If you’ve been blogging for any length of time, you’re bound to come face to face with the reality of your old site feeling a bit stale. I used to think changing my website around meant the current style or format was bad. But that really isn’t the case. As we develop as bloggers and website owners, we grow and change. Our focus shifts from one topic to the next, or it becomes even more laser focused on that golden niche. Noticing our site is feeling stale is a signal to us to try something new. This trying something new is exactly what a branding refresh is all about. Here are 3 simple strategies to refresh your brand’s blog.

This article was sponsored by Font Bundles. All reviews and opinions expressed in this post are based on my personal view. Learn more.

1. Brand Vision

Every serious blogger should regularly review our brand vision. Whether you care more about corporate branding or personal branding, it’s easy to let our purpose grow stale.

When we first felt that tug on our heart to start a blog, we had an idea of why we wanted to do it. Why it was important. Why the blogosphere needed one more blog!

According to branding expert David Aaker, “brand vision refers to the ideas behind a brand that help guide the future.”

More than likely, as time has gone on with your blog, your vision has changed or simply matured. If you think about the ideas guiding your blogs future, are they still accurate? Are they still helpful?

Here are a few questions to ask from Ryan Scott at Lean Labs to help make sure your brand vision is current.

• Who is my ideal customer?
• What kind of personality do I have?
• How do I make people feel? Or, how do I WANT people to feel when interacting with my content?
• Why do people trust me?
• What’s my story?

2. Look and Feel

Refreshing a blog’s branding is more than choosing the right colors, images, and fonts…but not much more when it comes to creating a digital footprint that sets us apart. That’s why style is critical.

Our style is our first impression with unique visitors and a powerful way to draw regular visitors back. Great content can be hidden by poor style.

On my blog, I focused on a minimalistic, classic style with time-tested colors and fonts. You can find fancy fonts online that fit a wide array of personalities and digital identities. Some of my favorite fancy fonts are Sweetlilly and Varino, but that’s because I still think science fiction movies will all come true!

3. Website Structure

Once we’ve decided our brand vision is on point and accurately describes our digital identity, and we’ve put some serious thought into how our personality comes across with colors, images, and fonts, our next step in refreshing our blog is reconsidering website structure.

Website structure is all about how people interact with your content. When they first land on your website, are they staring at a landing page or a list of blog posts? Where is the navigation and is it easy to use? Is the site responsive to different people’s screen sizes?

Did you know, the majority of users interacting with online content are now using mobile devices? That means if you don’t have a website that’s responsive to a large spectrum of sizes you could be losing interest, visitors, and clients. Also, search engines consider mobile friendliness as a ranking factor in their algorithms.

Ask a few friends to visit your website and check it out. Let them know ahead of time you’ll be asking them some questions to improve the site. Take the good and bad critiques as good lessons to learn and make the changes necessary to create a smooth website structure.

The easier you make life for your readers, the easier they’ll make like for you!

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