Blogging 101: Protect your Brand

I’ve previously talked about how important Branding is to blogs and it’s come up in a lot of different Blogging 101 posts before. However, what I haven’t really talked about is what to do after you’ve done all the hard work of planning and creating your brand. There’s some level of brand protection that is needed to uphold your visual branding, your content, your recognisability but also your reputation branding. So here’s the basics to how to protect your brand.

Be distinctive and unique

If you’ve branded well in the first place, then a lot of your hard work may have been done for this point. Making sure that your brand, and your content under your brand is distinctive and unique in some way helps protect your overall brand. Main branding such as your name, header, design etc can utilise this method by being unique in a way that is memorable to those who read your content. This may also mean having the same profile image/handle across social media so you’re easily recognisable too.

Being more unique also helps to protect your brand in the eyes of your readers. For example, a name like ‘Location Blogger’ may work for you, however bloggers in multiple locations may also utilise this way of putting together a name… and some people may get confused between the two. Therefore, slightly less recognisable, and harder to protect. For Uptown Oracle, I used two pretty random words, which meant 1 – I could get my own handles on all platforms (except Twitter where I had to use an underscore… which I’m still slightly bitter about). And 2 – as far as I know, I haven’t been mistaken for someone else.

Creating original content is also important as your content is the value your brand gives to the reader. Protecting your value by thinking up new ways to write about a topic, or finding new themes, or upping your photography game to make yourself distinctive adds to your value. You can also be unique in small ways, I’m not saying every single post should be a completely new idea (because that would be hard), but writing in your own TOV, or formatting posts a certain way, do add to what people expect from you. For example, I am more inclined to read book reviews from certain bloggers because I enjoy the way they write them.

Brand Reputation

A brands reputation is built on multiple factors, and each person has different measurements of these factors. This is why it is so hard for brands and blogs to perfect their brand reputation (at the end of the day… there will always be someone who doesn’t like you, and that’s okay!). However, there’s a lot of research around brand rep, and that means they’ve narrowed it down into broad terms which whilst aren’t exhaustive, are pretty good at leading you the right way.

Expertise

Expertise is the extent to which your blog is perceived to be a source of valid information by your readers. Some bloggers have gained ‘expertise’ through years of blogging around the topic, others may have degrees or qualifications in the area (think In the Frow with her PhD). A lot of the time though you work to prove your expertise around the topics you discuss, which lifts your brand reputation.

Credibility

Credibility is something that depends on multiple dimensions, one of which is expertise. This shows that a lot of these factors work with each other, and you should focus on building your brand reputation across multiple factors and not just one! The next dimension is goodwill, which is whether you’re showing yourself as being fair, unselfish, and just being ‘good’. ‘Good’ in quotation marks because again, this measurement is subjective! But taking time to show you care about other people, movements and/or social issues shows you’re a real person, which builds credibility up.

There is also prestige which as all about status (and some people don’t want to admit this is a factor!). But bloggers often have more credibility when they have bigger followings, brand deals, and collaborations. This may seem off-putting for newer bloggers, but there has also been a shift towards this status being less credible in recent times due to lack of trustworthiness, which is the next factor I’ll be talking about! Remember it’s all about getting your factors balanced.

And then self-presentation is key to be deemed credible. If you don’t have the confidence in yourself and what you’re putting out on your blog, then people will sense this, and you’ll lose a little bit of credibility. The same goes for how you present your blog – if you’ve made absolutely no effort in design, (unfortunately) people will judge you as less credible.

Trustworthiness

Trustworthiness and brand reputation go hand in hand, as once you’ve lost your trustworthiness, your reputation often falls along with it. Trustworthiness is the confidence that your readers have in your for providing information in an honest manner. Like I mentioned before, having status and prestige through brand deals can affect the perceived trustworthiness of creators. Therefore, a lot of thought should go into who you’re working with, to allow natural trustworthiness to build and retain it.

Familiarity

Quite simply, the more familiar someone is with you and your blog, the better your reputation in their eyes. This is why I also talk about getting involved in the community, as it’s a way to build you brand reputation with those who are more likely to be familiar with your blog. Being exposed to your blog and you can be through social media, newsletters and using ‘dark’ social channels like Discord – all of which build that familiarity.

Likeability

It’s not a surprise I’m sure, but likeability is key for brand reputation. If you’re genuinely friendly and nice, and people like you then they’re more likely to return to your blog. Affection for you and your blog can come as a result of your interactions, behaviour, and brand appearance as well. For example, some blogs don’t look good… and some even hurt to read because of bad design! So, their likeability is reduced, as well as reputation in my eyes, and then of course traffic reduces too.

Similarity

Generally, people follow blogs who have some form of resemblance to them. Whether it’s me following other redheads who talk about beauty, university bloggers who I can relate to, or those who also work in marketing. This works both ways too, I tend not to follow parent bloggers, not because they’re not brilliant at what they do but because I struggle to relate because I’m younger and childless. And so, we’re not similar and therefore I see them differently to those who do relate.

What Affects your Brand Reputation?

Now you know some of the factors, you can work on what affects your brand reputation and build it up. But here’s some extra key tips on what can negatively or positively affect it.

Content

Your brand reputation can depend a little bit on the unique content you bring out too. Having a reputation of creating unique or distinctive content can help you build followers and traffic to your site. But I want to talk about what can tarnish your brand reputation a little bit too.

Creating posts based on someone else’s post, whether it’s a tag or just something with a similar theme, can be a good way to increase your own content. But there is a fine line. Always, always, always credit the original blog your read if you’re pulling inspiration from them – it’s kind of an etiquette rule. For example, my blog post about why gaming is great for book lovers, inspired another blogger to write about games too – where she credited me! However, some people will just use your idea, and often if they are consistently using other people’s ideas and passing them off as their own… they end up with a negative Brand Reputation.

Using people’s ideas are one thing, another big no no is straight up plagiarising other people’s blog posts. And I know some of you reading this are thinking ‘but that’s so obvious, why are you bringing it up’. But I still see (mostly new bloggers!) doing this and it quite rightly annoys the original poster. So, before you think of just copying and pasting someone’s work, remember that when people find out (and they will find out!) that you’ll garner an extremely bad brand reputation.

Tone of Voice

Having a Tone of Voice that is credible, trustworthy, likeable etc (you see where I’m going with this) is important to have a good reputation. If your tone of voice is obnoxious or rude then… I don’t know what to tell you because this feels pretty obvious. Don’t. People like those they can relate to, so make sure you’re not driving people away with your tone. Of course, in some instances, your tone may shift whether for humorous reasons or because you’re sticking up for someone/social issues (So still relatable or for goodwill!) – but if your tone is consistently bad… that’s a no.

Social Media Presence

Your social media presence is most likely the biggest part of your online self that can affect your brand reputation. We’ve all seen the creators who’ve posted something stupid online and completely ruined their careers because of it. So just make sure before you hit ‘post’, you’re thinking about whether this is what you want to be known for, whether it fits your blog and brand, and whether it’s going to create negative feelings towards you.

Some creators consistently get involved in social media drama, and honestly, they’ve gained a reputation as being part of drama. (And even starting drama…).  This may work for some people, and I know some creators still have a lot of traffic whilst getting involved, however if you’re a smaller creator maybe rethink it as it can look bad. Personal opinion here, but if you’re consistently being negative and jumping into Twitter arguments then I tend to avoid trying to be friends with them.

Personal Brand

It’s also not just about your blog, your reputation also depends on you as well. Unfortunately, once you put yourself out there to the world, it’s hard to not include your personal self in that. Some people (like me) don’t mind as much and are happy to link out to personal accounts, others use online alias’s and never mention real names online. Both are perfectly fine, but make sure you take the steps to ensure that your personal brand is a good match to your blog brand.

It may also be good to clean up your online presence of anything that might not match. Review your privacy settings on places like Facebook, delete old posts or profiles which could be taken out of context (or y’know just embarrassing because 13-year-old did not dress well…). Some tools to manage your online presence:

• Social Mention
• Deseat.me
• Mention.me
• Google Alerts – more likely for business purposes but could still be beneficial.

How to Protect Your Brand Reputation

Now to what you really want to know. How do you protect your brand reputation? Well there’s a few formal ways, but also a lot of informal ways to retain and improve on your reputation to allow you to continue creating value for your readers.

Formal protections

First things first for formal protections is copyright, where I’m focusing on UK copyright, however these are often similar worldwide. Copyright is a legal protection of your IP (intellectual property) which covers your blog posts, photos, branded images, podcasts, videos etc. If you’re the creator of a piece of content, then you hold the copyright (unless you have been employed to create it, in which case the employer owns the copyright).

Your work is automatically under copyright as soon as the work has left your mind and is embodied in a physical form (I.e. a blog post). Whilst the DMCA is US based, it is a wonderful way to register your copyright and it will also work for UK based sites. Through DMCA you get a small badge, which means they can send cease and desist letters on behalf of your site for copyrighted works. Cease and desist letters are a bloggers best weapon for stolen content, and often work immediately to get others to remove the content. On top of this, I would suggest ensuring you have ‘© 2019 BLOG NAME’ in your footer.

If you’re a blogger who utilises images found online, I hope you already understand copyright free stock images or fair use images. But if not, I’ll go over it quickly. You can’t just download and use any old image you find online, which is what you were protected your own images from above! However, if you are known for stealing images (even if it’s accidental, or you’ve credited the owner) then you’ll get a bad reputation.

Images that are copyrighted can be used, but only if you pay for a license from the copyright owner and the use and time used is restricted. Royalty free images are a one-time purchase fee and can be used multiple times with no additional charges. Common free license images are protected by copyright but can be shared, repurposed, or adapted for free, depending on the Creative Commons License it falls under. What most bloggers need to be using if they want free images are Public Domain images, which have no copyright and not limitations of usage.

Fair use is a little different as it allows you to use copyrighted images without seeking permission from the owner. For most bloggers, you will be using fair use imagery for the purposes of criticism, review, or quotation. For example, book bloggers use book covers under fair use due to them reviewing the books.

Whilst I’m on the subject of images, I wanted to make a note that hotlinking images is also frowned up. Hotlinking images is where you add an image to your own site through code that has the image source from another site. (Example: a book cover with the img src = Goodreads). This is wrong and puts additional strain on the other site’s servers, where they should be on your own. Therefore, whilst the image may be fair use, you should download and upload directly to your own site.

Your site should also utilise policies, disclaimers, and terms of use to ensure that you are legally protected, whilst also committing to the rules and regulations in place. This includes things like privacy policies, cookie policies etc.

Write down brand rules

Whilst not formal in a legal standpoint to protect your brand, creating your own rules can make it ‘formal’ to you and your blog. You know when I talked about creating a tone of voice, mission statements, USPs etc? Well make sure you write down some rules based on these that are easy to follow. But make sure your brand rules are also authentic to yourself! For example, don’t make your brand rule state your TOV to be completely different to your own… readers and watchers of your content know when people are being fake.

Target Audience

This point lands squarely on the ‘Similarity’ factor. Your audience most likely mirrors you in at least some aspects. Whether it’s age and gender, or just the interest in your niche. But build out who you think your target audience is, and then build the persona of who your blog targets. For example, one of my interests is gaming, but because of my other niches I write about, my target audience isn’t particular inclined that way (backed up with my google analytics and social media data!). Find out about likes, dislikes, age, location, gender, cares about, spends money on, has an account on, reads etc. and go from there to increase your ‘similarity’ score.

Social Listening

Protecting your brand can be done by knowing what others are saying about it. Probably not much use for newer creators, but as you start to get a following you should monitor your blog name and your own name. You can simply use Google alerts – this may seem like it’s a bit OTT, however if you’re seeing growth in views, users, and followers you may want to set up google alerts for your brand name, actual name etc.

If you’re using brand collaborations and sponsorships on your blog, I also recommend you monitor the brands you work with and want to work with. People have been burnt before because of the company they keep. You can use tools like Tweetdeck for this as well.

You can also listen out for mentions in posts through linkbacks but also plagiarism too. Honestly if people are plagiarising your content, they probably aren’t crediting you for it… but sometimes people may ‘credit’ your idea but not actually change the content at all and it can be super obvious. Use a site like Copyscape to check your content for duplication/plagiarism

Metrics Tracking

If something happens to your brand (whether good or bad) then your metrics may spike up or down. If it’s you get yourself into drama on social media, you may see an increase (people want to see more about a person involved in drama) or a decrease (people don’t want to support you anymore) in your page views and users. Using your search console metrics, you may be able to see spikes if people search directly for your brand name as well.  Tracking your metrics may help you understand where your brand reputation is, and whether certain actions affect it – which you can then act on.

Learn some basic PR Skills

I know a lot of people like having their blogs as a hobby, and that is completely okay. But if you’re putting it on your CV (like I’ve said you should do!) or if you’re hoping to make an income or go full time with it… please learn some basic PR skills. This means knowing what to put online and what not to put online, it’s how to talk to people in a professional manner (like brands).

PR also includes a little bit of Crisis Management. Now this is one I don’t see many people do well at all. You’ve probably seen or heard of YouTubers who’ve posted apology videos… and you’ve probably also seen the satire versions of them. When you mess up… admit it, apologise (and MEAN it) and make amends in any way you can. Be humble, be modest.

Emotional Appeal

This part is all about your familiarity, likeability, and similarity factors. In order to improve your brand reputation, you need to form some kind of emotional attachment towards your brand. Preferably a positive emotion, but this helps create not only a more positive reputation, but it protects the reputation from if you do end up with a negative reception to something. Often those who are close to you and have a connection to you and your brand will also help defend your reputation if something (or someone) tries to tarnish it.