Guest Blogger Week continues on Remarkablogger with Bob Younce of The Writing Journey.

Dooce.

Pioneer Woman.

Skellie.

What do all of these bloggers have in common? Simply put, they are their blog’s brand. If Heather sold Dooce tomorrow, she’d lose a good number of her loyal readers. We go to dooce to see Heather, not to learn about her niche. (What IS her niche, anyways?!?) Same for Pioneer Woman, and for Skellie.

What else do all of these bloggers have in common? They’ve won, or been nominated, for the Weblog Awards (the bloggies). Why? Personality sells. We like to read about interesting people, whether they’re edgy, funny, deep or whatever. We feel like we can connect with them. We say, “Dooce is just writing what I was thinking anyways.” We admire them, and we say, “I wish I could be married to Marlboro Man, like Ree.” It’s like the way that we follow celebrities, but instead of watching the antics and failures of a Britney Spears, we look for advice from Skellie.

This isn’t a problem for most bloggers. Like most other people, bloggers tend to be a bit narcissistic. I include myself in that group, and will admit that I’m one of the most self-obsessed. I’ve said it before, openly and honestly: I blog, in part, because I want to know and to be known.

But what happens when you no longer want to be your Blog’s brand? Wendy (eMom) is facing this right now. She’s had an extremely successful run as eMom. But Wendy realizes that “eMom” doesn’t really fit her business model any longer. Her blog appeals to more than just moms who work at home, which was the original premise of eMoms. Wendy wants (and needs) to re-brand her blog along broader lines.

The problem that she is facing is this: Wendy will always be eMom to many of us. Her writing, her focus and her advice are all geared more toward small business and entrepreneurship than just work-at-home moms. eMom, as a brand, doesn’t fit her anymore.

What do you do when this happens? There are a couple of options that come to mind:

• Re-brand yourself and your blog to separate you from your blog. Ostensibly, that is what Wendy has decided to do. I’m interested to see how it will work out for her. The downside of this option? You run the risk of losing readers who were loyal to your old brand.
• Slowly transition your brand to separate you from your blog. If your domain name is eMom, this isn’t so easy. if it’s remarkablogger, you’ve got a bit of an easier time. Let this be a lesson when you select your domain name. This was the idea, of course, for Amazon.com: they didn’t want to be known as just the online book place, so they picked “Amazon” instead of “Books of teh Intarweb.”
• Start all over. Create a new blog with the new brand, and either drop the old one or phase it out. Is this viable at all? I’m not so sure.

So, what do you think? How would you handle a brand conflict? For me, I don’t see it becoming an issue. For me, Writing-Journey.com is all about my journey – and that’s what I want it to be about. But if it is an issue down the road, how should I go about doing it?

Bob Younce is an Internet writer living and working in Linwood, Michigan. For the past five years, Bob has made his living writing online. He began the Writing Journey in 2008 as a way to help other Internet writers to achieve their dreams. You can subscribe to his blog’s feed at http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheWritingJourney.