Blogging Your Brand

Blogging is one of the best ways to establish a brand persona. The tone and quality of your blog is an indicator to your customers, partners and potential influencer endorsers of the quality and type of service/product they will receive if they purchase from you.

Your blog becomes and important conduit to many things you do as a business and entrepreneur. I actually see my blog as a fulcrum of activity around writing, business acumen, networking and new business development.

Companies and entrepreneurs can use their blogs to sell you conceptual ideas matching the trends and happenings in your industry. It can be a conversation initiator; writing an article that you know will appeal to a potential customer then inviting them to read it. Or introduce yourself to an influencer by commenting or re-posting one of their blog posts, or linking to an article or quote in a publication, then letting them know you did this. These are brand building tactics around a certain post and the tone and focus of you blog.

There is an interesting trend on the blogosphere to engage in what I call “blog duals.” This is where two or more blogs “dis” the other either personally or philosophically. The philosophical dual is compelling, as long as it stays at an exchanging ideas and perhaps agreeing to disagree. But many times it spirals into personal attacks. When it becomes personal, while it can build a soap opera-like following and spike traffic, what does it do to that bloggers brand? Some can get away with it and have an extreme personality-based brand. But most of us can’t pull that off and it will eventually bite us in the butt (Don Imus anyone?).

So think about what your blog stands for, how does it represent your brand. Are you using it to the fullest capacity as a networking and customer building work horse?