What Kind Of Brand Is Best For You?

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Starting a blog is similar to starting a brand. There are three types of blog brands you can start:

Personal brand
Business brand
Mixed brand

Are you still deciding which kind of brand is best for you? Read the following descriptions to get a better idea of what each of them is like:

Personal Brand

Your blog’s name is your name, such as ElaineRau.com.

PROS:

Highly personalized.
Extremely flexible in topics you can talk about or transition into talking about.
Great if you have lots of interests that may change over time.
Perfect if you are or want to become a speaker, writer, author, coach, freelancer, or influencer because people are buying YOU and the services you offer because they trust YOUR EXPERTISE.
Great if you love to utilize podcasts, videos, and photos of yourself to build that personal connection with your readers.

CONS:

Your domain name doesn’t associate with what you do.
It’s harder to build when starting out because not everyone is going to understand what you do right off the bat so you must be explicitly clear.
This brand will take longer to rank in SEO because your name isn’t a search term (at least not yet)!
It’s harder to sell your blog + business if you wanted to down the line.
Can be more difficult to scale your business because your readers want access to YOU.
If you mess up, you will be personally held accountable.
You MUST be comfortable being in the spotlight all the time and promoting yourself. If you’re not interested in being the center of attention, this one isn’t for you.

Business Brand

Your blog’s name is related to your niche, such as LadyBossBlogger.com.

PROS:

Your business doesn’t have to rely on you to function.
There is less expectation from your readers that you have to do everything so you don’t have the pressure to produce your own content all the time.
It is easier to sell if you wanted to because there isn’t a personal connection.
Can allow you to take time off without your readers requesting you.
It can be run by more than one person and includes different team members. You’ll build-up to this but this is the expectation of business brands.

CONS:

Less flexible if you wanted to talk about different topics or change your topic down the line.
You need to work harder to get people to feel a personal connection.

Mixed Brand

Your blog’s name is related to your niche but you’ve personalized it.

Most blogs fall into this category. It’s basically a business blog with a personal connection. LadyBossBlogger is very much a business brand but it has Elaine Rau’s face and story on the front page to personalize it making it a mixed brand.

PROS:

It has the best of both worlds.
Good for SEO and making connections.
This will allow you to bring other voices onto the blog and takes the pressure off you.

CONS:

Can’t take a ton of time off because you still have to run it.
Need to be somewhat a part of everything you produce.

Personal + Business Brand

You can start two blogs instead of one if you can’t decide.

PROS:

This gives you flexibility.
Kill two birds with one stone since you’re building two brands together.
Use your personal blog to launch different businesses while keeping each business separate.

CONS:

This choice is more work.
You might get overwhelmed because you’re trying to do too much.
It can be difficult to build two successful brands simultaneously without failing to give one brand the attention it needs to be successful.

HOW ELAINE RAU HAS CREATED A PERSONAL + BUSINESS BRAND

Elaine focused on building her blog brand first, LadyBossBlogger.com, along with its social media accounts.

Then after a year she started ElaineRau.com and focused on four main social media accounts that she wanted to grow. Her blog isn’t where she wants it to be yet because she is not yet creating content for it, instead, she has been sharing the content from LBB on her personal channels.

She started paying attention to her personal brand when she kept on getting passed over for influencer marketing campaigns. No one knew who was behind her brand therefore big brands didn’t want to work with her! So there are benefits to having both, just depends on what you want to do.

It’s easiest to grow them simultaneously because you can post the same content across all channels and watch your channels all grow, however only do this is you’re extremely disciplined with your time and isn’t taking away from you producing the best content for your blog because that should be your #1 priority.

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