Hello again, content peeps!

Once again, I’m hearing the murmuring from the SEO crowd + niche media crowds about the importance of creating a memorable brand.

This week, Tony Hill asked the question:

If your niche site ceased to exist, would anyone notice or care?

Again, to reiterate the importance of building a brand people care about and, yes, rely less on Google.

But is ‘brand building’ the answer we’re all looking for? I have some thoughts.

Brand Building Takes Time

One of the toughest things about building a brand is that it takes time. Not to mention, it takes continuous effort and marketing to really build a memorable brand.

There’s a big difference between a ‘brand’ and a ‘memorable brand’. A brand is not just a logo, name, and mission. There is so much more that goes into building a brand than that.

For us, building content publications, even if we set up a brand in the early days with a clear vision — having people recognize and know our brand takes time and resources.

While many SEO experts have called out that brands are doing better in the SERPs these days (especially after the HCU), this is not the only factor as to why they are suddenly outranking us.

All brands don’t necessarily own all the top spots in the SERPs either. For years, we’ve been working directly with brands to provide strategic content partnerships because users often come to us first or as an alternative resource outside of the brand search.

Of course, building a brand can help an already established content publication be better. I’m not saying we shouldn’t be building a brand, but keep in mind that it takes time and resources, and there are other areas we can focus on to make a lasting, sustainable digital asset first.

Brand Building Means Something Different to Everyone

As someone who has been a part of many brand-building initiatives, I can tell you that there is still this murky area we like to call ‘brand building’ that is really just marketing. What is a brand anyway?

As Anne Moss explained in a recent newsletter:

I think there is a lot of room to create a sustainable, content-led business while you build the brand. The key here is that there is a lot we can do to help people with our content and build an audience before we have a known brand that people can’t live without.

For me, this is the distinction. There are many touchpoints for audiences to find us. We can build and grow our audience, eventually leading to our brand becoming more recognizable over time versus focusing on brand-building activities alone.

The TL;DR of it all:

Building a brand is not enough. There are many parts to building and growing a lasting digital publication. Content is still one of the best bangs for our investment dollars when building an audience and a sustainable business.

Why a Strong Brand is Not Enough

I’ve seen so many amazing digital brands call it quits in the past few years or just not find the traction they deserve.

The example that comes to mind right away is one of The Body is Not an Apology, spearheaded by the fantastic, powerhouse, Sonya Renee Taylor.

This year, The Body is Not an Apology announced that they are shutting down their company + website. With over 1000 expert-created, passionately written articles, a team of contributors, and Sonya herself, this came as a bit of a surprise to me.

I’ve been following this brand closely for quite a few years and have sent many of these articles and resources over the past few years.

And their announcement of it shutting down was equally as poetic and fierce as the brand:

I first came to know of The Body is Not an Apology and learned the story behind this mission from Sonya herself, whom I met at the SOCAP conference in San Francisco.

Meeting Sonya in person was like meeting lighting wrapped in a beautiful soul. She instantly became someone I would follow for the rest of my days. I then met up with Sonya to do a full-scale interview and feature her for the publication I was a part of.

She has done everything right to build a memorable brand that people know, love, and remember. She appeared on several national television shows, wrote the book The Body is Not an Apology, and gave her energy to growing the brand by doing live talks on social media, always with that clear mission in mind.

And, yet, here we are in 2023, shutting it down.

From the SEO perspective, you can see that organic traffic growth has had its ups and downs. And yet, their DR is a 70! If Sonya had looked for someone to take over this site, I would have loved to create a content strategy for it. And, yet, I get why they are shutting it down and releasing the articles for free to their readers — it’s exhausting keeping a brand and company alive if you haven’t figured out monetization and still need the ongoing efforts of the founder to keep it growing.

It was just not a sustainable digital business.

I can imagine the tough decision this was for Sonya and her team. They did so many things that we, as publishers, only dream of, yet it wasn’t enough. Still, I’m glad to see that her work and projects will continue outside of this massive undertaking, and I’m rooting for all those involved in this company to continue in this type of content.

East Coast Mermaid

Another passionate content creator I follow and love is someone I discovered when I moved to the East Coast of Canada almost three years ago. East Coast Mermaid has been my guide to exploring this part of the world.

When I hear Google tell us that we shouldn’t be building for Google but for our audience, the first example that pops into my mind is East Coast Mermaid. She’s doing all the things that Google says they love.

She’s creating content she thinks is helpful for her audience. She’s not making any SEO content. She has merch for her fans and is building a brand.

Her content is full of amazing, authentic images and experiences through and through.

And, yet, when I look deeper into this site, I can’t help but think this is just a really fantastic passion project, not a fully sustainable business.

The traffic has been up and down but hasn’t grown significantly since she started this in 2016. I’m on her email list as well, and while there may be an affiliate deal here or there, this is not the core of what she does to monetize (at least from what I can tell).

And yet, whenever someone visits me out East, I always tell them to go to the East Coast Mermaid blog for ideas! So, she’s built a memorable brand and an audience, but is this enough for a sustainable business?

What I Think We Should Do Instead

While I think brand building is part of what we should do over time to build a lasting business, I don’t think it’s the ONLY thing we need to do.

Things just are not that simple.

Here are some things that I believe we should be doing to build a sustainable publication:

Invest in content-led growth.

Content-led growth focuses on creating valuable, relevant content that meets the needs of your audience. This is still the key to growing a valuable digital asset from the start.

First comes content, then comes the audience, then you can serve that audience more and eventually start to build a brand.

And, yes, investing in content-led growth can help with monetization as well.

Once you’ve got the foundation of content that you know is helping people, you can build an email list (that can be monetized) and targeted digital products to offer more.

A great content strategy helps establish authority and trust, two things that EVERY brand strives for. And it still works.

When we think about new ways to monetize our traffic, we look at the popular content on our sites. This data shapes what products we can build and tells us what people are looking for in our space.

By providing amazing content and doing more, we can also compete with the big boys (eventually).

I came across this Tweet and shared it with my team. Prominent publications lose trust when they don’t do the basics, like providing accurate data. We can do better!

Focus on your content mission instead of a brand mission. 

Shifting focus from a broad brand mission to a specific content mission can accelerate achieving your business goals. While a brand mission encapsulates your publication's overall ethos and long-term vision, a content mission zeroes in on the immediate value you deliver through each piece of content.

This is a shift away from brand building and allows us to align and serve our audience’s current needs and interests (think of what SEO can do).

By concentrating on a content mission, you're effectively streamlining your efforts to produce material that is both immediately useful to your audience and strategically aligned with your business's growth. This is a much more sustainable and do-able approach to building.

Final Thoughts:

You can do a lot to build an audience without focusing on brand building. A great content strategy may support the overall brand strategy, but just creating a great brand is not enough to build a sustainable digital business, as we’ve seen.

While it’s always a goal to have a recognizable brand in the marketplace, there are a lot of steps involved to get there. Don’t let that deter you. There are still many ways to build a digital business with content-led growth.

Things to Read, Watch, and Ponder

Are niche sites still valuable in today's internet ecosystem? This is the question that Anne Moss asks and answers in this blog post. She makes some great points about where niche sites fit in and why just being an expert is not enough!

As you build a content-first strategy, you may think you could run out of ideas of what content to create next. Well, help is here thanks to Ryan Law, who provides some great systems to have new ideas for content here!

It’s a tough time to be growing a digital marketing agency. With all the recent layoffs, shutdowns, and shifts in the industry, I appreciated this Whiteboard from Rand Fishkin on why this is happening. Some great insights here!

And that’s a wrap for this week!

I hope all my US friends are enjoying their turkey this week and, hopefully, some downtime as well.

I wish you all another great week in content.

Cheers! Amy

Some Bonus Newsletters You’ll Love

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