Hey there and welcome to The Marly Dice Podcast. Thank you for listening in on today’s episode. This is Marly and today I’ll be talking all about branding your blog and what bloggers tend to miss when it comes to branding.
Branding your blog is more than just pretty colors. When we start talking about branding, I think typically we go straight to the aesthetic component of branding, such as having a logo and having a couple brand colors.
When you’re first starting out with a blog, those are some of the first things you decide on. And rightly fully so. We have to think about what colors make most sense for our blog. Do we want bright, right, bold colors or do we want soft, elegant hues.
There’s actually quite a lot of research done when it comes to brand color. There are books out there about color physiology and what colors elicit what emotions. Red- for example, can be described using words like importance and attention. Green is more about nature or prosperity. White is clean, healthy. Gray is about neutrality and black is powerful or sophisticated.
When branding our blog, it’s a good idea to choose two or three colors. Those colors will be used in your logo and throughout your website.
It’s super important that you use the same colors consistently because it makes you look more professional and be more identifiable in the blogging world.
You’ll notice on my website, I primarily use three colors and they are red, dark gray, and beige. For me, my home is made mostly of gray, beige and white, so my photos typically stay on point with my branding colors. I also chose red for my blog because brick is typically red and my blog is called “A Brick Home.” I also like the color red and I like Target, which is obviously branded red. My red hue is a bit darker, more like a resemblance of brick than a bright red tone like Target, but I still thought red would suite my blog. And another reason I wanted to use red is because it’s one of my favorite colors. My bridesmaids were dressed in red and I had tons of red flowers at my wedding. Red is also a bit different than most other bloggers, and I wanted to do something that would stand out a bit from the crowd.
And then if we take it back to color phycology, red stands for importance. And I felt strongly that that would be a great fit for my blog mission.
So there’s really a lot of thought that goes into choose a branding color.
If you haven’t chosen your colors yet or maybe chose then but are thinking of changing them, a good idea would be to consider brand color psychology. Whatever colors fit you and your blog best, go with those!
I actually went through a couple brand color changes, so if you feel like your colors aren’t speaking to you or your audience, then change them. And go from there.
But don’t change them every month. Once you pick your brand colors and you’re happy with them, stick with them. How weird would it be if a couple Target’s across the US suddenly had a lime green Target logo out front of their brick and mortar location? It would really throw you off, wouldn’t it?
That’s why it’s important to be consistent with your brand colors.
People will start to know and recognize you by your brand colors.
So where should you put your brand colors? Your logo, your website, your creative work, such as your Facebook header, your pins if it makes sense for that pin.
We home bloggers can have all types of Pinterest pins, so I think there’s some room there for veering off course. If all our pins were primarily text it would be different but lots of our pins are images we take from photos of our home, our DIY work, projects we do, and so on. So, it wouldn’t make much sense to have those images be your brand colors.
But, those pins could and should have your logo on them.
There are lots of bloggers who don’t brand their images with their watermarked logo, and when you don’t do that people can easily steal your image and put it on their website as their own. It’s terrible. It really is.
And my take on it is, you’re doing all this work to create a beautiful home, you should give credit to yourself for doing all that work. Especially when you’re a new blogger, you can easily add your logo so that when it gets around Pinterest along with your other pins, people start recognizing your work – and your home.
I always try my best to put my watermark on all my images. I didn’t always do this when I was starting out, and I suppose looking back it wasn’t as big of a deal because I was learning the ropes and I wasn’t as proud of those old images as the new images I take. And because I am much more proud of the images I take now, I like to clearly identify that they are mine.
And you should too.
One place this is important is for any blogging roundups. I fully support roundups, and if you don’t know what this is, it’s when a blogger finds images of beautiful kitchens, for example, and takes one image from different bloggers and then puts that image on their blog.
If you do a roundup, you should always give credit to the blogger and link back to their blog.
That being said, it’s still great when you do have those images on your site that aren’t yours, for them to have a watermark so that the blogger can easily be identified. It’s just a great way for your audience to know whose work it is.
So along with your logo using your brand colors, it’s great to use those colors across your website. You can mix it up, testing which of your two or three colors works best on your footer or in your header or as blog titles.
I think the key here is playing around with your colors on your blog to see which color works best in which spot.
I know I played around with where the colors would go and I changed it so much, especially at the beginning when I was just starting out.
Just remember – it’s fine to mess with your colors until they’re just right, but don’t keep redoing this so much that every time a person comes to your blog, they’re confused about where they’re at because it keeps looking different.
Once you find your colors, stick with them.
If you go through a major rebrand, then that’s a different story. That would a case where you could redo the look and feel of your blog – even change the name of it – and announce it to your audience so they’re aware of your rebrand.
That happens often in the blogging world, and I think it’s pretty natural as we progress and grow as bloggers.
One other aesthetic branding component is your font or fonts on your blog.
I think it’s really important to have the same fonts throughout your blog and all creative because, again, it provides your audience with consistency. And we love consistency as readers.
I played around with my font so much in the beginning and I changed it way too many times. But, we live and we learn.
My best advice if you want to change your font is to install the plugin called “Easy Google Fonts.” This plugin allowed me to easily customize my font settings for paragraph text and each heading text. It was really user friendly and had a ton of choices for font options. I like to mention this tidbit as much as possible because it helped me so much.
I remember trying to change my font early on by updating my theme’s code. And I have a paid theme with complicated coding, so it was no easy task.
Long story short, I kind of messed up my coding when I was trying to update the fonts and then had to go back, figure out how I messed it up, fix it. ..it was basically a nightmare. Many plugins are wonderful, and I am so glad I installed “Easy Google Fonts.” – wish I had done it sooner.
We covered a lot of the aesthetic side of branding, and I think most of know a lot about those. But it’s not all about how our blogs look.
Words matter. Words are powerful. And words are part of our brand.
So, to answer the question of this podcast title, “what do most bloggers miss when branding their blog?”: they miss the brand messaging component.
Similar to your brand aesthetics, your brand messaging should be consistent.
If you haven’t yet come up with branding words to describe your blog, add that to your to-do list.
You want to come up with branding words that describe your blog but also aren’t overly common.
For my blog, I use words such as “casual elegance” and “comfy, cozy & chic.” – in that order, all the time. I also specify my mission as a blogger, which is to help home enthusiasts beautify their home and build a blogging business.
These are words that I use all over my blog.
So where should you put these branding words?
Well, get out a pen or pencil or the notes section of your phone. I’ve got a list for you.
Some good places to reiterate your message are:
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- on your blog’s homepage
- On your blog’s about page
- in the bio section on the sidebar of your blog
- in a bio section under your blog posts
- in your Instagram profile bio
- on your Facebook page’s about section
- on your Pinterest profile
- On creative work – like a Facebook header
- in the meta description of your blog – AKA how your blog appears in search results on Google.
Where do you change this info?
I’m glad you asked.
First, you should get the Yoast SEO plugin. This plugin is great for optimizing your blog posts and blog for search. I believe every blogger should have this plugin.
Once you get the plugin, there’s a section called “Search Appearance.” Once you click on “Search Appearance”, there’s a box entitled “Meta description.” This is where you want to put your branding words and message because this is the text that will show up in search results.
Once you add your brand words and message to this box, go ahead and google your blog. This may take a minute or a day or so, But soon, you’ll notice that those words you typed in that meta description box in the Yoast SEO plugin are the ones that generate under your blog name when you search it.
Pretty awesome, right?
There are a lot of takeaways in this episode, but I think the overarching message here is to be consistent with your brand look and brand message. You don’t want to give your audience a mixed message so that they have no clue why they should follow you.
And make sure that you’re making an effort to monitor your brand. Be brand aware.
We have a lot of things to do as bloggers, and branding your blog consistently should be on that list. It shouldn’t be looked over because it says a lot about your blog and give either give you an authoritative stance on the industry or do just the opposite.
You don’t want to be classified on the “opposite” side, so make sure you’re keeping u with branding.
One great way to do this is by having a cheat sheet nearby that you can glance off of that has all your branding guidelines.
I have a small piece of paper taped to my desktop that says the hex code of my brand colors and the fonts I use and where. My brand messaging is memorized and actually my hex codes are basically memorized too because I use them so much, but these things should eventually be engrained in your brain.
Until they are, have a little cheat sheet nearby so you can easily find what you need for branding purposes.
I know that was a lot of information but man this episode really gets my heart pumping because this is marketing talk. My former corporate marketing self is jumping up and down inside.
Then again, every time I do an episode that relates specifically to marketing, I think to myself, this is WHY I started this podcast. Because, while I love being a home blogger, I’m also so passionate about marketing. And my blogging business gives me the opportunity to combine the two – because we, as bloggers, can do whatever our little hearts desire.
So go forth – and enjoy your day. Thank you so much for tuning it.
BTW – if you loved this episode, please take a minute to subscribe on iTunes and leave me a review. It would mean the world to me.
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