Branding and PR is Better Than Marketing and Advertising

I found these interesting pictures on Neil Patel’s blog. Neil Patel is a personal branding expert and personal branding is definitely something bloggers should be focusing on. Check out the pictures and see why branding and public relations (PR) is more effective than marketing and advertising.

As you can see, the message in marketing and advertising originates from you. However, the PR message comes from a third party. And PR leads to branding. In branding, the prospective customer/visitor is interested in you because of what someone else said.

Neil ties everything together by saying:

If you want to brand yourself you need to understand that it is much more effective when other people talk about you in a positive fashion compared to self-promotion.

So, how can you get other people to talk positively about you?

Network. Webmasters are much more likely to promote you if they know you. Get out there, knock on some doors, make some contacts, and build friendships especially with people in your niche.

Blog for the long haul. The longer you blog, the more people will notice you. As time goes by, you’ll be considered a fixture in your niche. This leads to links and traffic.

Do something unique. Webmasters are much more likely to talk about you and link to you if you do something different from the rest. This means you need to know your niche well. Find out which topics in your niche are not getting enough coverage. Then, write quality content about those topics. For example, in my market research, I found that many of us bloggers were juggling too many blogs to our detriment. But not many people were writing about this phenomenon. So, I wrote this post, which attracted a couple links and went viral on StumbleUpon.

What other things can you do to get others to promote your blog?