Even if you don’t want people to know who you are today, they’re going to find out if you become successful enough. Therefore, seek to build a brand that represents your true values that you’d be proud to represent. That way when things are discovered about you, it’s not a shock to anyone because they know, like and trust you already.

2. Market to the Audience of One

Remember that you know exactly who you want to be in your audience and you will design all your marketing materials to appeal to only that audience of one. This means that you put blinders on and don’t worry about whether you turn a few people off that might not buy your product, but seek to appeal to a specific targeted audience within the niche instead.visit here

3. Send Information Regularly to List Members

One way to ensure that you stay connected with your audience is to ensure that you send emails to list members on a regular basis. One way to do that is to go with the “newsletter” idea, sending a nice update for each week of what you’ve shared all over social networks and your blog for them in one spot.

4. Pay for Ads (Especially on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube)

The days of free marketing are almost over. You can market free content, but it will take a lot longer. If you want to move things along faster, spend some money on marketing – at least on these platforms. Market your paid and free content to your audience to ensure the most eyes get on the content.

5. Post Long-Form Content on Your Blog

Today, longer content on your blog is more important than ever. When you post long content, it shows that you’re an expert because you can get into detail about something that your audience cares about. It also signals to search engines that you may be an authority website.

6. Have a Mobile-Friendly Website

You really need a mobile-first strategy today, more than you need a “mobile-friendly” website. Your site needs to work on mobile and off mobile but if you design first for mobile, it will also work well and look good off mobile platforms.

7. Use the Social Media That Your Audience Likes Most

While you may want to be everywhere, use the platform your audience uses most more than the others. You may need to test it out to find out where you gain the most traction but once you know where they are, make that your main platform.

8. Attend Live Events

This applies whether the live event is online such as a live webinar or a live YouTube event, or an in-person event like a seminar or workshop. It’s important that you go where your audience goes.

Branding is important for small businesses as well as large companies. If you have a limited budget, smart branding is perhaps the most inexpensive business tool you can create. To learn more about how to make your business stand out, download my free checklist, Branding For Small Businesses

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

You’re going to publish a post today. Don’t worry about how your blog looks. Don’t worry if you haven’t given it a name yet, or you’re feeling overwhelmed. Just click the “New Post” button, and tell us why you’re here.

Why do this?

• Because it gives new readers context. What are you about? Why should they read your blog?
• Because it will help you focus you own ideas about your blog and what you’d like to do with it.

The post can be short or long, a personal intro to your life or a bloggy mission statement, a manifesto for the future or a simple outline of your the types of things you hope to publish.

To help you get started, here are a few questions:

• Why are you blogging publicly, rather than keeping a personal journal?
• What topics do you think you’ll write about?
• Who would you love to connect with via your blog?
• If you blog successfully throughout the next year, what would you hope to have accomplished?

You’re not locked into any of this; one of the wonderful things about blogs is how they constantly evolve as we learn, grow, and interact with one another — but it’s good to know where and why you started, and articulating your goals may just give you a few other post ideas.

Can’t think how to get started? Just write the first thing that pops into your head. Anne Lamott, author of a book on writing we love, says that you need to give yourself permission to write a “crappy first draft”. Anne makes a great point — just start writing, and worry about editing it later.

When you’re ready to publish, give your post three to five tags that describe your blog’s focus — writing, photography, fiction, parenting, food, cars, movies, sports, whatever. These tags will help others who care about your topics find you in the Reader. Make sure one of the tags is “zerotohero,” so other new bloggers can find you, too.