A great post I had to share from Leo Babauta at Write to Done.

One of the reasons I was able to draw so many readers to Zen Habits within the first year was that I treated the promotion of Zen Habits as you would any other product — I branded it.

Of course, there are other reasons as well — I really focused on creating as useful content as possible, for example — but branding is what really helped Zen Habits take off so quickly.

When you think of your blog as you would a brand, you have to create a consistent message and have everything you do — on and off the blog — send the same message. And you have to repeat the message as often as possible to your target audience until it’s stuck in their head.

Leo’s right, of course, if you want to build a real readership, stay on message.  Not a skill I have been demonstrating here of late (oh look, a butterfly….), but one that you should be considering in your writing.

Along with his action list, I’ll add a couple of my own:

• If you can’t reasonably stick to your topic, then provide decent “silos” in which you categorize content, and stick with them.  
• Spend time optimizing landing pages for categories, if you’ve got more than one.
• Live it and love it – if you’re just covering a topic because it’s a potential money maker, you’ll sound hollow.  
• You might want to consider multiple blogs, if you can’t handle the previous three items.