The concept of blogging can be very complicated from start to finish and it takes months to get used to writing, publishing and promoting. However, many believe writing content and generating brand awareness is the most difficult part when blogging however I’ve just come across some more troubling. I believe the way you market your blog is more damaging to your blog than anything else. At one point it was writing low quality content because it slows down the rate at which your brand grows however here’s something more alarming. Did you know even the most authority bloggers can harm their blog by marketing the wrong way. I learned the concept of “brand dilution†on dinodogan.com and couldn’t help but research this concept. For those of you not aware of this term, here’s a quick breakdown…
“Brand dilution is defined as the “spreading†of the brand across too many ill-conceived channels.â€
It’s when you over market your blog across too many channels or market on the same channels as millions of others blogs. I know your probably having a hard time understanding the entire concept so let’s take a look at how it applies to blogging and what you can do about it.
Explanation 1
It’s all about the avenues you take to market your brand and what you do with others brand’s. Did you know each time you place someone else’s logo on your blog your diluting your brand? Here’s something else,
Many people are using WordPress as their number 1 blogging platform because it streamlines the entire process to create a website and/or blog. The plug-ins are easy to install and you can customize your website to perform exactly the way you want, however you have to be careful of a few things when tweaking plug-ins. For example, recently I’ve been using Disqus.com below my content for people to easily leave comments. I didn’t realize how much this is hurting my brand until I read some of the examples by dinodogan.com. Here’s what I mean…
Each time someone leaves a comment the persons profile and logo are displayed. This means I’m indirectly promoting someone else’s blog. Many of you are thinking who cares, but I’ll tell you why it matters.
First, if your getting 100,000+ visitors to your blog your driving enormous traffic to someone else’s blog through comment traffic. Next, these people can be relevant to your niche and are in direct competition with your brand and can have an impact on your overall traffic over time. If the same person leaves a comment on 200 blogs throughout the month it can translate into enormous conversions. I’m not going to lie to you and I’m going to be completely transparent. When I first started leaving comments on Disqus.com on relevant blogs I saw an increase in my traffic and still do.
Next,
Dinodogan.com talks about how some bloggers will pay thousands of dollars to sponsor an event, but when their logo is displayed it’ll be mixed with 100’s of other brands. This is NOT doing your blog any good because you’ve essentially diluted your brand logo by mixing it with other relevant logos on the same banner. You’ve invested thousands of dollars to sponsor, but the initial ROI is very low. In these circumstances you have to be very careful where and how you promote your brand.
Solution
There are “2†scenarios outlined where it will be fine to dilute your brand. Both are towards the bottom-scale and the positives outweigh the negative. Let’s take a look…
First, it fine if there is a monetary value behind the logo marketing. For example, Shoemoney.com has T-Shirt Fridays where he’ll wear a company’s t-shirt to promote their brand. Here’s an example…
If you adopt the same philosophy than you’ll be able to keep your bottom line making money and charge a small fee. The fee will depend on the popularity of your blog, etc. Next,
The other method is simple…
If you need to promote the other bloggers brand and there are times you might have to reference a bloggers work, images, video and infographics so you have to give credit where deserved. If it’ll add value to your blog and content then be sure to reference the blog so your following Google’s guidelines while staying away from trouble for using someone else’s work.
Other than the two examples listed above I think it’s a good idea to stay away from blog dilution because it’s a very competitive industry so no need to promote your competition. Be strategic and always look at the positives & negatives of your promotion strategy before moving forward.