If you have a website or blog and you don’t have a great logo that you’re proud of, then fixing this should be your number one priority. Having a great logo is crucial not only so that your site looks great but also so that you can create new marketing opportunities, form more of an emotional attachment with your viewers and generally become ‘bigger than yourself’.

Your logo makes all the difference between landing a client and your competitor landing the client.

Once you have your logo then, you need to make sure you are doing more than just leaving it at the top of your website. Here we will look at some of the things you can do to begin making more of it.

Business Cards

If you’ve just created a logo, then it’s time to update your business cards (or to create some in the first place). This way, you can turn every interaction in person into a chance to strengthen your brand.

E-Mail Signatures

If you have a business e-mail account, then you should add your logo to the bottom of that. This way, each time someone receives an e-mail from you, they’ll see your e-mail and be given a chance to find out more about your business and blog. The same goes for forum signatures.

Social Media

Social media accounts should all be branded in accordance with your blog/business. This means they should feature your logo prominently as either your cover image or your profile photo. At the same time, your user name should be the same as your website or business and you should provide a clear link.

Make sure all of your handles are consistent across platforms.

This will not only allow you to ensure more people see your brand, it will also create more consistency across channels which will be more impressive for those users experiencing your marketing efforts.

Invoices

No one likes being invoiced but that doesn’t mean you should hide your brand from your invoices.

Packaging

If you sell products of any sort and will be delivering them, then you should include your logo on the packaging. This has worked incredibly well for Amazon, who take advantage of the excitement that people feel when getting deliveries in order to create positive associations around their brand.

Web Design

Your website should feature your brand at the top but it should also integrate your logo right into the design. This means your color palette should take cues from your logo for instance and you should involve elements from that logo in your background and navigation.

When you create your logo, you will be coming up with a symbol or a stylish way of writing your company name that you will subsequently use to represent the entirety of your brand. This is no small matter then, as you are going to be using that image in every piece of marketing and on every product and service you put out.

So it needs to be good. How do you make sure it is?

Coming up with an idea is going to be the hardest part .

The Idea Phase

Coming up with an idea is going to be the hardest part to start with but there are a few ways you can get over that blank screen staring back at you.

The first is to look for inspiration. Create a mood board by collecting anything that gives you ideas or that you like the looks of. At the same time, draw down all the related images and symbols that you associate with your industry or niche.

Next, you’re going to try combining that imagery in various ways alongside your company name written in various fonts. Don’t be afraid at this stage to try things that don’t work – just throw out every idea and see what sticks. You should end up with a few different designs which you can then choose from by asking around. As a rule, the simpler ones are preferable as they will prove to be more versatile ultimately.

It’s worth noting at this stage that the colors you choose are likely to affect the coloring of your website, of your products and more – so don’t choose a color that’s too garish!

Create a mood board by collecting anything that gives you ideas or that you like the looks of.

The Creation

To actually create your logos, you need to use vector software, the most popular example of which is Adobe Illustrator. This software has the advantage of creating images that you can subsequently edit with ease and which you can scale to any size with no loss of quality.

You might find in future that you need to use different versions of your logo. For instance, if your logo is white and it needs to appear on a white background, then you might have to invert it or make it a light grey. Illustrator will allow you to do this quickly and easily, as will having a relatively straightforward and simple logo to begin with. Follow this advice then and you’ll be able to ensure your branding works in as many different situations as possible.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could become an authority in your niche overnight and ‘leapfrog’ the competition? If you could skip the normal need to gradually climb the ranks and instead go straight to the top as a thought leader?

Well, as it happens there is at least one way you can do this – and that’s to network properly with other thought leaders in your niche.

If you could skip the normal need to gradually climb the ranks and instead go straight to the top as a thought leader?

The Theory

If you can network with other thought leaders in your niche and if you can align yourself with them/work with them, then you will be able to create more opportunities to associate yourself with them in the eyes of your fans.

What this then means is that right away, you will gain some of the trust and authority they have simply through your connection to them.

For instance, if you could get a top digital marketer to say that your e-book on making money was great, then you would not only get the exposure from them but also the seal of approval that would come with that.

The same goes for having a guest post published on a top blog – again you will benefit because people trust them and will thus be more likely to trust you by extension.

you will be able to create more opportunities to associate yourself with them in the eyes of your fans

How to Work With Top Bloggers

So that’s great in theory but how do you actually get to the point where those big bloggers are going to be happy to promote you?

There are many popular methods for working with other bloggers in content marketing and these provide a ‘framework’ of sorts that you can use to structure your own interactions. The guest post is one example – it’s generally accepted that many blogs will accept contributors and provide them with a link back if the content is good.

Another option is to do an ‘ad swap’. Here you will promote another blogger to your mailing list in exchange for them doing the same for you. That way you both benefit by gaining exposure to the audience the other has built a relationship with.

LinkedIn and networking events provide good opportunities to meet these bloggers and to discuss working with them. An important tip whatever your strategy though is to avoid the temptation to go straight for the biggest bloggers in your niche first. A smarter strategy is to start nearer the bottom and to work your way up as you gain exposure for your own brand.

Creating a brand is not just about getting more people to see your site and creating more opportunities to market your business. Another important reason to have a brand is so that you can bring your customers back and so that you can leverage the good experiences they’ve had with you in the past in order to sell to them again in future.

Ultimately, this means trying to develop what’s known as ‘brand loyalty’ so that you get to a point where people aren’t just fans of your products but of you as a company or as a blogger. How do you get to that point?

Creating a brand is not just about getting more people to see your site.

Be Consistent in Providing Quality

The first and most important consideration is that you need to be consistent in terms of what you’re offering and the quality that you provide.

In short, if someone reads a blog post of yours and enjoys it, they need to feel confident that the next blog post they read on your site will be similar in tone and topic and will be similarly high quality. If your content is all over the place in terms of topic and quality the people won’t bother checking back. The same goes for your products.

Under Promise and Over Deliver

Another good way to build brand loyalty is to ‘under promise and over deliver’. What this means is that you give your customers more than they bargained for so that they feel almost as though you did them a favor. This creates the kind of positive experience that will bring them back and goes well beyond just fulfilling your contract.

One example could be to give a free gift away with an item you sell. Another might be to record a personal thank you note which will always impress.

If your content is all over the place in terms of topic and quality the people won’t bother checking back.

Offer Incentives

Another easy way to increase brand loyalty is simply to reward people for being loyal. The most obvious way to do this is with some kind of reward scheme. Likewise, you can offer deals to your email subscribers or you can reward people for following you on social media.

Stand for Something

Finally and most importantly – to get real followers you should stand for something. People love getting behind a movement and love buying products and reading blogs as a statement or an expression of who they are. Try to actually represent something and make this a key part of your business model.

Once you’ve created a brand for yourself, the next job is to start making that brand worth something by creating a reputation around it that will encourage people to seek you out and to order more of your products and services. The idea here is to build your brand to the point where people consider your logo and/or your name to be a ‘stamp of quality’ so that they know they can trust you. People will then seek you out to get your opinion and at that point, selling will become considerably easier. This is essentially how you become an authority and a thought leader for your chosen subject matter.

People will then seek you out to get your opinion and at that point, selling will become considerably easier.

One of the best ways to reach this point is through content marketing. This means publishing content on your site and on other channels that will demonstrate your knowledge and gradually help you to build a name for yourself.

The mistake that a lot of bloggers and business owners make here is in thinking that they can build that name for them with just one or two posts. Actually though, the ‘process’ of content marketing and of building trust is lengthy by its very nature.

the ‘process’ of content marketing and of building trust is lengthy by its very nature.

This is the essential process that any blog must go through to become an authority in the eyes of any one customer…

1. A visitor finds a blog post by accident and reads it, finds it valuable and entertaining. They then leave your site and give you no further thought.
2. They then find another of your posts and find it entertaining again. They then make a note of your website name/brand.
3. They then find your blog a couple more times and eventually come to think of you as someone they can trust on a particular subject. They may actively look around the rest of your site at this point and possibly subscribe to your mailing list.
4. In future, when trying to find out about a given topic, they will specifically search for your website or business name along with their question because they know they can trust your answer.
5. They now are at a point where they consider you an industry leader and if you suggest something for them to buy they will be more likely to make a purchase.

As you can see then this is a long process and is predicated on you delivering consistently high quality content for a long time!

Using promotional gifts is a fantastic method for strengthening your brand and offers an incredible ROI for those bloggers and business owners willing to make a small upfront investment. Here we will look at why this is such a powerful and multifaceted strategy and at how you can ensure you get the most from it.

Everyone loves a free gift, use it to add to your email list.

What is a Promotional Gift?

To start with then, what is a promotional gift?

Essentially, a promotional gift is the same thing as a corporate gift, though the latter term is usually used more in a corporate setting. The general idea in either case is that you’re giving away a product for free that is inexpensive but that everyone can appreciate. A good example of this would be something like a hat, a mousemat, a mug or a t-shirt. These are cheap items that everyone has use for.

You’re then going to give these away at tradeshows, with products you sell and in a variety of other ways as a ‘treat’ for your visitors, customers and fans.

Figure out cheap giveaways that people would actually have a use for and give them away to get email addresses.

What is a Promotional Gift?

To start with then, what is a promotional gift?

Essentially, a promotional gift is the same thing as a corporate gift, though the latter term is usually used more in a corporate setting. The general idea in either case is that you’re giving away a product for free that is inexpensive but that everyone can appreciate. A good example of this would be something like a hat, a mousemat, a mug or a t-shirt. These are cheap items that everyone has use for.

You’re then going to give these away at tradeshows, with products you sell and in a variety of other ways as a ‘treat’ for your visitors, customers and fans.