Building a powerful brand for your blog – learning from John Chow Dot Com

Showoff your harsh characters

From 14 years of living I have realized that the world we live in is very strange, people support the successful more than the good ones. So I guess all of you know about John’s characters, oops.. I’m sorry I mean the ways he shows off his bad characters, he openly admits that he is not trustable and that he has a lot of ego, if you read his disclosure policy and about us page this will be confirmed.

This just shows how cool a particular person is and unfortunately people are attracted to such things, doing stuff like this you’ll loose the sympathy of your readers and you may find a hell lot of negative comments on your post, but creates a big and powerful brand around your blog and ultimately people will start speaking about you and your blog, and as an entrepreneur you must value your your fame and popularity rather than sympathy.

Don’t hesitate to be part of controversies

In the past four years, John has been part of many internet controversies and almost all of them have ended negative on his part, but still each time that happens he is sure to see a rise in his traffic for a few days, just imagine a blog of your own level or a bit bigger than you accuses you of something and then the readers of that particular blog will surely pay a visit to yours.

John effectively used this method, he didn’t bother much for people wrongly accusing him, but took the maximum advantage of this and made sure he captured the attention of all his visitors. At times this may reach a higher level and may touch mainstream media, this can be a paradise as well as a nightmare if a person wants to take legal action. So if you are brave enough to bear the risk, there isn’t a better way to grow your brand.

Build relationships and influence

John Chow and many other famous bloggers started off at the same time and they combined resources to grow to a bigger level. I think all of them were successful because they worked together. Once all of their blogs reached a certain level and after they started to have an influence over their audience they started promoting each others blogs on their blogs.

This just brings a in a few visitors and a bit of exposure to each one of their blogs but this method was sure to be lethal in the long run. Thats why I have recommended in many of my previous posts that building relations with other bloggers and networking with them are few of the most important things in blogging.

I have successfully done this for my blog, after every post I send requests for all my friends in the blogging group requesting for retweets, diggs and stumbles and if possible even a comment and I do the same for them once they’ve got their post ready, thats why you can see so many diggs, retweets and stumbles on my last few posts.

I initially mentioned this on my Facebook and Digg profile and slowly my network kept growing by asking for recommendations from one user and recommending some more people to him as well, until now I haven’t got a network to help take me very viral, but its surely growing at a fast pace. It takes time and a lot of patience, but your sure to get success.

Showoff your success in that particular niche

John Chow dot com rose to world wide fame when John publicly claimed that his blog earns $32,000 each month, this was of course important as his blog is part of the make money online niche. So when he claims to be so successful, people will surely follow his posts more often and he gets an impression of a role model to many.

John took the maximum advantage of this, he kept exploiting his readers leading them affiliate programs and then kept selling ads and sponsored reviews like hell! Even you can make use of this, if you show your readers that your still a newbie the niche your blogging at, then not everyone will take you seriously, so make sure you do something and provide a proof to prove your expertise in your niche.

This may seem unethical for a few of you, but come on your not stealing anything , moreover this does not mean that you’ll have to lie, you can just show some real proof and just manipulate it a bit, no one will be hurt by this and this will surely help grow your blog. But before you do this its necessary that you have an existing audience, I used to report Dumb Little Blogger’s traffic and earnings before, but stopped doing so due to my drop in traffic.

Endorsing big products and showing your authority

When you find a premium product or service the first thing you’ll see is how famous it actually is and the first place is the testimonials section where you get the reviews of some people who are known to have been big in that particular niche. This way product gets enough sales as it increases the visitor’s confidence. Another party which it helps are the ones who endorse it, when that product gets popular many would surely notice the authority of the person who has endorsed it.

When we take the case of a celebrity endorsing a product in a television commercial we feel the only one gaining fame is the product, but if you see it in another point of view you’ll also see the actors brand value increasing depending on the popularity of the campaign. This was one useful method John took the maximum benefits from and for this you don’t need a big blog all you need is networking and writing skills.

A few years ago John Chow use to make deals with people launching products and services, which he felt would be popular someday and wrote a post on it which was then featured on that particulars company’s blog for their readers to see.

Meetups and conferences

Meetups and conferences are currently the best places to build personal relations with other bloggers and unlike meeting people online, this way you can have chances of building new partnerships, thats why social networking isn’t always a social place. Moreover its really a great way to gain knowledge and understand this world better as no blog online can show you how really it is in the blogosphere.

If you attend normally like anyone else your going get knowledge and a few contacts, which anyhow is better than anything else, but John started promoting those meetups for free, but with a deal with the organizers that his blog must be featured to everyone, this may have been just by announcing the name or even by interviewing him, whatever it was those meetups had over 200 people for sure, so he really got a lot of exposure.

On to our readers

As you can see John Chow defied the laws of marketing, it shows that networking, innovation and creativity can create a huge brand without any quality, though I strictly advice all of you that quality must be first. One more thing we learnt here was that blogging too takes a bit of investment, either to grow it or even to start it.

To keep up with such posts in the future please follow me on Twitter and also subscribe to our feeds, if your looking to promote your blog on sites such as digg, stumbleupon and Twitter please connect with me on Gtalk : vishi.sanjay as I do swap with a few friends of mine.