[Re]Encoded.com

How To Make Your Blog A Time Lasting Brand

Back in 2003 when I started my very first blog on a free hosted solution, things were simpler. In 2009 there is an entire industry based around the mighty blogosphere. Now, in order to succeed, you must keep track of social networking accounts, comments, SE rankings, analytics stats and more.

This makes the problem of establishing your blog as a time lasting brand even harder, so here are some tips on how you can do it in 2009. These are simple tips that will help make your blog a memorable brand.

We are going to cover how to build an authoritarian social presence, learning new writing skills, moderation techniques, identifying reader needs and requests, design concepts, commenting, building a elevator pitch and some nice general tips and tricks.

First Things First, The Elevator Pitch

The first problem I faced when designing my own blog in 2009 was how to make it interesting. One idea I picked up after reading the 31 days to build a better blog book from problogger.net was to create an elevator pitch. An elevator pitch is a descriptive word or phrase that you can throw in almost anywhere.

Try and find a elevator pitch that you can use in your email signature, in your forum signatures, inside your blog, and so on. I even saw one on the back of a car, that made me very interested and I visited that blog on my cell as I was driving.

Try and give the pitch a shorter version and a longer version. You will need the shorter version for offline contacts and the longer version for the actual daily presence.

Building A Powerful Social Presence

Social networking is the best way to stay updated on new trends. It is also important for you to have a strong presence in social media. It doesn’t matter if only have Youtube or Twitter. Whatever social media platforms you use, master them.

The first rule is that you don’t want to be rude or a total snob when it comes to new users. Make sure to help people and to participate at least 10 minutes a day in your online life. People will add you as friends and you can build up a small community around yourself.

The two networks that I recommend are Twitter and Facebook. Make yourself known around those two networks and start building your social brand.

A word of care

Don’t start auto adding friends on Twitter like a madman. You want actual people that are interested in what you say, not robots that simply ignore your messages. Building up relationships take time and care, so use twitter as your own custom made drift car, take care of it and it will take care of you.

Here are some nice posts on how to add more followers to twitter and more friends on Facebook:

• How Do You Get More Followers On Twitter?
• 5 Ways to Find More Friends on Twitter
• How to get more friends on Facebook
• How to acquire more friends on Facebook

Learning New Writing Skills

Having a strong social presence and a great elevator pitch is worthless if you have poor writing skills. The most important thing to have a nicely branded blog is to write great and unique stuff. Originality is very important.

Think about it, you have a resource that people can explore. You need to be to the point, original, unique and trustworthy. Try not to write about a topic that has been covered 10000s of times, and if you do it, then make it as unique and original as possible.

Let me give you an example:

I want to write about a Philips electric razor. So I name my post Best in the world Philips electric razor, trust me that is not going to start up a lot of hype. But, if you write a post like The electric Philips razor that my grandma shaves her mustache, that will definitely get linked.

Here are some tips on how to improve your writing skills:

• Ten Tips for writing a blog post
• Mastering blog writing skills
• Cultivate Your Writing Skills to Improve Your Blog

Moderation Techniques

Everybody loves SEO, but please stop hogging it. If you are running a wordpress blog, there’s all less work you need to do for SEO. One recommendation here – Install All in one SEO pack and let the job be done. The only thing you need to do is write a descriptive sentence at the beginning of your article that is in relation with your title.

Keep in mind that SEO doesn’t gather frequent blog readers, it optimizes your blog on SE. You need quality content for those readers to be transformed into RSS subscribers. Keep your blogs SEO in moderation and focus on other things.

I found a blog post that tells us the same thing: SEO technique like link building can help visitors find your blog, but they don’t turn visitors into regular readers.

Twitter hogging

Stop checking your Twitter status every 5 minutes. You don’t have anything up just yet. Try and check it once or twice every few hours. Try and focus on writing.

As I said, try and keep everything in moderation, and focus on the things that need attention. If you have a rusty About Me page, try and give it a nudge by changing it`s content in addition to writing another GREAT list post like the previous 10 you wrote.

Solve Reader’s Problems

Try and establish your blog as a user helper. Look out on forums, posts or twitter on what problems do users have. Try and solve them (if you can) on your blog. The chances are that not only one user has the same problem, so if you have a solution to a problem, post it. This increases the fact that a user will become a active reader on your blog.

Log in to your analytics and search for keywords that users are typing to find your blog. See if there are questions asked. Don’t be afraid to email a user and help him on his problem.

Often these tiny bits can help your blog significantly. Be active and helpful and your blog will be highly regarded. You know every user surfs more than one resource, so if you help someone out, chances are that he might link your solution inside a forum or blog giving you even MORE exposure.

Design Concepts

After writing, helping and other matters, you need to look at the “dress” that your blog wears. Think of it like this: You go with your blog to a dinner, but your blog has a cheap 10 dollar dress on. This is embarrassing for you and for your blog in front of the other bloggers with 1000 dollar D&G dresses that their blogs wear.

Here are some nice places to get great design ideas for your blog:

• WordPress showcase
• WeloveWP
• WordPress Showcase: 40+ Beautiful And Well Designed Blogs Powered By WordPress
• WP Inspire

General Tips

I will just list the points here so you will get a clear idea:

• Don’t make your blog for money earning from the start
• Write often, at least 2-3 times a day
• Get out of the box with your topics, write something unusual
• Use a grammar spelling checker
• Be descriptive with images – its fun to check flickr
• Don’t be afraid to link to a fellow blogger
• Don’t be afraid to link to a smaller blog with few readers
• Give credits when someone earns them
• Encourage users to leave comments
• Offer prizes, money, exposure by making your blog a weekly contest

These are the tips that allowed me to build a great community and brand around my blog in my own country. These are general tips that you can use to improve your blog. If you want more detail on this topic I recommend buying the problogger book that will help you build a better blog in 31 days.

• Tweet