reasons to not brand your blog

Why I Don’t Want to Brand my Blog (But Probably Will Anyway)

It’s been over a year now and I still don’t know what the hell this blog is about. I elaborated on that point in my last post a bit, but the truth is I’ve resisted branding this blog for a long time. In fact, my blog is so non-branded that my primary driver of traffic is Google searches on my ‘hell’s itch’ post.  For the record, this is a post about me getting hell’s itch, which an excruciatingly painful sunburn. In case you couldn’t guess, that’s pretty not related to my writing, or even writing in general. For a long time though, I’ve actually enjoyed not branding my blog, and I think there’s a lot of reasons to not brand your blog. However, now that I have a book out soon, I’ll need to think about branding my blog and targeting keywords that are at least somewhat related to what my book is about.

But the truth is, that’s kind of boring. It’s fun to just write about whatever pops in your head. But ask any marketing expert on how to make money blogging (or even sell a product through your blog), and then tell you that this squarely does not fall into the reasons to not brand your blog category. In other words, nobody’s gonna buy a book about Exodus and Moses from a guy who’s claim to search engine fame is his really bad sunburn.

That’s sounds kind of silly, but it’s actually kind of hard to swallow. It kind of sucks to have to focus this blog more on the things (or book) I’m trying to sell. But while not every post needs to be about #personalbranding, and there are reasons to not brand your blog when you’re starting out, this blog is over a year old and now has a purpose.

Ideally, I’d like to be using this platform for more than just a way to keep writing and self-expression (or rather, to communicate my ideas). I’d also like to have my book for sale up here. And while it’s exhausting to come up with an editorial calendar to promote this book, and to use social media to amplify posts about this book, it’s starting to become increasingly necessary. The launch is planned for early next year, so I need to start getting on subscribing people to actual emails that I send them that are relevant to the product I’m trying to sell.

I know; tough stuff. Marketing is tough. That being said, I’m committed to trying to write more posts that are more relevant to my writing and my book. That’s not to say I’m giving up on the wackiness that is this blog. They’ll be plenty of posts about the realities of being a digital nomad, video games, pop culture, and a whole bunch of other random shit that seems relevant when I’m writing it.

So stay tuned. Because while this new ride might be one that is a little more commerce driven, it’s still going to be weird. And I hope that’s why you’re all still reading.

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