When it comes to digital brand management for your blog, you should understand a few key terms. The first is branding. Sometimes, the term is vaguely defined because it’s confused with some design aspects, such as a logo. The truth is that branding includes the logo but goes beyond the distinctive graphic.
Branding promotes a company or product through distinctive design or certain advertising elements. It’s unnecessary to define the term since it’s enough to say that you can visualize digital parts through screens. The result is that you can observe the digital branding components of your blog through your smartphone, monitor, or media based on pixels, such as a digital billboard.
What is a brand?
The origins of a brand may shed light on its modern components. A few decades ago, it was the identifiable mark of livestock through a branding iron. You performed this process to mark ownership. It doesn’t seem strange to distinguish other products and services through distinctive modern branding.
Modern branding is a mixture of elements. This branding reality is particularly true in the digital realm, where almost every successful brand has a unique identity. If you want your blog to be successful, you can’t ignore branding.
Focused on the digital
Maybe you’ve designed or commissioned designs to create business cards and flyers. You can find this marketing collateral in offline businesses. Since a blog is an online endeavor, you’ll often find that most of the graphics representing your brand are exposed digitally.
Some of the results are practical, you use most of the RGB (red, green, and blue) colors that make up screens, and you deprioritize projects created with the CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Key) color model that you often use in the print world. The practical purpose is to focus on the online media your audience consumes.
The concept
You’re mistaken if you believe you should start your branding process with pretty and colorful graphics. Of course, vivid images have their place, but I don’t recommend you start your branding process with visuals alone.
You may have some ideas, and the moment will be suitable for exposing them. First, I recommend you think about a concept for your brand. It can be related to the blog’s name and raison d’etre. Most other elements of your branding process take the concept as a starting place. For example, you certainly don’t want a name that doesn’t match your logo.
Voice, identity, promise, values, targeting, and positioning
Voice, identity, promise, values, targeting, and positioning are the elements that make up a brand. They answer the following questions:
- How will the brand communicate with its target audience?
- What is the DNA or the brand?
- What can customers expect from the blog?
- What values make up the core of the blog?
- Who is our message aimed at?
- What market position do we want to take?
As you can see, the answer to these questions needs deep thought since they will permeate every single decision you make for your blog or brand.
The obvious – The logo
Once you’ve identified your target market and answered all the questions that lead to a strong brand, you may want to think about the visuals being the first element of the logo.
It’s best if you create or commission various versions of your logo. In some cases, it’s not feasible to designate more than one version because of constraints such as budgetary concerns. Otherwise, I recommend you have your options open. Then, you can be pleasantly surprised with alternatives you may haven’t thought about before.
Your color palette
A color palette is another must-have. It’s a color collection you can use in the digital marketing collateral that enriches your visuals and distinguishes you from other blogs and brands.
Let’s say you have your logo ready and want to create a video. What color should the background be? You don’t want to make a series of videos with conflicting messages. You want them to be “on brand,” which means you know the color palette belongs to you.
Using a color palette, you’ll be differentiating from other blogs, which will often use the template their software provides without much customization.
Being Consistent on all digital media
By now, you should have your visuals ready and your branding questions well answered. The next step is to use your assets again and again. This repetition will allow you to be cohesive. For example, one reader follows you on YouTube and then downloads a report. The logo and color palette should be the official ones you use for branding purposes. Your blog’s voice, positioning, and other intangible non-visual elements should also be clear.
In your branding guidelines document, you should also decide if you have fixed visual rules or if you can, for example, add another color for Christmas or consider seasons, months, and special days. These enhancements will add dynamism to your branding.
The results
When it comes to branding, there’s sometimes a question in the background: Why bother? The answer is simple: Branding is a proven way to make your customer happy. You make it easier to recognize your blog material, which leads to more engagement, sales, and satisfaction.
It’s also a way to differentiate yourself from your competition. If you don’t stand out, then it’s highly probable that your sales, profitability, and overall goals will suffer. On the other hand, if you are just like any other blog, there’s no reason to read, watch, admire, and therefore buy from you.
Final Words
As you can see, digital brand management for your blog is about making the best of the modern ways your target market wants to engage with you. So whether it’s a blog post, a Pinterest picture, a tweet, a PDF, a course, or a video, you can always stay “on brand” by preparing yourself beforehand.
The results speak for themselves: No successful internet company without a strong brand exists. Whether a one-person operation or a distributed team, you can be closer to your goals through a strong brand management plan.
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