Have you been blogging for a while, shared many of your personal stories with the public, but see no progress? Chances are, your blog isn’t correctly branded. If you’re blogging on a free domain, don’t know about SEO, and didn’t plan your website’s appearance, you’ll have to change things to see improvement.
Many bloggers have successfully branded their personal blogs. They’ve presented themselves as experts in their niche, and people are rushing to their website to see what they write about. Branding statistics show that customers are more likely to purchase something from a brand, and this explains why these bloggers have more affiliate sales and higher revenue.
Luckily, there are several steps you can take to turn your blog with mundane stories into a branded website with increased page views. Ultimately, you’ll be able to monetize that blog and earn a decent amount of money in almost any niche. Here’s how.
Step #1. Get a Paid Domain and Hosting
While domains with .xyz, .tk, .ml extensions are usually safe, many people believe that websites like these are related to scams, which is why they tend to leave the page. Besides, nothing beats a professional domain that shows the essence of your brand.
You can purchase the professional domain on several platforms, including GoDaddy, Namecheap, Domain, Bluehost, and similar. Think about what you want your blog to represent, how you want your readers to feel while reading your blog posts, and what your niche will be before deciding on the domain name.
Handling the paid hosting might seem like a hassle, but in reality, it’s straightforward. Even if you run into a problem, you can always ask for help, and customer support will assist you. The best way to get paid hosting while you still own the domain and your blog’s content is to go with WordPress.org and a paid hosting platform.
You won’t need dedicated hosting for your personal blog. However, while it’s faster and better, it’s also more expensive. Since you’ll need to save money for creating your logo and possible consultation with a web developer, the best solution is to go with shared hosting, which is fast enough and still affordable.
Step #2. Migrate Your Content
If you’ve used any of the free hosting platforms so far, now you’ll have to migrate your blog posts, images, and other website media. For example, if you’re migrating from Wix, you’ll need to take some time to learn how to save the content and move it to WordPress.
Wix Migration Tips and Tricks
Wix is known for not helping its users move away from the platform. Ideally, you’ll want to move both your content and domain to the paid hosting service.
Once you install WordPress and have the essentials like a navigation menu and a few pages, you can use the RSS to migrate from Wix. Then, you should point the domain to your new host since Wix won’t let you do a permanent redirect to an outside premium website.
Luckily, since WordPress.com and WordPress.org are similar platforms, and WordPress.com has an option to let you import a Wix website, you can follow these steps:
- Create a new free website with WordPress.com
- Go to Tools – Import
- Select Wix
- Enter your current domain
- Import the website
- Use the Export feature to download it from WordPress.com
- Import it to WordPress.org
It might take you some time, and the media might be slightly misplaced. But once you have your WordPress website imported, you can proceed to branding.
WordPress Migration Tips and Tricks
If you use a free version of WordPress.com, you can easily download the whole website and upload it to your WordPress.org platform via the Export/Import feature. Even though these are two different kinds of WordPress companies, the interface is similar, so you shouldn’t have any issues.
Step #3. Brand the Blog
Once you upload your website and have your domain fixed, start thinking about the colors you want to assign to your brand. Do this before handling your texts, images, and other items, since you’ll likely delete some and upload new media.
To turn your personal blog into a brand, you should consider:
- Niche
- The style and tone of the blog
- Colors, theme, and logo
- Social media
Niche Selection
Your niche is the first thing to consider when you want to turn your personal blog into a branded one. It will also define how you monetize your content, where you’ll find the audience, and what you’ll write about.
For example, if you only publish short stories on your blog, you can aim for a publishing or book-related niche, where you’ll post articles about the self-publishing process. If you blog about the places you visited by car, chances are you can successfully manage either car-related or travel niches.
Your ideal niche is a combination of the things you love and know a lot about. Let your niche revolve around the articles you used to publish to match your selected niche.
How Do You Want to Communicate With Your Audience?
The way you write your blog posts says a lot about you and your website. Your brand’s tone of voice will also set you apart from the rest and give your brand a personality.
That way, you’ll build trust with your audience. Once you get the hang of it, you’ll realize how to better influence people and their purchasing decisions, which can increase your revenue.
If you successfully combine all those elements, you’ll create a loyal readership. On the other hand, if you don’t have a niche and write about personal experiences, you’ll have even more freedom to work on your style.
Colors, Theme, and Logo Are the Key
Naturally, you’ll want to assign a color palette to your newly branded blog. Colors are the most powerful tool of a brand. They evoke a particular emotion in your visitor and may affect the decision-making process. While not all people will react the same when they visit your blog, you can still affect the most and get the best out of your theme and logo.
These are the most common colors in web design:
- Red – passion, excitement, anger. Ideal for blogs that want to appear authoritative and draw attention;
- Orange – playfulness, vitality, friendliness. Great for blogs that share fun articles;
- Yellow – happiness and optimism. Yellow is suitable for parts of the blog, like buttons or anything that needs attention;
- Green – stability, growth, nature. This is the perfect color for gardening websites;
- Blue – trustworthy, professional. Perfect for formal writing topics;
- Purple – luxury, royalty, sometimes spirituality. Use purple if you write about digital products or technology;
- Pink – femininity, innocence. This color is great if you write about jewelry, makeup, or lifestyle.
If you feel like you can’t handle color selection and logo creation, you should hire a freelancer to do it for you. Fiverr and Upwork are the two well-known platforms where you can find a decent designer that won’t cost a fortune.
Select Your Platform
When it comes to social media platforms, you’ll likely feel like you need to conquer them all. However, this can be tiresome and might distract you from writing your content and optimizing your blog.
The ideal social media platform is the one where your audience is. That’s where you’ll likely have the most interaction and chances to succeed. While each platform comes down to the activity of its users, there are some tips and tricks for increasing brand awareness on each one.
The first thing you’ll want to do is create an official account on your desired platform. You can still keep your personal one and use it to share the content, but creating an official account can increase brand awareness.
Keep in mind that many platforms require a lot of followers for the verified badge. Still, it’s enough that you just mention that the account is official in the bio section. Utilize your logo and color palette to create header photos for official accounts. Maintain the same style of writing and tone of voice.
Use tools like Canva to create images or Tailwind to schedule your posts and remain active to build your audience. Once you’re happy with how that account looks, you can proceed to another platform and test the waters there.
Step #4. Optimization Is Essential
By now, you’ve probably heard about SEO and website optimization. After all, the purpose of your now branded blog is to be seen, shared, and generate revenue. You’ll hardly manage this without the basic SEO.
You already did a little bit of on-page SEO by carefully selecting your theme, brand colors, letters, and images. With the active social media account, you handled some aspects of the off-page SEO. Unfortunately, there’s more to it.
If you’re used to writing your blog posts without keywords, you’ll want to spend some time learning about them now. While Google changes its algorithms, you’ll still want to create content that’s suitable for Google and your readers. The right keyword implementation will help you do that. The best way to handle SEO is to use specific tools. These include:
- Rank Math or Yoast SEO – help you write optimized content
- Diab or Semrush – help you with rank tracking and marketing
- Ubersuggest or Ahrefs – great for keyword research
- AnswerThePublic or Exploding Topics – help you find topics
Most of these tools are free and sufficient when you start working on your newly branded blog.
Conclusion
Having a blog requires patience, and turning it into a branded website can be challenging, especially if you start with a free domain and hosting. While cheap domains don’t necessarily affect Google rankings, they affect how your audience sees you.
In order to turn your existing personal blog into a branded one, you should focus on improving your content, selecting your color palette, niche, and building your brand on social media. A branded blog will have a solid readership base and can bring in a steady income.
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