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5 Key Steps to Successfully Branding a Thriving Personal Website Tutorial



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5 Key Steps to Successfully Branding a Thriving Personal Website

Anyone that does any business online today with their own website, will know on some level how important it is to brand that website with unique branding. And it doesn't matter if you run a simple blog, a simple e-commerce site, or have a full on online store, or even if you're just looking to grow your social media followers or gain some positive reviews, personally branding your site so it stands out from the rest is very important in todays Internet based world.

And did you know that it all starts with your website? 5 Key Steps to Successfully Branding a Thriving Personal Website

How To Brand a Personal Website to See Better Success?

Speak to any successful Internet entrepreneur today and you'll hear right off the bat that branding was pivotal to their success. Not only their immediate early success either but their ongoing success too. Take Sam Ovens for example, a 26 year old Internet success who says that "Each media hit, speaking opportunity or social media post has the potential to bring you a new customer. Personal branding is an essential tool for business success." And while it's true that social media will play a large role in it all, it's your website that will be the best place to start with and what you should give most priority to when branding yourself only. Although doing that often goes hand in hand with knowing how to do that. So to help with that, here's 5 tips on how to build and brand a successful website today!

1. Keep it Simple

These days, there are so many web technologies out there, it's very tempting to add all these elements to your site. It's tempting to do so to try and impress your sites visitors with them. But some people can go OTT on these and they quickly clutter up your site with elements that aren't really needed. Your website should be simple looking and simple to use. It shouldn't be cluttered with elements and flashy images. It should just say, this is my site and this is what I do. Trying to keep things simple and basic will help people to better understand and relate to your site. It should have those basic pages like About Us, Contact Us, Portfolio pages etc which can all be easily accessed from the homepage of your site. Keep it simple and make it simple for people to navigate around your site and that will be rewarding in the long run!

2. Navigation

How simple and easy, or how hard or complicated your site is to navigate and find you way around, will have a massive impact on your sites success. More so than any other factor. According to Andy Crestodina of Orbit Media Studios, your websites navigation "affects traffic and search engine rankings. It affects conversions and user-friendliness. Everything important about your website is connected to the navigation, from content to the URLs.". And when you take that into consideration, it's no wonder why there are so many Internet entrepreneurs that spend so much of their time trying to perfect navigation on their site. But quite simply, good navigation can mean people will spend a longer time on your site and be able to engage with it more. Are you placing enough emphasis on navigation? Is your sites navigation agile enough for all people on all devices to use?

3. Content

Although your product pages may be your main source of income on your site, and your static pages like the homepage, about us page etc can be your bread and butter and what influence peoples buying decisions, it would be your blog itself that helps to actually earn backlinks and traffic from other blogs who want to share it on their own blog or social media pages and is one of the best ways to establish yourself as an expert in your niche. Provided you are writing and publishing expert like articles to it. And it's not all about posting every single day, but posting regularly will keep the spiders, and people, coming back to your blog/site regularly and increase social sharing.

You can think of blogging like fishing. Your blog is the hook, and you need to bait the hook with something tasty to lure those fish (people) in with. 5 Key Steps to Successfully Branding a Thriving Personal Website

4. Squeeze Pages

Any website that sells any kind of product or service, would do well to take advantage of squeeze pages or landing pages. These can be SEO'd with on-page SEO and keyword targeting, but they are often worded in such a way as to first present a problem and then provide a solution to that problem at the end of it. Of which, you effectively funnel the traffic from that squeeze page to your actual product pages. But more than that, you can make use of squeeze pages to grow your social media profiles and pages as well as just promote your niche products and services.

5. Subscribe Forms

It's one thing to grow your traffic to your site and apply these tips to it to see better conversions. But one part of doing that brand building is to capture your visitors emails which are leads which you can then try to convert into customers through email marketing. Even if it only means sending out a regular newsletter once or twice a week or month. Or sending people actual offers as well. It's free to do and all it really takes is putting a subscription / opt in form on your site along with a message that entices people to subscribe. Such as why they might want to. It's just one of those things that's better to have and not need than it is to need and not have.

Email subscribe forms are important to have because many people want to subscribe to your sites newsletters if they are interested in what your site is about. Apparently, ExactTarget, a provider of digital marketing automation and analytics software and services founded in 2000, say that they've done some research that reveals that up to 77% percent of customers like receiving permission-based marketing communications through email. By putting up simple but appealing subscription forms on your site, you have a better chance of earning more money from your site! 5 Key Steps to Successfully Branding a Thriving Personal Website

Make Branding a Personal Journey

In today's hyper-connected world, it's easy to fall into the thinking that Social Media marketing is enough and is adequate to find success. And while Social Media can bring a lot of success, the personal branding of your site is as important if not more important. Once you have these elements and features in place on your site, you'll find that your Social Media marketing efforts will be much more fruitful! 5 Key Steps to Successfully Branding a Thriving Personal Website

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TommyCarey
Branding goes a really long way if you do it right. And if you are trying to brand yourself online, it only compiles over time since a lot of your posts and marketing tactics will stay live forever if they aren't deemed spammy and deleted lol.

I've branded a few of my own websites and helped numerous clients with branding and I still see clients coming in from posts that I've made years ago on random forums or websites in hopes to help brand my business name 5 Key Steps to Successfully Branding a Thriving Personal Website

One website that I did a lot of branding for has actually brought in clients daily and I haven't done anything for that website in roughly 6 months 5 Key Steps to Successfully Branding a Thriving Personal Website I usually run an SEO campaign on it once a month, but I've been super busy and couldn't do anything. But since I did strategic branding on it a few years back, I still get loads of traffic to it from all of my posts. People are already sold before they come to my website because I also do online reputation management ;)

Subscription forms are extremely awesome 5 Key Steps to Successfully Branding a Thriving Personal Website Usually they build up pretty slow because you're not going to get every person signing up when they come to your website. But over time it's well worth every ounce of sweat you put into building your list 5 Key Steps to Successfully Branding a Thriving Personal Website I have a list of around 10,000+ people I've sold to over the years and every once in a while I will blast out an email to them and I'll get a good flood of sales because of it 5 Key Steps to Successfully Branding a Thriving Personal Website Now with this list I have it so the website is branded and not my actual name or pen name, so people see the domain name and will open it. I need to start sending out emails more often, like once a week and see what I can do with that. I'll usually send out an email to all of them when I have a new website launching and I want to get some attention for it. I'll blast it out as my website but mention the new website in our network as a way of saying "Hey, you know my website and we've been cool for a while. Now you should check out this other website because it's one of ours as well and you'll love it!" These emails usually work pretty well, but sometimes they bomb 5 Key Steps to Successfully Branding a Thriving Personal Website Never rely on just email marketing 5 Key Steps to Successfully Branding a Thriving Personal Website



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EliteWriter
Personal branding is very important, and in various aspects. Be it for an individual who is trying to show what he is capable of, to a business that is trying to stand out, and also, for a website, which is a very important part of the marketing strategy of a business. I think that the tips you offered above are very valid in ensuring that the site is well branded. It is something that should be given importance as the site is ultimately the online shop window for a firm/seller.



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Cristian
Regarding Navigation, I remember testing a tool once something the line of heap analytics, only you got a freaking video recording of people using your website, you can't imagine how helpful those videos where for one of my clients, helped both me and programmers figure out where users were getting stuck and why they were getting stuck!

Even if you think your navigation is simple and logical, always test it on live subjects! Ask your family and friend first and don't give them any guidance, just make sure you understand their feedback.



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Lynne
I love this Mike and I am so with you on this one. There are so many websites where I go to and I leave so quickly simply because they are so cluttered and full. I don't know where to look to find what I want and visually it is a mess.

I love a website that is plain and simple, where I can see what is happening. I love white space! I have often arrived on blogs where there is a busy background image and I just can't stand it. My eyes get drawn to that when it should be drawn to what is important, to the actual content.

You know what? I don't have any landing pages... yes maybe I should have but I just don't. I haven't figured out how to create a landing page yet and it has been on my list of things to do for the last year or two. One day....



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vinaya
I have a handful of websites, including a personal blog, however, I did not have a personal website until recently. That's because I never thought about having a personal website. However, once I was offered a dot info domain for 60 cents. Therefore, I registered a personal domain VinayaGhimire The website does not have enough content yet. I am thinking to use this website as a platform to promote my other websites and blogs. I am also thinking to use this website to promote my products and services. The tips explained here are very useful for me.



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Corzhens
Your points are well taken. A simple design and good navigation can make the visitor comfortable. It is like entering a small house that is neat and clean with no sophistication that you will be intimidated. In other words, it is comforting to enter a website with simplicity in design. And if your contents are informative and relevant to the niche then that is a big plus to your website. Of course, the contents are expected to be original and unique otherwise your brand will be the big P – plagiarist.



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