Your Blog is your Brand

I just read an article on The Vine’s fashion page where they interviewed the lovely Garance Dore, an illustrator, photographer and blogger superstar. What stood out the most about the article was this:

A successful blog has a few key ingredients, says Garance. “You need to build up trust with your readers. Your integrity is very important and you must also choose carefully the people that you work with and follow your instinct.”

She is so right, trust, integrity and being associated with the right people are very important to blogs. Most of the time we don’t know too much about the person who creates them, what their credentials are and why we should hold their opinion above anyone else’s.

Readers and followers of the blog need to be able to trust the blogger not to deceive them. In this day and age where businesses are catching onto the blogger phenomenon and the influence bloggers have over consumers, bloggers are constantly being approached by companies to feature their brand on their site... it’s up to the blogger to decide if this brand fits with their blog.

Integrity is everything, followers want to know that they’re blogger is going to be true to themselves and not sell out and feature whatever brand approaches them to earn some extra cash. Some examples of blog collaborations that really capture their direction well are SRC783 and Rusty, Sea of Shoes and Teen Vogue, Fashion Toast and RVCA. When someone approaches you don’t be afraid to say ‘Sorry, but I don’t feel we have the greatest fit”.

Your blog is your brand, everything from your posts, to your advertisers, to your collaborations need to all link together to create a solid statement about what your blog is about.

Image: Garance Dore