Blog Titles and Branding Tools

My new blogger friend Juliana has had a very eventful life and has been in recovery for many years.  She’s always positive and tries to add value to the world by being courteous, sincere, and by paying it forward.  Juliana has  a new blog on her own domain and she has asked what the implications of changing her blog title (not the URL) might be. In this post I’m sharing my advice to her with my readers and inviting their feedback as well.

Creating a New Blog – Preparation

When creating a new blog take the time to consider exactly what your purpose is for creating a new blog  how you will use “branding tools.” Either by intention or by default,  branding starts during the design and strategy stage of creating a  new blog. That’s when the blogger chooses the niche (subject matter and keywords)  and lays the foundation for what kind of a blog they intend to create,  selects a URL, blog title and  blog tagline that reflect the intended “brand”.  Thereafter, branding begins to shift as a reader community develops and  grows and ultimately the blogger and the reader community become co-creators of an ever evolving brand.

Branding for Readers

What’s in a name? Unique names are highly valued for establishing brand identity and for standing out from the crowd. The best case scenario is that the URL, and the blog title, and a brief effective tagline operate as branding tools. Wherever possible, your blog’s URL, blog title and tagline ought to contain keywords (primary subject matter, products and/or services) that define your intended brand.

The rule of thumb is to select a unique, short name and URL that are easily remembered.  These “branding tools”  make it clear in advance to targeted readers using search engines to locate blogs of interest to them, what your blog is about and which niche it’s in before they click into the blog. Once readers do click in a unique, short name, URL and tagline along with a distinctive logo and/or graphics assist readers to recall where to find your blog again.

Targeted readers are different from casual traffic. Targeted readers arrive on your blog in response to SERPS (search engine page results) knowing the subject matter they are searching for will be found in your posts (assuming you have used relevant tags). Targeted readers are more likely to become regular readers and subscribers and leave comments on your posts. They are also more likely to backlink to your posts in posts of their own and when they do your blog will receive visitors who click the links. Targeted readers are also more likely to share the URL to your blog with other targeted readers in the same niche.

We all want our posts  to receive search engine attention be indexed and appear in the SERPS so they attract incoming targeted readers. We all want our posts to  receive backlinks, and our blog so achieves authority in our niche so it does achieve a PageRank. Effective use of branding tools increases the odds of this happening.

Branding Beyond the Blog

Forums for bloggers require bloggers to register and sign in or become a member. This membership provides them with a point of connection with other bloggers and sense of belonging to an online community. Additionally, the forum experience often leads to opportunities to form blog centered relationships, and to increase traffic flow to blogs, and branding tools have an important role to play in that process.

In the context of blog directories and social networks the consistency in the branding messages conveyed by your “branding tools” ought to be reflected in your blog descriptions, in the primary categories, sub-categories, and tags that you have assigned to your blog.

The more consistency created the more “targeted” your branding message becomes, and that in turn, makes it easier for targeted readers looking for specific content not only to locate your blog, but also and after visiting the blog consistency makes it easier for them to recall the URL, the blog title, and the tagline and return to it, and/or pass it along to other potential new readers.

Juliana’s blogs:
Personal Growth and Life Balance
The English Country Kitchen
The Northern Exchange

Related posts found in this blog:
How to Become a Better Blogger 4: Essentials
How to Become a Better Blogger 7: Brand Evolution
Creating a new blog
Basic SEO elements for bloggers

Related articles by Zemanta

• The Ultimate Guide to Building Your Blogging Brand – Blog Like A Pro! (bloggingpro.com)