Monetizing your blog can be a lucrative way to create a passive income. However, making money blogging is often more complicated than it seems. A clear brand identity is the foundation of any successful blog and for that you’re going to need to learn the five commandments of blog branding.
By incorporating these straightforward principles, showcasing your personality, and focusing on your audience, you’ll be able to run a more profitable blog.
With that said, these are the five golden rules of blog branding that we’re going to discuss in this post:
- Define your niche, mission, and values
- Establish a clear voice and tone
- Choose your color palette carefully
- Incorporate stunning visuals
- Create a brand style guide
Let’s jump right in!
1. Define your niche, mission, and values
Blog branding isn’t only about looks. Strong brands also have meaningful stories, as well as clear goals and intentions. That’s why it’s essential to pinpoint your niche, mission, and values.
Your niche is your field of expertise. If you write about every topic under the sun, you might confuse your readers. With a clear niche, you can more easily establish yourself as an authority.
The right niche will help you generate unique post ideas to increase your traffic. It should also be a subject that truly interests you, so you’ll be comfortable creating a lot of content about it.
Equally important are your mission and values, so you’d be wise to communicate them to your readers. For example, your mission might be to educate your readers about a certain topic:
You may want to create an About page on your site that’s dedicated to explaining your blog’s purpose. There you can share your blog’s story, outline your goals, and make sure that your niche is clear.
2. Establish a clear voice and tone
Another key element of your blog’s brand is its voice. A strong voice is essential if you want your brand’s personality to come through. This is often what keeps readers interested and coming back.
The voice you opt for should be consistent, unique, and aligned with your niche. For example, if you run a goofy blog similar to I Can Has Cheezeburger, you’ll want to strive for an informal and even jokey tone:
Your voice can be tongue-in-cheek, use puns, or break the rules of grammar. If you write about current events or a more serious topic, you might to adopt a more formal and authoritative tone instead. The key is that your words support a personality that appeals to your target audience.
Additionally, you may want to change your tone depending on the type of content you’re creating and where it will be featured. Your blog’s brand will likely extend to many social media platforms. Each of these comes with its own norms and trends, so it’s important to adapt.
However, your brand’s voice should remain relatively consistent no matter where it appears. Otherwise, you risk losing readers’ trust. It’s only your tone or mood that should shift depending on the circumstances.
3. Choose your color palette carefully
Color psychology has shown that different hues affect how we feel. Therefore, it’s a good idea to choose your brand colors carefully. You’ll want to consider:
- Cohesion. Your brand’s colors should work well together. You might want to do some research on color theory to help you select complementary choices.
- Brand alignment. Your color palette should be in harmony with your niche. For instance, if you run a craft blog geared towards elementary school teachers, you might employ lots of fun, bright hues.
- Minimalism. Too many colors can make your blog feel messy or unprofessional. It’s wise to stick with three colors – a base, an accent, and a neutral.
If you run a gardening blog, you may want to use lots of greens to match your subject matter:
Additionally, you should always think about how your colors affect the User Experience (UX). For example, lots of art blogs use only black and white. This allows visitors to see the art more clearly:
In a nutshell, your colors should be practical, while also enhancing your brand’s personality. You can also dive deeper into color psychology for more sophisticated customer targeting.
4. Incorporate stunning visuals
If you want to create a blog that turns heads, you’ll need stunning visuals. First off, your logo is of the utmost importance. Consider the following to create a memorable logo design:
- Space. Make sure that both the text and image elements have room to breathe. Otherwise, your design may be difficult to interpret.
- Fonts. As with colors, using too many fonts can make your logo seem disorganized. As such, it’s best to keep them to a minimum.
- Simplicity. Above all, your logo should aim to be sleek, timeless, and beautiful.
You would also be wise to consider logo placement. If your brand is new, you can be more upfront with your logo, as you’re building brand recognition:
Additionally, you can always expand your custom designs by using tailored icons in your navigation menus, headers, or anywhere else:
Furthermore, it’s a good idea to include images to accompany the text within your blog post. However, make sure all of the images you use are high-quality and relevant.
5. Create a brand style guide
As your blog grows, it may become hard to keep your branding consistent. That’s especially true if you have a diverse online presence, posting both on your own site and on social platforms.
Once you’ve worked out what the key elements of your brand will be, it’s vital to document them clearly. This is where a brand style guide comes in handy. Your style guide doesn’t have to be complicated. There are plenty of templates online that can get you started:
What matters is that you write down everything you’ve decided on involving your brands personality, voice, colors, imagery, and so on. Don’t forget to include visual examples as well. That way, you and anyone else who creates content for your blog can have all of this information right at hand.
Last word on blog branding
Establishing a profitable blog can be challenging when you’re first starting out. You may not know how to go about building a cohesive and irresistible brand.
Keep the following blog branding commandments in mind and you should be in good shape:
- Define your niche, mission, and values.
- Establish a clear voice and tone.
- Choose your color palette carefully.
- Incorporate stunning visuals.
- Create a brand style guide.
Now that you have a solid understanding of blog branding, you should take a look at our A to Z guide on how to make money with your blog and also our review of blogging best practices.
