Brand Building 101

Branding

What did we learn from our Project Brand Building?  Over the last 2 months or so, we have been building our brand using a specific topic.  If you used all of the post ideas I gave you and added more, you should have been able to post almost everyday.  This would have helped you establish some authority on the subject and Google would have liked it very much.

Run some searches on items you think you should be ranking on the Google results for.  I ran some searches for Bernie Madoff since that was the subject of our branding experiment and I did rank for some results.  This also was with limited articles since I was only giving you ideas and not fully developing them for my own site.  You should fare much better in the rankings.  Share with us if you started a subject, what kind of rankings you got, etc.

Let’s review:

1.   Pick a topic that you can provide A LOT of information on.
2.   Create a website (WordPress is a very easy and quick tool)
2a.  Get a Domain
2b.  Get Hosting (you can get hosting from Go Daddy as well)
3.   Install plug-ins to track traffic, allow more tools, etc.
4.   Write content that provides some value-added information
5.   Publicize your brand
5a.  Comment on other blogs with similar content – not interruption, but engaging in the conversation
5b.  Have business cards ready when meeting new people
5c.  Talk to reporters, even if you aren’t ready to publicize yet.  Building the relationship before you need their help goes a long way.
5d.  Input your site into a lot of distribution channels (technorati, alltop, etc.)
6.   Add to your content to enhance the user experience
6a.  Include Images where you can
6b.  Include Video if available
6c.  Include Audio / podcasts if available 
7.   Keep your viewers coming back by posting new content regularly
7a.  Longer posts would require less frequent posting, shorter posts would allow for more frequent posting
8.   Come up with some creative ways to display your content or aggregate it.
8a.  ebooks, downloadable pdfs, etc.
8b.  Video
8c.  Audio
8d.  Timelines, graphical displays
9.   Create a product for purchase if you can.
9a.  T-shirts, books, mugs, hats, etc.
9b.  Downloadable products with a shopping cart (the definative guide to…)
10.  Write good content, Title your posts correctly
11.  Practice good SEO Download SEO Book tools free

There are many more steps, but you get the picture.  Building a brand and building a site take a lot of time, and it could be a while before you actually see any income from it.  Depending upon how much time you put in, it could take up as much time as a full-time job.

Chuck
Click Into Action

Teaching you about brand building, online opportunities, affiliate marketing, how to make money online, etc.
You can follow me on Twitter – @JohnnyOptimist