The role of a blog in building a brand

Whenever someone asks me what is a nice way to get started on Social Media, I tell them to go get a blog first.Twitter,Facebook and other sites are there , but you are what your blog is.Without a blog,running a targeted and credible social media campaign or just maintaining your on-line identity becomes an uphill task.In today’s post,we will try and understand why a blog is indispensable for your on-line presence and why it defines you on the internet in today’s information age.

A blog is,in many ways,today’s replacement for your business card.It even goes one step further and tells people what your thought pattern is and how you see yourself on the internet.There are many types of bloggers.There are ones that blog with a fierce resolve to update their readers as an when something new happens,there is a breed of bloggers who believe that slow blogging is the way to go and then there are folks like me who think that they can blog whenever they feel like it .Another way of classifying blogs is the division of generalists and niche writers, there are also aggregators like Guy Kawasaki,who do not produce major content,but aggregate stuff from places that matter and give it to us in a way that counts.Then there is also the on-line version of paparazzi and gossip mongers who also go by the tag of bloggers.One thing that stands out here is the fact that every one of the types that we discussed has their own way of blogging and have selected their niche and stick to it religiously.In effect.blogging defines their brand positioning to a great extent .

Here is how I started my blogging journey and the various changes that my blogging underwent in the last two years.I started out on a free blogging platform just to see if I could write stuff that didn’t bore anyone when they read it.There was no specific area that I stuck to,I was blogging about anything that I wanted to talk about and did not have a niche, a starter generalist was what I came across as.The few eyeballs that I managed to garner to my site had inputs about how my writing style was good but I was spreading myself thin over a range of topics.I thought that they made sense.I decided to pay heed to them and stick to niche.The next question in front of me was “What will the subject of my blog be ?” ,it took me a while to get my hands around that topic. This was also the time that I started out on twitter, social media held my attention quite a bit and I tended to write about blogging and social media more often.I then started self hosting wordpress and created a new blog with my own domain name.That is this blog.

I have to admit that the overheads of being your own webmaster are sometimes very stifling,but all worth the effort.I started to get regular readers and I could also see that the blog was serving as a platform for me to connect with folks that I would never stand a chance of meeting otherwise.The feedback in the comments was definitely helping me to grow as a communicator and writer.This in turn was slowly beginning to define what I stood for on-line.Over time,twitter helped to drive focused traffic to my site and there was now a regular visit pattern to my site.Most of my twitter conversations started to revolve around the things I wrote on my blog ,adding to the quality of my interactions on-line.

The concept that I am trying to get across here is the fact that the blog serves as an on-line extension of me and defines me in many ways.My other social media platforms enable and enhance a better interpretation of my primary platform of expression,my blog.If you are a company and are trying to establish an on-line brand, a blog is essential and without it ,your presence is slightly hollow and incomplete.Twitter and Facebook will help you to give glimpses of your services/products but your blog will give a clearer and more definite picture of the same and hence add value to your brand.Have a blog and see the difference.Try it and you will get what I mean.

Technorati : blogging, internet, presence, social media
Del.icio.us : blogging, internet, presence, social media

Follow @v_shakthi