When it’s handled effectively, a company’s blog can be a huge asset to its marketing and branding. A strong blog can bridge the gap between the company’s name and face, connect you directly with customers and clients, and build you up as a leader in your industry.
However, the content of your blog and the marketer in charge of interacting through it are not likely to find success alone. The design of the blog has to represent the brand, not just adequately but (you would hope) stunningly.
Too many people think of branding with regard to online marketing or blogging as involving nothing more than a consistent color scheme and font choice; but your brand is so much more than that. So if you’re about to launch a blog for your company, or you’re interested in improving your current one, here are three ways you can use your blog’s design to strengthen your brand.
Convey a Consistent Visual Voice
One of the biggest ways in which you can strengthen your brand with your blog and its design is to have a consistent visual voice that is carried throughout. As mentioned previously, this goes far beyond simply sticking to a few colors and a font or two.
When you truly have a consistent visual voice, your brand shines through like you wouldn’t believe. If you’ve yet to uncover the voice you want your brand to speak in, Karen DeFelice, a contributor to Canva.com, suggests going through a little trial and error until you can find a unique representation of your brand that works throughout all of your marketing materials.
Every part of your visual voice should be specific to you. Although you can look at what others have done, DeFelice doesn’t recommend giving too much attention to them, so you can tap into your own individuality and find a visual voice that will honestly encapsulate the look and feel of your specific brand.
Once you’ve found this, it should permeate all of your messaging. So what are some interesting ways to do this?
Using Filters on Photos
One area that many designers don’t think about over the long term is photographic content. When you design a website or blog initially, it’s easy to make each individual piece correspond with the next – and with the design of the asset as a whole.
But as things get added to the blog over time, it can be difficult to maintain that consistent visual voice, especially if multiple people work on the project. To address this, Zach Kitschke, a contributor to SocialMediaExaminer.com, advises that you at least brand all your images in a consistent way by using the same photo filter.
Even if the composition of the photos varies across a series of photographers, employing a consistent filter will help to give all the images a similar feel and reinforce your brand’s identity. The filter will also make it easy for your followers to pick your photos out of a crowd, which is one of the main goals of branding.
Maximizing Your Logo
A logo is another major part of a company’s branding and the blog design. In fact, Wix.com explains that the point of having a logo is to have a smaller image that’s synonymous with your brand name.
However, given the minimal amount of prime real estate space available on devices such as cell phones, tablets, and desktops, maximizing your logo by creating a functional icon will help take your branding further. By featuring both your logo and your icon on each page of your blog somehow, you will make it a challenge for your visitors to forget about your brand.
Logo design can be expensive but there are many options these days from design agencies, crowdsourcing platforms, and even free logo generator tools. Learn more about them here.
If you focus on the above-mentioned areas for your blog design, you can create a strong, recognizable brand that will stand up to your competition. Use these tips to help you do that.