The blogging world is packed with marketing, some more transparent than the rest. From uber-self promoters to blogs set up entirely as a marketing tool, more and more people are using their blog to promote themselves, their services, or their business.
The most effective way to stand out in the crowded blogosphere is to blog for yourself. The following tips, tricks, and strategies will show you how to retain your blog’s personality, all the while establishing yourself as a blogger worth listening to.

This is a guest post by Mathew Carpenter, a business owner and entrepreneur from Sydney, Australia. Mathew is currently running Tisme, a design agency which is quickly becoming one of Australia’s top website design and development firms. Follow Mathew on Twitter: @matcarpenter

Don’t fall for short-term blogging trends.

The quickest way to lose your credibility is to sell your blog to whatever is hot at the moment. The online world is forever searching for now: the latest fad, the biggest recent news story, or even products that are currently hot.

But there’s a problem with only blogging on short-term trends and events; your content loses its ‘evergreen’ appeal. The best bloggers don’t focus on covering the here and now, they focus on covering things that are relevant all the time. Ask yourself – what’s better in the long-term: five links on news aggregator websites or a lifetime of appreciation from long-term readers?

Put brand ahead of everything else.

When Coca-Cola takes out a billboard on a crowded highway they don’t think about direct sales. They’ll sell Coke no matter what – the billboard is just their to contribute to the power of their brand, and remind consumers of why they exist.

This all comes down to the short- vs. long-term approach. A lot of bloggers sell their brand in exchange for quick affiliate sales or sponsor plugs, and in effect destroy the possibility to use their blog as anything other than a short-term marketing channel. By building your brand you can create a blog that’s truly valuable as something more than a product billboard.

When you become popular, people will want to cling to your credibility. Ignore them.

Can you imagine how many people want a featured post on Seth Godin’s blog? They won’t be getting one, not unless they’re interesting to Seth himself. When a blogger becomes ultra-popular, their approval or dissent could make or break a product, company, or event. Naturally, unknown people try to surf on their credibility, all to establish themselves as an ‘expert’.

Ignore them. Blogging is about you and your audience. The influential are always surrounded by wannabes, and letting them piggyback on your success only marginalizes your influence.

Go where other people aren’t.

There’s a law that’s thrown around amongst investors, telling people to ‘go where others aren’t’. In this case, it’s about avoiding stock bubbles and potentially dangerous investments by investing outside the mainstream, but it carries over to blogging nicely too.

There are always going to be people covering the same old tired topics trying to get an audience. When something becomes popular, people naturally come out of the woodwork to take their slice of the pie. If you want to build a blog that rapidly becomes popular, complete with an equally rapid decline, go ahead and do so. However, if you want a blog that stands the test of time, spend your time blogging on things that are outside the mainstream.

Ignore design, and put content first.

The vast majority of ‘pretty’ blogs are devoid of any valuable content. Why? Because the owner puts all their effort into perfecting CSS, maximizing the value of their plug-ins, all the while ignoring the entire reason blogs exist: to write.

As long as your blog layout isn’t annoyingly bad (blink tags and animated gifs, anyone?) very few people are going to be focused on your design. When you’re just getting started blogging, let design take a backseat and focus on content alone. Clean design is all you need; flash design is just a distraction.

Write for yourself.

The moment your blog becomes something you don’t like to write is also the moment you should stop blogging. Blogs, even personal ones, can get out of hand, especially when you’re writing for your audience, not yourself. The blogosphere is packed with people out to hold up an image, satisfy others, and project themselves as someone they’re not. Authentic bloggers write because they enjoy it. If your blog ever becomes a task, something that you no longer appreciate, it’s time to change it.