Building Your Brand With a Blog

Savvy professionals are blogging to easily publish fresh content on a platform that integrates well with social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. A blog can be a useful tool for building your professional brand, however, to be effective, you need to publish content on a regular basis.

If you have a lot of information to share, blogs are an ideal platform for publishing text, images, and even video. If you already sent out an email newsletter, consider publishing complete articles on a blog and link to them from your newsletter. If you’re a writer, a blog may be a natural fit for you. Even if you don't have the time or inclination to write, you can hire a professional blogger to flesh out your ideas and craft blog posts for your blog.

Here are some ways to build your brand through a blog:

1. Showcase your expertise. If you’re an expert in your field, use a blog to demonstrate what you know. Focusing on your areas of expertise help you hone in on relevant topics and build your reputation.
2. Share your accomplishments. Showcase what you’re doing on your blog and announce milestones, recognitions and awards you and your company receive. You can also link to articles and blog posts that others have written about your company from your blog.
3. Share your opinions. Craft timely blog posts by commenting on current events, industry news or other issues relevant to your business, your customers and your prospects. The most successful blogs feature an opinionated blogger with a strong voice. Make sure to set a tone that is appropriate for your professional image and your company’s brand.
4. Give kudos to others. Avoid blogging in a vacuum by reading what others are writing and referencing them. Citing other bloggers or writers and praising and linking to their writing from your blog can generate a lot of good will.
5. Showcase your work. Because most reputable blogging platforms support embedded multimedia files, blogs can be ideal for featuring graphics, photography, artwork, audio and video. Visuals also help break up text to make blog posts more readable. Even if you don’t have images of your own, carefully curated stock images can draw attention to your content.
6. Stimulate conversation. As a blogger, you are a defacto host of your online community. Think of your blog posts as potential conversation starters. As people comment on your blog posts, respond to their comments. Being a responsive host can foster loyalty amongst your readers and in turn increase your readership.
7. Drive actions. If you are blogging for business, just building your brand and reputation isn’t enough. You want to be able to direct people toward actions such as contacting you to hire you or to purchase your products. While taking a salesy approach doesn’t work well in blog posts, don’t be afraid to link to your online store or contact form to encourage actions.

Building your professional brand online with a blog requires clear content and a consistent publishing schedule. Create an editorial calendar where you plan out blog post topics for weeks at a time considering what’s happening with your business and what you’re doing. Your editorial calendar should be flexible to accommodate current events and breaking news. Treat is as a helpful guide to stay on message and to combat the inevitable writers block.

Another way to keep your blog content ideas flowing is to start a tickler file of blog post ideas. In the “old days,” a writer’s tickler file consisted of a physical file folder in a desk drawer filled with clippings from newspapers and magazines. In this digital age, “clip” articles and blog posts from the web using bookmarking tools such as Evernote, Pocket, even Pinterest. Refer to previously saved content to spark new blog post ideas.

You’ll find that blogging can be a great way to build your brand as long as you post regularly, stay focused and relevant, and let your personality shine through.