How to Grow Your Brand

Learning how to grow your brand is one of the hardest things you’ll ever do. You need to be active on social media while providing the best quality content possible across all channels, (and sometimes that means 10 or more!). If you’ve been following along on Snapchat (notanothrblonde), Instagram, and Facebook you’d be able to pick up on my personal brand building tips and tricks. I swear this is not a tactic to get you to follow me… or is it? ::follow me, follow me:: 

give more than you ask for

Gary Vaynerchuk definitely knows how to build your brand like a boss. He’s a huge advocate of this principle to give more than you ask for. He follows the jab jab jab right hook method which is to provide small, powerful amounts of content that engages your audience (jabs) and then ask for something in return like a follow or to buy your product (right hook).

You always want to be adding massive value to people’s lives. Not just the ordinary stuff they can Google, but really telling stuff that only you can share like how you lost 50 pounds in 30 days without dieting or how you built a blog without a web developer.

When you give a ton of value away consistently, people will think a. ‘if her free stuff is this good, I can’t imagine how good the paid stuff is’ or b. ‘she’s so good, I can’t wait to buy her book‘. That’s how I feel every time Gary publishes a book, the book sells itself!

Above all else, give away with pure intent. Don’t expect anything from anyone or you will be disappointed when you don’t get it. View opportunities you do get as nice little surprises or added bonuses, but don’t expect anything in return ever.

stick to the same aesthetic

Target, Starbucks, and The Skinny Confidential are great examples.

Think about Target’s target logo, dog, and big red… balls out front of their store. #nailedit

There is no denying a Starbucks cup or store when you see that emerald majestic woman everywhere.

The Skinny Confidential may be a lesser known brand of the three but her aesthetic is unmistakable with pink, grey, black, and sometimes teal color palette and Amatic Small Caps font. She filters her pictures the same way, her videos all have a similar looking title. She is the blog branding queen.

This is one area I haven’t quite mastered yet but I’m getting there!

don’t try to sell your products

If you find yourself doing any sort of selling… you lose. It sounds contradictory to everything you’ve been taught but it’s true. Facts tell, stories sell. If you tell a story that evokes some kind of emotion, that is what will drive sales, not you explaining how great your product is and why people need to buy it.

Even if you don’t have a product you can be guilty of selling yourself by asking people to follow you on Instgram or Snapchat (as I often do) but I give a reason why. I provide different content on each of those platforms.

Here’s another example, The Skinny Confidential has a book and workout guide. She never once has said, “Hey guys buy my stuff!” but instead she hosts giveaways that usually include one of her products, Snaps herself doing her workout guide almost daily, and posts Instagram pictures with her book subtly shown.

Giveaways get the audience engaged and it helps market your product organically. You gotta’ give to get.

Snapchatting yourself using your own product creates brand awareness and drills it in people’s minds that they need ::insert product here:: to be like you. If you want what someone else has, do what they do.

And finally Instagram pictures that have your product chillin’ in the background are a non-invasive way to let people know you have a product and it is available.

Bravo, bravo. Let that be a branding lesson for you.

ask for what you want

I’ve talked about CTAs before, which is essentially when you ask for something of your followers/readers/audience. CTAs get your audience engaged and creates a conversation. What good is it to pump all this content out and provide the highest quality photos if nothing happens with it?

That’s why it’s so important to ask for what you want your followers to do. If you want more people to subscribe to your newsletter, ask! If you want more Snapchat followers, ask. If you want to know what your audience wants to know, ask them.

Sometimes coming right out and saying “Please subscribe to ___, it would mean so much to me” works. Other times you may have to do some coaxing by offering a giveaway or exclusive content for whatever you’re trying to promote at the time. In that case, you could say something like, “Comment on my latest Instagram your favorite book for a chance to win ___”, or “Follow along on Snapchat for an exclusive Q&A with ___”. 

try to get featured

I can’t stress collaborating enough. Think about how viral content gets viral… people share it. The more shared work you have the more known your brand will become. (Check out this post on how to collab with other bloggers.) 

A bunch of features on smaller blogs here and there is great, but it’s much harder and time-consuming than establishing a long-term rapport with a well-known site like I have with Zanita Studio. I definitely recommend the latter. It will be a challenge to first get noticed, but once you do, it’ll be much easier to convince other blogs you’re worthy enough for a guest post.

Zanita’s site gets so much traffic that I actually gave up smaller writing gigs because it wasn’t worth my time aka “opportunity cost”. Opportunity cost is a whole other blog post… coming soon!

So, how do you know what’s worth your time? Tracking your stats (statistics) very carefully. I keep a progress tracker for each year and break it down month by month so I know exactly what’s working and what’s not.

If you want more on branding…

Check out the entire Branding 101 series here:

Week 1: What Is Branding & Do You Need It?

Week 2: How to Collab With Other Bloggers

Week 3: How to Promote Your Product

Week 4: Best Ways to Brand Yourself

Ask me your questions about branding below and I’ll be sure to answer!

xx