Type-A Mom Conference – Rebranding Your Blog

We’re in the Rebranding Your Blog session at the Type-A Mom Conference at the Renaissance Hotel in Asheville, North Carolina. Our speaker is Amanda Henson (@HighImpactMom). She started a free blog (Mom of Faith) that was faith-based a while back, but last year she was contacted by a woman who had a blog with a similar name – Moms of Faith – only one letter difference. And of course, the other woman had the name trademarked.

So last July, Amanda got the opportunity to “refresh.” The woman with the similar blog name offered to redesign her blog for free. This gave her an opportunity to break away from the niche of faith blogging. She’d gotten a lot of people who met her and said she wasn’t who they thought she would be, and rebranding gave her a chance to be more like herself on her blog.

If you find yourself in a position where you have to rebrand, like Amanda did, she has some tips.

Step 1: Don’t panic.

Rebranding is always personal. Don’t fool yourself into thinking it’s all about business. It’s always personal. Your blog is a part of you. When you rebrand, you’re changing a part of who you are, and you have to be comfortable with those changes.

Step 2: Involve your readers.

Amanda’s readers chose everything about her new blog – the colors, the tagline, everything but the image, which her daughter helped with. She ran a contest to help her determine the new name for her blog. Her readers were the ones who decided on High Impact Mom. This happened about three weeks before BlogHer last year.

Try to find sponsors for your blog contest prizes when having your readers help you with the rebranding process.

Step 3: Do your research.

Whether you’re rebranding by necessity or by choice, you have to run a trademark search. Make sure your name isn’t trademarked. If it’s not, and you can afford it, you should trademark it yourself. You should also do a search to make sure your logo isn’t infringing on any copyrights. You may also want to do a common law search through yellow pages, industrial directories, etc to check for other businesses that may have a similar name but haven’t trademarked it.

Step 4: Spread the word.

Tell everyone on Facebook and Twitter about the change, well before it happens. Do a permanent redirect from your old URL to your new URL. (For the technically minded, that’s called a 301 redirect.) Keep your readers involved and in the loop.

There is no reason to believe that your blog will always remain the same. Our blogs are reflections of us, and we should make sure our blogs reflect who we really are. Our blogs can change as we change. Amanda wants people to know who she is and not be shocked. We should be liked for who we are.

Think about SEO. Tell people who have buttons or links to your old URL on their sites to change them out to point to your new blog.

Lucretia Pruitt (formerly known as @GeekMommy) couldn’t be here today, but she did provide her 8 huge steps for rebranding:

1. Think about what happens if your new brand isn’t going to be as wildly popular with your audience as your old blog.
2. When you think you’ve got something, do your research. Don’t step on toes, don’t hide in shadows.
3. Have a rollout plan. Decide what to roll out and when. You want it to seem easy to your readers. Make sure you can use your rebrand on other sites. Make sure your name is available on social media sites. Go to usernamecheck.com
4. Talk about the reasons why you changed.
5. You can’t divorce yourself completely from your old brand. But eventually, people will get used to the change. 
6. Timing. Roll it out on Sunday night. Be ready for the Monday morning curiosity.
7. Phrases to put in your arsenal: “I liked the old me, too, but I like to keep growing.” “Put me in your RSS feeder until you remember the change.”
8. Have fun. It’s  a rebranding, not a tattoo.

Amanda didn’t lose any readers or followers, but that’s not always going to be the case. People aren’t necessarily good with change. You may lose people, but you need to know that ahead of time and be prepared for it. Is it worth the cost?

You can do guest posts on other blogs to let people know who you are. Use your little bio to tell people about the rebranding. “Hey, I’m still here!”

Examples of successful rebranding:

Global Influence. Amy Lupold Bair rebranded her company for legal reasons, and she and Shannan Powell did an excellent job with the name change. “Rebrand at the first sign of trouble. Don’t wait and hope it’s going to work out, because it won’t.

Kirtsy was once known as Skirt. “It could’ve been a negative lawyer-filled experience…but it became a positive friend-filled experience instead.”

Lucretia was GeekMommy, but she is rebranding herself just as her own name, Lucretia Pruitt. She wants to be more than just a mom, but the whole person.

Mommy Snacks is now Savings Lifestyle. She emphasizes planning and hiring an experienced webmaster to help with the move. She will be watching her metrics over the next few months. Rebranding is serious business. There are so many implications. At the end of the day, it’s about what you think you need to do to achieve your goals.

Question time.

Is there any reason it might be bad to brand yourself by your real name? Privacy would be the biggest concern, or if you have a common name. You should definitely buy the .com of your name. (Side note: I’m considering making ChristinaGleason.com a place that links out to my other sites, and moving my professional blog to my company blog at PhenomenalContent.com based on this conversation.)

If you have legal issues with trademarks, etc. – contact the small business bureau in your town. Sometimes there are lawyers who volunteer their time to help small business owners.

Note: check your analytics to determine the best day to roll out your changes. Tech bloggers may get more of their readers Monday morning, but mom bloggers may get more of their traffic on the weekends.

Christina Gleason (976 Posts)

That’s me: Christina Gleason. I’m a writer, editor, and disability advocate. I'm a multiply disabled autistic lady doing my best in this world built for abled people. I’m a geek for grammar, fantasy, and casual gaming. I hate vegetables. I cannot reliably speak, so I’ll happily conduct business over email or messaging instead.