Blogging Hacks: Branding

Benefits of Blogging: 5 Reason to Start a Blog

There are several alternatives to blogging. But, blogging has benefits of its own as compared to other media available on the internet. Within this post, we will understand the benefits of blogging and reasons to start a blog of your own.

The reason for starting a new blog could be subjective. One may get influenced by a successful blogger around or someone who would like to take their business online or to promote their businesses to the next level. Nonetheless, there are only benefits of blogging that helps you to grow personally and professionally and develop several skills.

Until you start experiencing these blogging benefits like how it is essential to connect with the audience, knowing their preferences, what your competitors are doing, etc., you won't realize how powerful starting a blog could be. Writing a new post is always been an enthusiastic endeavor for me. As I begin writing a new blog post every time, I think about the opportunities it creates for me to grow, connect, engage, learn, and grow even more.

I experienced blogging benefits with my first blog SMS Gallery itself and had a chance to learn many things associated with it. Thanks to all those fellow bloggers and the lovely audience who helped me reach there and taught me many things.

Alright! I have listed these blogging benefits for your understanding. So, without further ado, let's quickly have a look at 5 reasons to start a blog and the benefits of blogging:

1. Start a blog and connect with a large audience

Share your ideas with the large audience

Blogging is a platform where you can express your innovative ideas to an audience across the globe. Not just text-based content but every sort of business idea, hobby, innovation, problem solution could be shared on the blog. For example, a skilled photographer can reach his/her end audience through a blog and gain all the fame/recognition he deserves.

One of the greater benefits of blogging is that it provides you a platform where you can reach millions of users. A single platform could be very much helpful to promote your brand where you have complete control over the platform. One may do a detailed analysis of user behavior and can change content, campaign, enhancement if needed in the process, which will meet the end requirements.

The vast ocean of online users will give you many opportunities and learning experiences through which your product would be more refined and improved during the process change.

2. Start a blog and build a powerful network

Through the blog posts, you will be able to communicate with a vast audience. Take this as an opportunity and build a strong network of your brand.

Express yourself as an expert in your area of work. To do so, you will have to constantly study and build the knowledge base. Share this valued information with your audience.

If you are on the right path, many people would like to subscribe to your blog for the righteous information with the facts you are providing. This way you will be creating a community of individuals who keep the same interest and have a great influence on the content you are sharing.

3. Earning money: One of the most popular benefits of blogging

Who doesn't love free money! We all do, right? One of the principal benefits of blogging is that it can earn money for you.

The content you post on the blog can earn money for you. But it's not that easy. Good quality content earns the trust of the audience. A well-researched content is a delight to read. It not only helps readers but helps the author to build a good relationship with the audience, establish authorship, build a good brand image and goodwill, and thus helping the product or services to sell.

Now, there are several options to earn money from your blog. Deep-domain knowledge, exclusively researched content will obviously help you get good readers. But it just doesn't stop there, if you have good writing skills, one may work as a content writer, or post ads on your blog and earn money through advertising, a well-developed blog owned by you can be sold off for the money, design premium templates and sell them for money, so on and so forth. I have listed some of the practical and useful tips on how we make money by blogging in this post.

4. A noble benefit of blogging: Sharing knowledge

It is said that knowledge grows by sharing. Imagine if all the major discoveries and innovations have been kept to the innovator themselves. We all be living in the stone age or at least in similar situations. When we do not share knowledge, slowly with time it diminishes and dies.

On the positive side when we share our knowledge with others, it reaches more and more people. Through the sharing process, reaches more innovative minds and enables them to grow further.

Also, with the blog when we share the knowledge we involve ourselves in various studies, conversations, new inventions to improve the legacy systems, etc. This not helps us grow on a personal level but everyone who is involved in the process.

By sharing knowledge or solving the problems of others we may create good goodwill with our readers.

Over time we can establish a good relationship with the audience and create a strong reader base which will be very much useful to promote your brand, sell products, services, and voice your opinion.

5. Benefits of blogging vs Benefits of social media

Blogging and social media, both platforms that will let you share content with the audience. However, they have different purposes and benefits of their own.

A notable benefit of blogging is that the content you post on the blog will stay there forever and is easy to access. Visitors can access it with the help of a URL, link it, or share it.

Social media can be thought of as a medium to share this content. It might let you reach the largest audience, but it is not easy to find the desired content through the vast list of posts coming on social networking platforms.

Besides networking, blogging lets you build a stronger community and other benefits we discussed earlier. Social media can be used to connect the services you provide on your blog. I have written an article on How to Get Traffic to Your New Blog by using social media. That is where it comes in handy. But to hold the content, build a brand, and showcase your products and services, a blog is a must.

6. Building a brand is the best among all the benefits of blogging.

Building a brand involves many things from creating a logo to colors, delivering brand messages through various communications and language, and many other things. Read our post on How to Create Strong Brand Identity for a Blog. While this is all essential, and we will see how it can play a vital role in building a brand.

When we start a blog, we limit our activities to a specific domain known as niche blogging, which helps the larger audience to understand where we come from. Through consistent publishing, marketing, and communication, we portray our brand as a single entity, which helps us to establish our identity. And through various engagement efforts, we communicate with the dedicated audience which helps to deliver the product to an intended audience.

These all are ways of building an effective brand name. It will help you get recognized as a brand and stand out from the rest.

These are few primary and direct benefits of blogging. To summarize, today we learned how blogging can create a difference in your life. The following are the benefits of blogging:

Do let me know through your comments if you liked this article. Also, share, comment, and do not forget to follow this blog.

Read our next article on how to write the first blog post.

Thank you! 😊

Branding

Color Theory and Color Meanings in Blog Design

Color Theory and Color Meanings in the blog design

Do you feel confused while working with colors? Well, you wouldn't after reading this blog post. Choosing the right colors in your creative work is quite confusing at times. Within this post, we will make this process easy and understand Color Theory and Color Meanings in the blog design.

The color theory basically deals with the correct use of the color combinations and their effect on the final product. It is a science behind the creative work which ensures that the right message and ambiance is being delivered in your product, design, or a blog for that matter.

Why color matters in the blog design?

We put a lot of effort into various activities like branding, designing, writing the blog post, and promoting it. If it couldn't make the right impression among your visitors, all your efforts will be wasted.
Additionally, your blog has a personality, an ideology that needs to be carried out so rightly. That helps in maintaining the brand reputation. When a new visitor visits your blog, you nearly have 8-10 seconds to impress him and sell your brand.
Color theory becomes an essential aspect of your blog design which ascertains the personality of your blog to be professional and serious. We definitely want our readers to have a pleasing experience with our blog. We don't want to mess up or confuse them by choosing colors that do not go well with the blog.
With the help of colors, you can convey a mood, create an environment, send a clear message, or grab the audience's attention. The right colors help us build the connection and fill up that gap by creating the appropriate atmosphere.
Since color affects your mood, creates a pleasing ambiance, and grabs the audience's attention, you should use colors that make your visitors relaxed, happy, and comfortable. Hence it becomes necessary to understand the color theory and science behind it.

Let's understand the colors first and how they can affect your blog.

The color wheel and the color categories

Science says that human eyes can see nearly 7 million colors and women can see even more colors as their brain works and perceive colors differently. Though worry not, neither I have the capacity to explain all these colors nor wish to do so! 😁

However, we will have a look at the color wheel, will try to understand color categories and see how they work with each other.

Color wheel primary, secondary, tertiary colors

We have labeled these colors as primary colors, secondary colors, and tertiary colors in the above color wheel.

i. The primary colors: Red, Yellow, and Blue

Red, yellow, and blue are the primary colors in traditional color theory. These are named as primary colors as these colors cannot be created by mixing other colors.

ii. The secondary colors: Green, Orange, and Purple

These are the colors which are made by mixing two primary colors. The group secondary colors include Green which can be produced by mixing Yellow and Blue, Orange by mixing Yellow and Red, and our third color Purple by mixing Red and Blue.

iii. The tertiary colors: Yellow-Green, Blue-Green, Blue-Purple, Red-Purple, Red-Orange, Yellow-Orange

The third group tertiary is made by mixing one primary color and one secondary color. There are six colors named above which come under this category.

So, that was about major color groups. Furthermore, these colors can be mixed with each other in various combinations and millions of colors can be produced.

These colors are also classified into three major categories based on the effect they produce on the human mind. These groups are warm, cool, and neutral colors. Let's have a look at each group.

i. Warm colors

All hues of red, yellow, and orange fall into this category. Warm colors are striking and bold in nature. Warm colors represent warmth and hence the name. People often associate them with sun, fire, and energy.

ii. Cool colors

Cool colors, on the other hand, induce us the feeling of calmness and soothing. Cool colors include hues of blue, green, and purple. Water, sky, and plants remind us of the cool colors.

iii. Neutral colors

Neutral colors as the name suggests doesn't fall into the warm nor the cool category. Hence these colors are not included on the color wheel.

All hues of white, black, and grey are counted into neutral colors. They serve a very useful purpose in designing and used in combination with accent colors (cool and warm colors) which in all cases complement the accent colors being used.

What colors convey and which brands use it?

Blue

Blue is the color of harmony. The blue color symbolizes calmness, peace, and trust. It is the most favorite color among people. Most of the large companies use blue in their branding.

From a psychological perspective, the blue color is more trustworthy, reliable, and secure. It creates a soothing effect. It can promote the feeling of calmness and harmony.

The blue color can be used to promote manly products, products associated with cleanliness, air and sky, water and see.

Companies that use blue in their branding are:

Facebook
General Electric
IBM
Intel
Nokia

Purple

The purple color symbolizes royalty, spirituality, magic, mystery. The Roman magistrates and Egyptian kings used to wear purple color and hence it is seen as a royal color.

There is a story behind why this color is seen as a royal color. In the olden days, there weren't many resources available to create colors, unlike these days. Whatever available in nature was used for dying clothes. The purple is scarcely available in nature and hence dying fabric with this color was costly and required too much effort. For this reason, only the royal and wealthy could afford purple clothes. That is how purple became the color of royalty.

This color goes well in feminine designs and to give products a royal touch.

Companies that use purple in their branding are:

Hallmark
Cadbury
BenQ
Nivea
Yahoo

Red

Red is associated with love, danger, anger, violence, desire, prosperity, happiness, and strength. Red is also a religious color.

Red goes well with the brand where quick attention and decision are needed. It can also be used to feature an energetic, youthful, and loud approach. It is used for fire brigade vans and in signal lights to ring the alarm in your mind after seeing it.

It is a very intense color and has the highest wavelength. It is a highly visible color and often used where the quick attention of people is required. Hence it is a good color for "Buy Now" and "Click Here" buttons, and advertising banners.

Companies that use red in their branding are:

Coca-Cola
Netflix
Virgin
Kwality Wall's
Heinz

Orange

Orange is connected with warmth, energy, excitement, sunshine, enthusiasm, encouragement, good health, and happiness.

Orange is a very attention-grabbing and energetic color. It gives you emotional strength in tough times. It also encourages stimulating a two-way conversation. As we see that it is a very energetic, exciting, enthusiastic color, hence brings people to think together and have a conversation.

It also helps in stimulating the appetite. Hence, many restaurants are decorated in orange color. It helps their customer engage in deeper conversation, increase their appetite, have a good time, resultantly consume more drinks and food.

This color is good for promoting food products and toys. It can be used to highlight and grab the audience's attention quickly.

Companies that use orange in their branding are:

Blogger
VLC
Nickelodeon
JBL
Fanta

Yellow

Yellow color represents sunshine, warmth, happiness, joy, optimism, and on negative side cowardliness. Yellow is attention-grabbing color. It helps us study, focus, and remember information.

Yellow is the most striking color. It can be seen from a long distance when used in combination with black. For the same reason, it used for school buses, taxis, and traffic signals.

Alike orange, yellow is also used for food products. It is an attention-grabbing color and children get more attracted to yellow. Hence it is used in children's products and advertisements.

Companies that use yellow in their branding are:

Nikon
Sprint
Maggi
Lipton
DHL

Green

The earthly color green represents nature, health, safety, money, fertility, and growth. It is said that green color has healing powers. This color is largely found in nature. Hence, it is also often associated with prosperity.

It is often used in medical products. The dark green color is often associated with the military, currency notes, and medical products.

Companies that use green in their branding are:

BP
Android
Animal Planet
Starbucks Coffee
Acer

Black

Black is the darkest color. It is associated with death, fear, mystery, evil, witches, night, and magic. On the positive side, it is connected with style, power, and seriousness.

It is also used to denote negativity, empty and unknown areas. It is mostly used in printings books, newspapers, and documents.

Companies that use black in their branding are:

Nike
Adidas
Gillette
Disney
Sony

White

White represents light, purity, goodness, positivity, cleanliness, peace, and faith.

White represents cleanliness and often used in design to equal the balance with other colors. It is the color of perfection as it is considered to be purest and complete color.

It can be used to promote dairy products and medical products.

Companies that use white in their branding are:

Almost all brands use white by default in their branding colors.

Conclusion

We learned that color theory is about using the right combinations of the colors in your design. We can use perfect colors in the design by understanding the science of the colors. Hence we understood the basic color palette.

We had a look at the color wheel and how colors are categories into the primary, secondary and tertiary categories based on their evolution. Furthermore, we understood how these colors are categories into warm and cool categories. We also had a look at neutral colors.

To understand the better application of the colors we understood what each color has to say, their meaning, and where you can use them.

So, next time whenever you are designing or playing around the colors, you know which color to pick for your design/ blog. We will talk more about colors but in the next post. If you have liked this post, do share it with your friends. Happy designing!😊

Branding

How to Create a Strong Brand Identity for a Blog

Like Wikipedia says, a brand is a name, term, design, symbol, or other feature that distinguishes an organization or product from its rivals. Within this blog post, we'll see what is brand, branding, and how to create a brand identity for your blog.

Brand

When we talk about a brand, a couple of things come to mind, like logo design, it's business activities, tagline, products, and etc. to name a few. A brand is basically a unique identity that helps your readers or customers recognize your business among your competitors. In simple words, it is an emotional connection between you as a business and your customers.

Branding
When we dig down further in this context, a term branding comes into the picture. The process which involves creating a strong and positive identity of your brand in the mind of the customer is called branding.

Branding involves creating your logo, defining mission statement, laying out rules and regulations to keep consistency in your marketing communications, fonts, and color themes.

Brand Identity
Going even further, brand identity becomes a result of all the efforts taken by the company to promote the brand to the customer as a single entity

Why branding for your blog is necessary?

Why branding for your blog is necessary?

Impression: The right branding efforts makes the first impression impactful in the mind of visitors. It is always good to have a positive impression among your readers when they visit your blog.
Seriousness: It makes you look serious in the line of business. We all bloggers always work in collaboration with each other as well as with our readers. We can not let our blog look casual anytime.
Unique Identity: Branding makes your identity unique. It makes your readers aware of your presence. It establishes a connection between the blog and the blog readers. Your readers will start to recognize your blog as often they visit and spread the word about your presence through the influential channels.
Helps you Grow: Branding helps your blog grow by building authority. Branding builds a positive image. Hence, building trust and personal attachment with readers. Ultimately, helping your blog grow.
Helps you sell: Branding helps in building authority as discussed above. A high authority blog makes selling products or services easy. Hence generating better revenue.

To take blogging ambition to the commercial level, the branding of the blog is very much necessary. Branding helps to create an impactful image for your blog. Within this post, we will have a look at all the factors that help to build a strong brand identity for a blog.

In a brand development process, we transform a couple of blog elements. We set certain rules and guidelines for marketing communications. We make sure that every communication that is taking place follows these rules and our blog is as per these standards.

Let's have a closer look at the elements which ascertain an impressive look of the blog and builds a professional brand image.

1. The blog name

The first and foremost factor that comes to our list while creating the brand identity is the blog name. Finding a unique blog name is a complex task. Since there is a huge competition and you may not get the desired name so easily.

Though we will ensure adhering to below points while deciding the blog name:

A blog name should be unique and original.
It should be easy to remember.
It shouldn't be taken by anyone else before.
It should be descriptive enough to get understood by everyone.
Should have a connection with your niche.

All these points need to be taken into consideration while deciding the blog name. Also, you need to be careful, as once chosen the blog name, it is going to stick around with the blog for forever.

2. Choosing the blog address

A blog address or a domain name plays a vital role in building your blog identity. It should be unique and not confuse your readers with your competitors. Here is the list of other factors that need to be considered while registering a domain name:

It should be short and easy to remember.
A blog address should be easy to type. Should avoid confusing spellings.
Include your keywords in your blog address
Try to get a .com extension or an extension that best suits your niche.

Registering the desired blog address is really a difficult task. All creative blog names are already taken. Hence do quick research before designing a blog logo and registering the address.

3. Designing the blog logo

The next step is to design a creative logo that can be used in marketing communications and for the blog as a face image. Look at it as a face photo with which all people will associate. Now, the logo can be designed in three ways. Those are:

i. Logo with typography: This type of logo contains pure typographic work that represents your brand name. Google, Cadbury, CocaCola are few examples who follow this type of logo style.

ii. Logo with a symbol: Some brands use a symbol to represent their brand. A single icon or a graphical object is used as a logo that gives a clear picture of the brand. Apple, Mercedes, Twitter, Playboy are some brands that use this type of logos and easily recognizable.

iii. A logo with mixed elements: You will find many brands with this type of logo. So in this category, we use both, i.e. text and symbol to design the logo. A new blog should have this type of logo. Once you have enough exposure you can go for the logotype that we discussed in the second category. Blogging Hacks has this style of logo. Some popular brands that follow this type of logo style are BMW, AT&T, Puma, so on, and so forth.

(Note*: We do not have any kind of affiliation, connection with the brands listed in this post. These are purely to list out the logo categories and information purposes).

Best practices for logo designing:

Keep originality in the logo.
Make sure it has a connection with the blog and the audience.
It should tell the brand story.
The logo should look good in the brand colors, black and pure white color, small and large size.

4. Write a catchy tagline

A blog tagline is the key piece of the information that helps your readers understand what is your blog about. It could also define the long-term goal of your blog.

Some of the popular taglines used by famous brands are:
McDonald's — I'm Lovin' It
Imperial Blue — Men will be men
KFC — Finger-Lickin' Good
Kit Kat – Have a break, have a kit kat

A tagline could be very helpful to a new visitor visiting the blog for the first time and has no idea about the content on your blog. It helps readers understand the blog niche and the objective of the blog. A tagline gives you an opportunity to build an image before a user starts reading the blog.

A catchy tagline helps to build brand identity in the mind of the readers. Hence, consider below tips while writing a tagline:

It should contain a positive message.
It should be written in the active voice rather than passive voice.
Use strong words to make it impressive.
Keep it concise.

5. Choosing the color palette

There is a lot to talk about the color theory and simply can not be covered within this point. Colors have a connection with psychology. Colors can convey emotions, feelings. For eg., the red represents anger, love, or glory, blue represents peace, black represents silence.

You may read the blog post on Understanding Color Theory and Meaning of the Colors to understand which colors best relate to your blog niche and the title. List down 6 different colors excluding black and white (are added by default in every color palette) which could be used in different marketing communication and on the blog.

One or two colors from the color palette should be chosen as your primary colors and these can be used in the logo, blog, and every marketing communication.

Your blog, social media channels, emails, and every marketing communication should follow these colors only. It creates a strong brand image and attracts your audience.

6. Selecting fonts for your blog

Now there is one principal rule to follow. The font used in designing the logo should not be used in other text elements of your blog. This helps to keep your blog logo prominent rather than getting it lost in the rest of the texts on the blog.

The second thing is that you will have to define different types of fonts that can be used in various text elements on the blog. For eg., different types of headings, quoted, or emphasized text, normal body text, attributions, etc.

While we choose different font styles and typefaces for the blog, one thing needs to remember is that we should keep consistency in using these fonts throughout all the marketing communication, blog, and collateral documents.

Know the different types of fonts and choose the right type of font for your blog:

Serif: This type of fonts has curvy lines at the end-points of the letters. These are classic and traditional fonts and generally used in publications of the books and newspapers. Eg., Times New Roman, etc.
Sans-serif: These fonts don't have the curvy lines at the end-points. Instead, each letter is represented in a clear sharp shape. These are easier to read and used in the blogs, and other digital collaterals. Eg., Arial, Calibri, Raleway, etc.
Script: This type of fonts have cursive and connected letters. They generally follow a calligraphic style and are used where the extra emphasis is needed. Eg., Great Vibes.
Strong fonts: These types of fonts are generally attention-grabbing and have a bold appearance. They can be used in headlines to attract readers' attention. Eg., Impact

7. Selecting and customizing a theme

One of the tedious job in brand building exercise is to select and customize a blog theme. A lot many tiny details have to be taken care of while customizing a blog theme.

Since it is nearly impossible to find a theme that offers all the features you desire for your blog. Hence, find a theme that closely matches your requirements.

So we will find a theme that has an outline and structure we wish to apply to a blog. Be sure about using 2 or 3 columns layout, having a responsive and mobile-friendly template. Now, to convey a uniformity throughout the blog, a couple of things you will have to update in the selected theme.

The first and foremost thing is selecting the font. It includes all settings for mentioning font-family, different font sizes for headings and paragraph text, list items, links and etc.
The next thing is to include your brand colors in your theme.
Add your blog logo and favicon in your theme.
Define a format for picture elements and the iconography

8. Sticking with the niche

We should stay focused on a particular niche rather than touching a variety of niches. We will observe what your niche audience wants from the blog and work towards it to meet the desired goal. We will try to provide a better solution to your audience which is not done by your competitors.

Working in a specific niche helps to build a stronger brand image. A stronger image could help to become a leader in the chosen segment and gives vigorous competition to your business rivals.

There is a term is called niche marketing. Niche marketing involves putting your marketing efforts towards a specific segment and targeting a specific group of audience. Niche marketing is an effective tool to create a strong brand identity.

9. Building the common language

A common language is always easy to understand and helps to connects with the people. A personalized touch in your writing helps to connect, people with the brand even more closely. It helps to develop a personal relationship with the brand.

Depending upon the niche and the audience type, we will use or restrict the use of technical words and jargon in our writing. Including readers in the story, and making them part of it is another strategy to keep them engaged.

Take an example of Google, nowadays, we do not search for the information, we Google it. That level of branding needs to be incorporated into our language.

10. Consistency in all collateral assets

All big brands are easily recognizable through their slightest presence over any medium. Many times you might have recognized a brand featured in a TV commercial without watching that ad completely.

Ever wonder how this happens? The answer is consistency. Their content looks so exclusive from the rest of the brands and easy to recognize. Consistency helps to build awareness, trust, and loyalty with your readers. Blogs changing their appearance often, fail to build a strong brand identity.

Streamline the brand guidelines concerning logo usage, fonts, color, messaging, photo, and iconography. Keep them consistent in all channels of communication. Document the guidelines for future references and in case you need to share them with anyone else.

With that point, our list of creating a strong brand identity for your blog has come to end. Let's have look at what we discussed in this post.

Conclusion:

We had a look at the terms brand (a unique identity), branding (the process of creating the brand image), and brand identity (the final image positive or negative after all efforts).

We understood branding helps to make our blog presence impactful, brings seriousness, creates a unique image, helps the blog grow, and sell your services.

We had look at all aspects that help to build a strong brand identity. It includes creating and shaping a personality for your blog. We follow certain rules to enrich its unique personality and make it impactful.

I hope you had a good reading experience. I would like to know from your end what practices do you follow on the blog and communication channels to make your brand identity stronger? Let me know through your comments and do not forget to give it a share. With love! 💗

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