Branding by association is a powerful strategy that can quickly increase awareness and credibility for your brand.  There are many tactics and tools that can be used to implement this strategy  including blogging.

As blogging continues to increase in popularity as a core component of many entrepreneurial businesses, it is helpful to take a look at how blogging can be used to build associations with other experts who can bring credibility to your business brand.

Following are four blogging techniques for creating a marketable association with select branded experts who you admire but with whom you have not established a personal relationship: 

• Showcase credible experts and brands by writing posts on your blog focusing on their products.  This technique works best if you have tried the product and can provide an honest, first-hand opinion about your experience with the product.  Include the good and the not so good aspects of the product - that makes your comments more believable.  And, if you are an affiliate for the product, this can be a money maker as well if you include your affiliate link. 

• Set up automatic feeds to your email box from the blogs of your target experts so that you can quickly review what they are talking about on a daily basis.  Select at least one or two  blogs on which to post response comments a couple of times each week.  The more content-rich and helpful the comments are, the more attention it will attract among prospects and readers.  And, by posting on other blogs, you have the opportunity to provide a link back to your blog.

• When you find a blog post by a leading expert that would interest your prospects and clients, write a short commentary on your blog about the original post along with a link to the original blog post.   Your clients will not only appreciate the information but will associate you with the other expert.

• Select articles from article directories to publish to your blog which have been written by your targeted branded experts.  Make sure that you use the entire article and resource box.  Readers seldom think about where the article originate from but do make the link between the expert and you.   

Each of these branding by association tactics can be implemented without having an existing relationship with the branded expert.  They are designed to showcase you by providing helpful information to your prospects while also supporting the brands with which you wish to be associated.