Using Your Blog to Improve Your Reputation

Years ago no one took blogging seriously. Blogging was for people who wanted to write about their hobbies or have their own little journal on the internet. Now it’s a requirement to have a blog for your brand or business. If you still don’t have a blog of your own, you are missing out big time!

In this post I’m going to tell you exactly why you need to have a blog and how you can grow your brand and reputation in the process. Before we get started, I’m going to tell you a bit about myself.

I first started making money online in the mid to late 90s, and I didn’t start blogging until 2007. This was a huge mistake to wait this long, but when I did finally start blogging, I saw immediate returns. The first blog I started was the main blog I still run today, which is at ZacJohnson.com. The blog is all about my journey in the world of online marketing and blogging. Since the launch of the blog I’ve been able to refer over $5 million in new business to my site partners, teach others how to make money online and also open up a whole new world of opportunity… such as being a keynote speaker in Australia, appearing on Fox News and ABC News, writing my own book and much more!

Enough about me… now I want to share my secrets on how you can do the same!

Step 1: Launch Your Blog

The first step in getting setup with the blog is the easiest… and that’s just going live. A blog is a great way to grow your brand and reputation because it’s all about the content you generate and it won’t cost you much money in the process. The initial costs are just $10 a year for a domain name and around $10 a month for the web hosting. Once setup with a domain name and hosting, you just need to throw WordPress on your site and you are ready to go.

Step 2: Create Killer Content than People Want

The success and sole purpose of your blog is all about the content that you create for your site. There are millions of blogs on the internet, so you are going to want to make sure you create content that people find value in. The more people like it, the more likely they are to share it with their friends and on social networks. Depending on the niche you are in, create content that caters to your audience and gives them answers to their questions.

Step 3: Brand Yourself and Your Blog

Now that you have the content being setup for your site, it’s important that you create your site to focus on your branding building in the process. This means you should have a premium or custom WordPress theme on your site. Links to social profiles to all of your personal or business accounts. An “About Me” page to tell your audience who you are and why it matters. A great logo or tagline to get people to remember your name and site.

Step 4: Be Everywhere in Your Niche

The next step in creating a blog that represents your brand and grows your reputation is for you to focus on guest blogging on some of the top sites within your niche. It doesn’t matter what industry your blog is focused on, there is always going to be another blog out there in the same niche that is looking for quality content to share with their traffic. By providing quality content on other blogs in your same area, you will gain backlinks back to your blog while also getting your bio and picture shared at the bottom of the post. This will open up your blog and personal reach to a whole new audience that are already interested in what you have to say. In addition to guest blogging, you should also be participating in blog commenting and engaging with different comments and content on various sites.

Step 5: Dominate and Become the “Authority”

The final step in the process is to bring everything together and to focus on building out your blog as an “authority” source for information and content within your niche. You have the blog, the content, the premium site design, a logo, your guest blogging and exposure on other sites… all of this leads back to building your brand and reputation every time a new person sees your blog. The better the content you provide, the better your blog and reputation will be seen as an authority in your space.

The Future of Your Blog and Your Authority

There is no “secret” to making it big in the world of blogging. I broke down the exact process for you in five simple steps. Now it’s up to you to put everything we discussed into action.

New blogs are going live everyday, but the majority of them are nothing worth looking at, most will get no traffic and many will eventually die out in just a few days or weeks. The content and success of your blog represents your name/brand and what you decide to do with it.

Follow these steps to build a powerful brand and reputation with your blog!