Quick. Google “top SEO tips”. And observe which result do you click first
It’s likely, like the majority, you would visit Neil Patel or Backlinko’s website. Or maybe even Ahref’s.
Not necessarily because the other results are bad. But because these are three authority names that are well-recognized and reputed in the digital marketing niche. Their brand exudes trust and value.
Now comes the punchline for all the bloggers: just creating blatant contents and optimizing them with keywords is NO MORE sufficient. If you’re looking to turn your blog into a full-time income stream, you need to take up sustainable marketing models.
Say, you’re creating more contents today and driving lots of organic traffic. You’re generating decent revenue. But what if you STOP producing more contents tomorrow? Given the algorithms of search engines and social media platforms change unpredictably, indeed your organic traffic will take a hit. And your revenue will slow down.
Now imagine, you built a brand that your core target audience recognize and trust. In that case, you won’t have to depend on an algorithm; you wouldn’t have to worry about shelling contents every day.
In the blogosphere, there are many big names who continue to enjoy hundreds and thousands of dollars annually on the back of pillar contents that they created years back. Yaro Starak is a renowned face, who leverages his old, evergreen blog posts to bring more customers to his business.
And then there is India’s Harsh Agarwal of ‘Shout Me Loud’. Although he’s making lakhs every month, he’s doing it the hard way. Failing to shape its brand value in the early stages, he has to create unique contents on a very consistent basis. For this, he even accepts guest posts, which has literally hit his blog’s quality. For the same reason – an ineptness to create a brand among the core target audience – his ‘Shout Me University’ course wasn’t really a big success.
In short, if you want to be successful – today, when competition is so high across all niches and SEO is easier said than done – you need to build yourself a brand. Period.
Now, you can focus on your own personal brand like, say, Neil Patel. Or, you can brand your blog, like HubSpot. That’s your choice, depending on your personal strategies and goals.
Comes the most important question next: How to build a brand?
Simple…
Start Conversations
There are many ways to build a brand for your blog. There are many tactics. But the fundamental to these tactics remain same: conversation. You need to talk to your target audience, engage them in a meaningful conversation, deliver them high value for their time, and (with no sense of economic returns) connect with them on an intimate level.
Look at any renowned and trusted brand out there. You will find that the majority of them don’t just offer their products/services to succeed—they actually go out of their way to connect with their target audience. Through their messages, unique personality and valuable contents, they connect with others. And this helps them build a brand for themselves, which go on to influence their sales and revenue.
So, once you’re done researching on and identifying who’s your most relevant audience, you must shape your entire digital marketing strategies around initiating and promoting conversations with them. Again, this is fundamental to a proper branding strategy.
Of course, moving along, comes the talk on channels where you should converse with your target audience. There are many social platforms to do this: Facebook, Medium, your own blog, Reddit, Quora, more.
However, in recent times, following the clumsy interface and outdated features of Quora, one platform that has gained massive attention from the top and new bloggers alike is LetsDiskuss.
LetsDiskuss is a rather Quora-like platform but with unique features and intuitive interface, it’s much more centric to “conversations”. Hence ‘Let’s Discuss’!
Continue Reading Part II of this post: 5 Powerful tips to Promote and Brand Your Blog With LetsDiskuss
No comments:
Post a Comment