Guest Blogger Week continues on Remarkablogger with Bob Younce of The Writing Journey.
What do all of these bloggers have in common? Simply put, they are their blog’s brand. If Heather sold Dooce tomorrow, she’d lose a good number of her loyal readers. We go to dooce to see Heather, not to learn about her niche. (What IS her niche, anyways?!?) Same for Pioneer Woman, and for Skellie.
What else do all of these bloggers have in common? They’ve won, or been nominated, for the Weblog Awards (the bloggies). Why? Personality sells. We like to read about interesting people, whether they’re edgy, funny, deep or whatever. We feel like we can connect with them. We say, “Dooce is just writing what I was thinking anyways.” We admire them, and we say, “I wish I could be married to Marlboro Man, like Ree.” It’s like the way that we follow celebrities, but instead of watching the antics and failures of a Britney Spears, we look for advice from Skellie.
This isn’t a problem for most bloggers. Like most other people, bloggers tend to be a bit narcissistic. I include myself in that group, and will admit that I’m one of the most self-obsessed. I’ve said it before, openly and honestly: I blog, in part, because I want to know and to be known.
But what happens when you no longer want to be your Blog’s brand? Wendy (eMom) is facing this right now. She’s had an extremely successful run as eMom. But Wendy realizes that “eMom” doesn’t really fit her business model any longer. Her blog appeals to more than just moms who work at home, which was the original premise of eMoms. Wendy wants (and needs) to re-brand her blog along broader lines.
The problem that she is facing is this: Wendy will always be eMom to many of us. Her writing, her focus and her advice are all geared more toward small business and entrepreneurship than just work-at-home moms. eMom, as a brand, doesn’t fit her anymore.
What do you do when this happens? There are a couple of options that come to mind:
- Re-brand yourself and your blog to separate you from your blog. Ostensibly, that is what Wendy has decided to do. I’m interested to see how it will work out for her. The downside of this option? You run the risk of losing readers who were loyal to your old brand.
- Slowly transition your brand to separate you from your blog. If your domain name is eMom, this isn’t so easy. if it’s remarkablogger, you’ve got a bit of an easier time. Let this be a lesson when you select your domain name. This was the idea, of course, for Amazon.com: they didn’t want to be known as just the online book place, so they picked “Amazon” instead of “Books of teh Intarweb.”
- Start all over. Create a new blog with the new brand, and either drop the old one or phase it out. Is this viable at all? I’m not so sure.
So, what do you think? How would you handle a brand conflict? For me, I don’t see it becoming an issue. For me, Writing-Journey.com is all about my journey - and that’s what I want it to be about. But if it is an issue down the road, how should I go about doing it?
Bob Younce is an Internet writer living and working in Linwood, Michigan. For the past five years, Bob has made his living writing online. He began the Writing Journey in 2008 as a way to help other Internet writers to achieve their dreams. You can subscribe to his blog’s feed at http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheWritingJourney.
14 Comments
An eponymous domain name - or one directly related to your life and is essentially your autobio - is a space for you to grow. It will change over time.
Maybe 20 years ago you were a blogging astronaut and now you’re a blogging gardener who drops science on astrophysics every now and again. Fine.
Pigeon holing your life is not an option as a celeb, micro-celeb or regular person.
Any of the three transition options you listed, Bob, is fine.
It’s not transitioning that’s more worrisome. At that point you’re not an authentic force but a cartoony farce.
Or goodness forbid you try to jump the shark!
This is an interesting post, and I’m one of those perfect examples.
We had a neutral blog brand back with JCM Enterprises. And it was boring as hell. It wasn’t getting us anywhere.
So we rebranded ourselves as Men with Pens. The brand and image fit better than a leather glove, and we’re reaping the benefits of a great branding success.
Now, I’ve also branded myself at the same time. When I go around the blogosphere, I can drop in at almost any blog and people say, “Hey! There’s James!” They know ME beyond Men with Pens.
A bad thing? I don’t think so. I haven’t branded myself as THE Man with Pen. I have branded myself as James, my own person and entity. I can step away from Men with Pens. I can be my own person and I can be my own business brand at the same time.
How did that happen? Not quite sure, beyond suddenly rising to the spotlight (through a lot of branding effort, building credibility and recognition).
Is it a problem like Wendy faces? I don’t think so. Is Wendy’s eMom situation a problem? No. As you mention, she’ll always be eMom, just as I’ll always be James, the man with a pen.
Her site poses another challenge. The difference is her domain name/image wasn’t chosen for growth or flexibility, I think. Men with Pens can encompass a wide range to fit us for decades. It’s flexible.
Hm. And I’m rambling. I need more coffee, but at least I’ve tossed my initial thoughts out to start. Good post.
Good post, Bob. I agree with Natasha about having an eponymous domain name, although my most successful blog doesn’t. If there’s ever a time when people don’t want to get paid to write online, then I may be in trouble.
@James. One of the things you do is include both your name and site name in comments. That means that people get a double whammy in getting to know you. And yes, your rebranding was genius. No one can forget that name.
Yeah, that’s why I jumped in back when Michael was creating a policy about how we could enter our name in the field. It’s not a keyword thing, it’s a branding the business and branding myself issue that came into play (and caused some cool debate).
Hi Bob,
I was going to mention Men with Pens as an example but James beat me to the punch. I agree with James. Brand expansion does not not have to alienate loyal supports, Martha Stewart, Oprah and thousands of food & beverage companies provide evidence of this fact. If Wendy approaches her transition as an expansion rather than creating a whole new brand I think that she will accomplish her goals.
@ Bob, thanks for the thought-provoking guest post! I have a lot of new people in my audience/readership that may not realize that only a few months ago, this blog was only called “Michael Martine.” Rebranding as Remarkablogger was one of the smartest things I ever did. It was a big part of helping me reach the next level. So I can also vouch from personal experience that rebranding away from using your own name helps.
I’m struggling with this. I’ve branded myself as UltraRob because of my ultra cycling. My website is UltraRob.com and was originally started to provide some exposure for my sponsors and for me to blog about my cycling.
I added a cycling and outdoor gear search to the site. It was just a convenient place to put it while I was developing it. Of course it’s taken longer than I hoped and I’m still far from done. Now the majority of my traffic is to that part of the site. I still think about moving the gear search to another site. I had someone tell me that my domain is short and easy to remember and I should just change the navigation of my site to make that part more prominent. Any thoughts?
@ Rob - I would agree with that idea. It would be easier to move personal stuff off of that site to a new one if you wanted to split. You’ll want the longevity and pagerank of the original to help get found via search.
A fascinating take on what I am both living and working through! I have been finding that this rebrand isn’t just about my business - I have been truly shifting internally as well. I’ll likely expand on that in a post after we relaunch.
Great conversation here around the subject as well. I think this may become a more ‘common problem’ as more and more people find that their ‘hobby blog’ took off more than they expected.
eMoms was never supposed to be my business. If it was, good grief I would have taken an entirely different approach from the get go.
I’m still trying to figure out how to fit a little bit of ‘eMom’ into the new brand. I feel the new name will be a true extension of what I started, but it truly is no longer just about me anymore. I’m thinking I’ll do a weekly column or something and call it ‘eMom on Something or Another’. That has been the most awkward part of this whole thing - how do I move my own blog forward as something separate from the brand?
Stay tuned, I guess, because I don’t know the full answer to that yet.
Thanks so much Bob!
Michael. Thanks for the thoughts. Since the domain name has my name in it, I guess it feels personal to me. It makes me wonder if it will limit what I can do but on the flip side maybe I can leverage authority with it. My current thinking is to leave my personal stuff but but it over in a corner. It’ll show that I have a passion for what’s on the site.
@ Wendy - We never know how things are going to turn out, do we?
But I bet it feels great to know that so many people are rooting for your continued success!
@ Rob - Even for a “business” blog, you want to inject your personality into it as much as you can. That’s what gives it life and makes it stand out. The split between what’s personal and what’s business can be lessened by personal/micro blogging sites like Twitter and Tumblr, too.
@ Natasha - Excellent points. But, What happens when I don’t want my blog? I can’t very well sell bobyounce.com to the highest bidder when I’m done with it. Writing-journey.com, on the other hand…
@ James - You guys are the king of branding. The good news for Harry is that, eventually, someone else could be the man with the pen. Besides, we all know you’re the face and Harry is the brains.
@ Sharon - excellent point!
@ Karen - True enought. But again, like I said to Natasha, when Oprah retires, no one can ever be Oprah again. Nor should they be.
@ Michael - Thanks for your perspective, and for the chance to do the guest post! Any time you need anything, say the word.
@ UltraRob - That’s Ultra cool.
The thing is, if you’re going to change your domain you should do it sooner rather than later. IMHO, I think you stick with “UltraRob.” It makes the reader (like me) smile before they even know what the site is about.
@ Wendy - I’m glad it’s you and not me going through the process! It looks damned painful. We’re rooting for you, though. I’m confident you’ll come out the other end plenty shiny.
For a while, I pondered finding a company name that meant something other than my own name with dot net tacked on.
It took a reader to help me realize the value of my long established brand. I’m a one-person business (although I work with people all the time — they all work for a different company in name) and when clients hire me — they get me. My caring about their business, my wanting to understand their business, my doing the little things to help them.
While my company name doesn’t give you a clue as to what I do, it’s been around since 1995 — why mess with that?
@Meryl - Great point. Most people follow that route without thinking through the long-term consequences, though. If you have and you’ve decided that’s what you want to do, then great!
4 Trackbacks
[...] When You Are Your Blog’s Brand Bob Younce of The Writing Journey raises some provocative questions about how we brand our blogs [...]
[...] James Chartrand (of Men with Pens) wrote an article of relevance, “Are You in Personal Branding Prison?“. You might also be interested in a post on Remarkablogger, “When You Are Your Blog’s Brand“. [...]
[...] James Chartrand (of Men with Pens) wrote an article of relevance, “Are You in Personal Branding Prison?“. You might also be interested in a guest post on Remarkablogger, from Bob Younce (of The Writing Journey), “When You Are Your Blog’s Brand“. [...]
[...] James Chartrand (of Men with Pens) wrote an article of relevance, “Are You in Personal Branding Prison?“. You might also be interested in a guest post on Remarkablogger, from Bob Younce (of The Writing Journey), “When You Are Your Blog’s Brand“. [...]