When people start a new blog, they don’t always have a clear direction in mind. You might have an idea of what you want to post about but it takes a bit of experimentation before you land on a clear niche.
Seeing what kind of posts people respond to and taking the time to learn your own blogging style can give you more insight into the future direction of the blog.
Often, people find that their blog doesn’t end up in the way that they initially thought it would. For example, you may have started out writing about your daily life but found that food blogging was the aspect that you enjoyed most, so the blog ends up being a specific food review site instead of a general lifestyle site.
In some cases, you will decide that you need to rebrand your blog once you have found your niche so the branding lines up with the concept of the blog more effectively.
If you want to grow your following and eventually monetise your blog, it’s essential that you get the branding right. However, the rebranding process can be tricky, so make sure you follow these crucial steps.
Understand your audience
Before you get underway with the rebrand, you need to understand your audience. The whole point of the rebrand is so that your blog better appeals to your target audience, so you need to know what makes them tick and what kind of branding resonates with them.
You should already have a lot of data about your readers that you have collected through the blog. Consider things like average age, gender, location, and what kind of posts are most popular.
Using this data, you should be able to build a clear picture of what your average reader is like and what kind of branding will appeal to them.
Make a plan for the website redesign
Overhauling your blog and completely changing the design is a big job and there are a lot of small details to work out along the way. That’s why you need a clear website redesign plan in place before you get started.
If you start making changes here and there without a clear direction, the end result will be incoherent and you won’t have a strong brand that is consistent throughout the site. So, plan every stage and get a clear idea of what you need to do and how long it will take.
Remember, you don’t want your blog to be offline for too long because you could lose readers, so the redesign needs to be efficient.
Consider a new domain name
During the redesign, you may decide to change the name of the blog, and that means that you need to change the domain name too.
If your blog has changed direction significantly, you need a new name that better describes what the blog is all about.
When you are deciding on a new name, make sure that you check if the domain name is available before you start changing everything on the blog.
Backup your content
When you change your blog brand, you won’t necessarily want to keep all of the content from the previous blog. However, there will be posts that fit the new blog and these can be moved over.
It’s important that you have plenty of content available when you start up the new site because people won’t stick around and explore an empty blog.
There is a danger of things being lost when you are redesigning your site, so make sure that you back everything up beforehand. Save a copy of all of your posts on your computer or on a cloud storage platform. Then, when the new site is ready to go, you can fill it with all of your old content.
You should also work on a few new posts and include one that explains the new direction of your site to existing readers.
Change your social media accounts
Social media is a great tool for promoting your blog, and your accounts are all part of your brand. They need to be updated too so they fall in line with the new direction of the blog.
Change the name on the account and update any pictures to reflect the new design of your blog. You should also rethink how you make posts on social media. The tone that you use when communicating with people is an important aspect of your brand too.
If you can get all of these elements right, you can successfully rebrand your blog and take it in a new direction.
Leave a Reply