What makes up your blog branding?

Over the last few issues of The Daily, we’ve talked about what a brand is. A brand is an IDEA… a FEELING… an IMAGE. It is not a logo, a business card, or a picture of yourself.

If you’re still unclear on all that, I encourage you to go back and review the last few issues. Because, before we delve into the surface-level stuff, you have to know what you’re aiming for… and why. In this case, the big ideas are more important than the tactics.

But, at this point, let’s begin talking tactics. Let’s talk mechanics.

Once you have an idea what you want your brand to be, what are the components?

• Logo

• Tagline

• Central branding image and “hero shot”

• Color scheme

• Brand tone

• Messaging

Those are some of them. Really, when you get right down to it, everything you put on your site is a component of branding. Certain things lend right to it (like logo, etc.), but everything on your blog goes together to back up the brand concept.

First off, a fundamental part of the brand concept is the TONE. Is the tone of your content and your site serious? Trustworthy? Comical? Lighthearted? Educational?

If you look again at the brand idea and the mental image picture you want people to associate with you, it should lend itself to certain tones. Plus, your tone should be pretty congruent with YOU and who you are naturally that way you don’t feel you’re faking anything and don’t find it difficult.

The TONE of Blog Marketing Academy is basically educational, yet approachable. I keep it lighthearted and normal… like you would be hanging out with me in my campsite talking about your blog. My blog posts read in a conversational way for this reason. These Daily emails are written pretty much like I would talk to you if I were sitting there. All that is intentional and part of my brand.

Once you have the tone in mind that you feel fits, ask yourself how the rest of the components back it up?

We’ll talk more about imagery coming up, but absolutely…. imagery you choose for your website does alot for your branding, your tone, and that mental image picture people associate with you. Now that I look at my own homepage, for instance, it might not be a bad idea to incorporate my RV camping setup into the main homepage imagery. It’s part of who I am and it speaks to the kind of lifestyle that I feel would be a good association with what I do.

See, if I were sitting there posing with a Lamborghini, it’d be a whole different vibe, would it not? Probably a crappy one…. since we all know all those marketer Lambo shots were taken with a rental anyway.

Probably a good “hero shot” (slang for the topmost branding image usually found on the homepage) would be me, on my laptop, sitting in a nice campsite next to my motorhome. That’d be a main branding image and a nice mental image picture I wouldn’t mind being associated with my brand.

But, that image alone wouldn’t be complete. Is it a site about RVs? Nah. And I need to make that clear.

So, along with the hero shot, we’d need a site headline. The job of that headline is to immediately communicate the unique selling proposition (USP) of the website to new arrivals.

Perhaps we’ll talk more about that one in the next issue… since I know many people gett all twisted up when they’re thinking about their own USP.

But, for now, think about this…

• What VALUE does your brand promise? In other words, what are they going to get out of it?

• What differentiates you from others who do roughly the same thing as you?

I know… I know. That last one can be a doosie. We’ll talk more about it later. So, stay tuned.

– David