- branding is important to set ourselves apart from the masses of book bloggers
- we need to use the same name and graphic across all social networks
- we need to be consistent with our blogging
- we need to establish a voice or personality
- our blog look should reflect that personality
- creating a niche for ourselves will help us stand out
One of the things we talked about was to survey our readers to see if our idea of ourselves matches our readers' idea of us. We talked about how doing surveys was fun but scary. You know I love to do surveys and have never really thought of them as scary, but this time, it really IS scary! That's because I seriously want to know how I am perceived out there in blogging land, yet to ask feels like I am fishing for compliments or something.
So just know that's NOT what I am doing by asking these questions. I am really only wanting to know what sort of "brand" I'm creating.
Now this whole brand idea is so funny to me because, I'm sure like many of you, I just started doing stuff and somehow, hopefully, it's all meshed into some overall big picture that all makes sense. Maybe, I don't know. But I had (still have really) no idea what I'm doing and like many said on the chat, I just do what feels right and take it from there.
But hopefully by doing what feels right, a personality or "voice" of some sort is coming through. And that's what I want to ask you all.... is it ? Or am I just clueless?
So here are my (scary) questions, which I hope you'll all take the time to answer this next week! (I'll be away some of the week family reunioning, so I expect to come back to TONS of lovely responses!!)
I'm sure there's tons of other things I could ask, but I'll leave at that for now. And please comment with anything more you'd like to add that the survey didn't address!
(P.S. Do try to join us at the chats! I have a feeling I'm going to learn lots from these things and probably every time it will spark a post idea of some sort. I'm sad I will probably have to miss the next one though which is actually Thursday morning at 10:00 AM Eastern.)
Suey, I'm still unsure what a gravatar is and once I figure that out...what should I use?!
ReplyDeleteI think reading blogs through my google reader makes it harder to know things about the blog. If I read your blog directly then I'd see the labels and currently reading widget and I'd see more of your style. As for seeing your gravatar, I'd only notice that if you commented a lot either on my blog or blogs I read the comments of a lot.
ReplyDeleteThe survey was here and now it's gone! Anyway, I think what I remember most about your blog is that your life is similar to my own! That's probably not very helpful to you, because that won't apply to everyone. I enjoy your reviews, and that's usually what I look for. I agree with Callista that google reader clouds some of these branding issues a little. I'll check back later and see if the survey comes back!
ReplyDeleteYeah, I think the "look" of a blog is less of a big deal with how many people use readers. I had to scroll back up and remind myself what everything looks like on yours, even though I never miss a post! lol
ReplyDeleteUsing the same handle across social networking sites is big... my problem is sometimes I'm doing things that I want connected to my book blog and other times I'm doing things related to Stampin' Up... I haven't figured out how to balance all that.
I've been thinking about my own branding quite a bit lately. And, I've been contemplating some surveys like this one and the ones you've run in the past. It is very scary! Thanks for this post - you give me courage.
ReplyDeleteJessica @ The Bluestocking Society