Grow Your Brand Banner

By: Divya Hegde

Starting your brand from scratch with no help is downright frightening in the beginning. As they say, it is always the first leap you take that will seem the hardest. The early stages of growing your business, be it a blog or a YouTube channel, is always hard. Once you push through this stage, the opportunities are endless.

Most people quit in the early stages when they realize that running a blog or a channel needs a lot of work. It is not a get-rich-quick scheme where you become an overnight success. Growing your brand from scratch, especially when there’s no one to help you, takes time.

If you dig deep into the internet, you will find all that you need to get started. All you have to do is put those pieces together to make a perfect formula for yourself. Not just that, you will get real-time reports and stats about your performance for free.

With Instagram, Facebook, Google and Pinterest providing analytics on how your work performed, it is easy to get demotivated. But if you change your mindset a little, you can make analytics work for you. If you are in the early stages right now, then just know that all you have to do is push through this phase, and you will definitely see results.

Tips to follow when growing your brand

Learning how business works

Treating your blog as a business from day one is so important. Going all in during the first year is the only way you can build your brand from scratch. This is because when you are just starting out, nobody knows who are or that your posts exist.

If you think you are not good enough to start right away, then you’re wrong. There will never be a day when you wake up and you’re perfect. So, with whatever little you have, start now.

The next thing you need to work on is figuring out why should people read your blog/watch your video over millions of others’. Ask yourself: what value are you going to provide? You don’t have to have the best equipment or the perfect house for this.

But like any business, initial investment is necessary. Be it a camera, a course or your time. You can’t take everything to heart and will have to move on with your work. Ask yourself these questions before starting a business: Necessary questions to ask before starting a business/blog

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Stop comparing someone’s Day 1000 with your Day 1

Comparing yourself to someone who is doing really well regardless of when they started out will demotivate you. It is kind of pointless to ruin your mood by comparing yourself to others.

One way you can avoid this is by cutting out all those things that make you want to start comparing yourself. This may work for a while but, as human beings, we will always find things to nit-pick on.

So, the heathiest way you can overcome comparison is by using someone’s success to inspire you to work harder. Because, at the end of the day, it is all about changing your mindset.

Related: How to stop comparing yourself to others 

Making analytics work for you

Nothing stings more than slow growth or engagement. But slow growth is always better than no growth! The only way to win here is to study your analytics. Look into the bounce rate, audience retention, time spent on your site, etc.

The best thing about analytics is you can study your audience behaviour and tweak your work accordingly. Promoting your blog posts on social media at the right times and being consistent will help a lot. There is really no secret mantra behind this.

Keep in mind to have a healthy mindset with respect to analytics. Avoid checking your analytics multiple times a day and getting disappointed. I know what it’s like. I’ve been there, obsessing over analytics. It does you no good.

Knowing when to re-brand

There will be times when you are not working up to your full potential. Not in terms of the number of hours you put into it or how hard you’ve worked. It is when your audience probably needs more. Or less. Or maybe you have lost interest in something that meant a lot to you when you started out.

Re-branding is common, and trust me when I say nobody really writes or posts blogs the way they used to do when they started out. The key here is to identify what is not working and knowing how to change things up.

Time is money. People giving you something that is so precious to them (their time) is everything. It doesn’t really matter how hard you worked or the number of hours you put into that post. If people don’t want to read it, then you probably have to change things a little (assuming you blog about helping people in any way).

Remember how I told you to treat your blog like a business? When one business model fails, you adopt another. No hard feelings involved. The best way to find out what you’re lacking is by asking your audience directly.

Instead of feeling sad about how it’s all going downhill, look at it as a learning lesson to improve your work.

Finding your people

This is so important because, most of the time, people close to you might disregard the hours you put into making videos or publishing a blog post. From society’s point of view, all of this is useless because you’ll probably make pennies. And to some extent, this is understandable.

Maybe you don’t know any bloggers or YouTubers or influencers who can answer your questions right away. This shouldn’t discourage you from putting in the effort to grow your brand. The best part about this is you’re not alone in this. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of people that are going through the same problems.

So, a smart move would be to connect with like-minded people all across the globe through social media. You will be surprised to find out that there are so many people that are willing to help you out and support you!

Conclusion

A quick run down of all these points would be that, anything that is bothering you needs to be dealt head on. Be it audience growth, low engagement or demotivation due to comparison. A long-term solution to this is to change your perspective from a negative to a more positive one.

Having said that, there are times when you might have to re-brand and tweak things a little. Don’t be afraid to take that leap. At the end of the day, if you love doing it, you’ll find a way!

About Divya Hegde

Divya Hegde

I’m an engineering student studying computer science and I like to write about blogging, SEO, personal development and college lifestyle on my website.

Feel free to check it out. Chances of me writing about a question that’s stuck in your head are high! For more insightful tips on blogging and some really good books I’d recommend, head over to my website.

If you’d like to contact me, you can send me a message or contact me on Pinterest.

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