Tips to Rebrand Your Blog

I shared my rebranding journey on my blog through multiple posts to help prepare other bloggers going through a similar process. Upon completing my rebranding, I started getting hired for more sponsored posts and my blog growth shows a tremendous improvement. Appropriate branding is crucial for a professional blogger, and I would love to help support any bloggers who are at that step in their blogging journey.

Blogging is a creative outlet for many of us and is also an amazing way to build a community with others. These connections made with other people from all over the world because we have common situations, common pain points, and common interests, is one of my favorite things about blogging. But before these connections can be made, our blogs need to be presented in such a way to attract the right readers.

Many bloggers have turned their blogs into a business, which is amazing. Blogging is an excellent way to supplement your income, and some talented bloggers have even turned their blogs into a full-time thriving business. Proper branding is vital to making this dream a reality.

Both Cassie and I have gone through a major rebranding on our blogs in the past year and can commiserate with each other that it takes some work and planning. I wanted to share some lessons that I learned in my rebranding process so if you feel the desire to rebrand your blog (or start a new one) you can be prepared.

Tips to selecting the correct brand for your blog

What topics do you blog about? The first point I began to consider when I realized I painfully needed to better brand myself was my content. My personal ramblings of a blog turned into a blog by a new working mom sharing tips for other new working moms, when I became one. I finally had a purpose, and that purpose needed to be represented in my brand. Think about what you blog about (or want to blog about) and identify the specific topics and themes.

Who are you helping? This kind of goes along with the item above, but you need to identify your expected audience. Who is your target reader? Whose questions are you hoping to answer in your writing? Pinpointing your audience and the pain points your blog hopes to soothe with your solutions are essential to help establish your brand and select a name for your blog.

Getting technical with your blog’s branding

Selecting the best domain name for your brand. I’m not going to get into specifics about finding hosting. I am going to say that a professional brand needs to have a professional name. Typically this will be a .com domain name, but many bloggers who are business owners have made use of .co and other trendy extensions. The important fact here is: your blog name has to be unique and descriptive. You don’t want to pick something that is overused and where the .com is not even available. Choosing a name is something some bloggers agonize over to get right.

Your design is part of your brand. The next step is the design of your blog. You can either hire a designer or buy a premade theme that allows you to set it up to look a particular way. I started with a mood board to select my colors and styles, and I made my header image myself. DIY what you can, right? The key here is to make it memorable and represent you and your blog. Selecting the main color and some key accent colors for text and headings is paramount for a cohesive look. These colors will remain consistent on all blog images, social media images, and anything else that represents your brand.

If you are rebranding, you need to update a lot of information. A fresh blog is easier than rebranding – to rebrand you have to change everything to fit your new name and your new look. All links that point to the old name have to be updated, or you will end up with broken links. You’re spending all that effort on rebranding and launching a new blog, so it has to be perfect. When I rebranded, I used a plugin called “Better Search Replace” to replace all the links all over the blog. I used the free version, which changes all instances of the selected text (your previous blog name for example) but it does not let you preview the changes. It is up to you if you decide to go pro with that plugin and be able to review each change. The important note is all references must be updated. Your post images of any posts that are staying need to be updated as well. I made “private” all the posts I did not want to keep as part of my new brand (because I didn’t want to delete them) and have been going through and updating the rest as time allows – starting with the most popular and most important.