Tag: personal branding

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The Intentional Writer

Are You Managing Your Personal Brand?

The Intentional Writer column

Did you know you had a personal brand? It’s not just for writers or entertainers or politicians. Every person has a personal brand.

Whether they are aware of it or not.

Whether they manage it or not.

The book You Are a Brand! by Catherine Kaputa tells us how to develop and manage our brands with intention, confidence, and flair. No mater where you are in your personal brand journey, this book has tips that will help you take your next step.

Why your personal brand matters

I’ll let these three quotes from the book answer this question.

“To be successful you need to create positive attitudes in the minds of other people. You can’t make yourself successful. Oly other people can make you successful.

In the same way, you can’t make a sale. Only other people can decide whether to buy from you, whether you are an induvial or a company.

In other words, you need to build a “self-brand,” a reason for people to buy from you, whether you are selling yourself for a job or selling products and services to others.” Catharine Kaputa

“A talented, hard-working person won’t do as well as a well-branded, talented hard-working person. Effective branding will tip perception in your favor and bring greater success.”

“The truth is, if you don’t brand yourself, someone else will, and it probably won’t be the brand you had in mind.”

Five helpful self-branding concepts from You Are A Brand!

You can re-brand yourself

Branding is based on perception. This may seem unfair, but in reality it’s good news, because perception can be changed. That’s really what branding is all about—managing other people’s perception. So, if you want to update or polish your brand, you can. If you want to refocus your brand in a new direction, you can. If you want others to notice all your hard work, you can work to rebrand yourself in a way that enables your skills to shine.

You have assets. Use them to be unique and authentic

“Make use of everything. You have experiences; these are brand assets. You have a point of view; that too is an asset. Make the best use of the assets and resources you have, and realize we all have hidden assets that we need to uncover.” Christine Kaputa

Know your competition and then find ways to differentiate.

Study your close competition to see how they market to your customers. But don’t simply copy what everyone else is doing. Instead, learn from them and let them help you position yourself to be similar but special in some way.

Answer this question to help you differentiate your unique brand: My brand is the only ___ that ___ .

Find your sweet spot.

The sweet spot is where your passion, skills, experience, connect with a market of audience need in a niche where the competition isn’t overwhelming. One way to identify a sweet spot is to consider this question: What is missing in my market area (genre/ministry arena/expertise) that I can provide?

Develop a memorable elevator pitch. And use it.

No matter the career or ministry niche, those who can succinctly and clearly communicate what they do and how it benefits others have an edge over the competition. An elevator pitch is a short, concise, statement that communicates what you do, for whom, and why it matters.

Craft one and practice it until you know it by heart. (Yes, really.) Then you can easily answer the question “What do you do?” at the drop of a hat. Even on an elevator.

Don’t be intimidated by this book

This book is jam-packed with branding information. And it’s written for a broad audience. Some of the material won’t apply to your situation or branding needs.

Don’t beat yourself up for not accomplishing executive-level branding when you’re a beginning writer, blogger, or podcaster. Don’t try to read if from cover to cover, digest everything the author is teaching, or try to apply it all at once. Instead, think of the book as a resource to help you to the next level—whatever that is. Choose a section that applies to your current situation and find a few practical actions you can accomplish right now.

Then, return to the book in six months and find something else to apply. Each time you open the book, you can take one more small but intentional step towards developing and maintaining an awesome, unique, memorable brand.

Lisa E Betz

Lisa E. Betz is an engineer-turned-mystery-writer, entertaining speaker, and speechwriting coach. She inspires others to become their best selves, living with authenticity, and purpose, and she infuses her novels with unconventional characters who thrive on solving tricky problems. Her Livia Aemilia Mysteries, set in first-century Rome, have won several awards, including the Golden Scroll Novel of the Year (2021).

She and her husband reside outside Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with Scallywag, their rambunctious cat—the inspiration for Nemesis, resident mischief maker in her novels. Lisa directs church dramas, hikes the beautiful Pennsylvania woods, eats too much chocolate, and experiments with ancient Roman recipes. Visit lisaebetz.com.

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Platform and Branding

Many Interests. One Brand.

Platform and Branding

As you dive further into platform and branding it may be difficult to determine exactly what you want your brand to be. For instance, if you’ve written fiction but now you want to write nonfiction, knowing exactly how to brand yourself can be difficult.

Thankfully, it’s not as hard as you may think. With some careful thought and planning you can be a writer with many interests and one brand. Follow the three steps below to learn how.

Who Is Your Audience?

Your audience is you unique followers: the people who follow you because they love your content and want more of it. If you’ve built an audience around one genre or one target audience, how do you rebrand yourself as your interests grow? This can get tricky when it comes to branding or rebranding, but simply do your research: Know who’s following you.

We are much more adaptable than we realize.

Life is a journey and just as everyone else grows and changes, so do writers. Know your audience enough to know which of your interests they will benefit from and which projects they’ll jump on board with.

How? Research. Or literally ask. Post a question box on Instagram and see what answers you get!

Lead Your Audience

Once you know who your audience is, their likes, dislikes, and why they’re following you, you are better equipped to know how to lead them.

If your audience is made up of a loyal fan base who fell in love with your first middle grade book, its sequel, and the third installment, and suddenly you want to transition to writing cookbooks, they might have a learning curve. Understand this, and move forward accordingly. It may take you a little more time, but move forward with purpose and lead them into your new interests.

Show Your Audience The Full Aspect Of Who You Are

Creatives often have diverse interests. Don’t allow your online presence to hold you back offline. Yes, your online presence is a powerful tool when used rightly, but don’t let a free app on your phone hinder your creative potential.

If you have a large following on your fashion blog and Pinterest but want to try your hand at writing a novel, go for it.

Life is short.

 It’s important to steward the talents we’ve been given and pursue excellence. While you may lose some of your audience, you will likely grow in other capacities (whether that’s your social media numbers, or as an individual).

As you move into the next stage of your personal branding journey, be cautious but be bold. The creative world is constantly evolving. Grow with it. Take your writing interests to the next level. Rebrand. Revamp. Present fresh content in a new way.

And remember, you’re more than a social media following or a singular interest. You are a person who grows and changes.

Enjoy the process!

Sarah Rexford

Sarah Rexford is a Marketing Content Creator and writer. She helps authors build their platform through branding and copywriting. With a BA in Strategic Communications, Sarah equips writers to learn how to communicate their message through personal branding. She writes fiction and nonfiction and offers writers behind-the-scenes tips on the publishing industry through her blog itssarahrexford.com. She is represented by the C.Y.L.E Young Agency.

Instagram: @sarahjrexford
Twitter: @sarahjrexford
Web: itssarahrexford.com

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Guest Posts

7 Tips for Writers to Build a Personal Brand on Social Media

Guest posts

As a writer, you need to know how to act and what to do in order to get more people to hear about your work, read your books, and start following your career. It’s not enough for you to have brilliant books if no one knows about them. That means that you need to build a personal brand and become more active in showing it, especially online. And, the best place to do it is on social media.

Social media is the most powerful tool you can use to build a personal brand as a writer. If you’re not sure how to do it, but want to learn, just keep reading. Below, you’ll find a list of 7 best tips for writers to build a personal brand on social media.

Let’s get started.

1. Build Strong Profiles

Let’s start with the essentials. To build a strong personal brand on social media, you need to make sure your social media profiles are fully updated.

Here’s what that implies:

  • profile and cover images
  • personal information
  • business information
  • short bio
  • fun facts
  • contact information

You want to make sure that your social media profiles are professional, informative, and complete. Also, make sure to delete any profiles you might not be using anymore to avoid having them ruin your online presence.

2. Get Personal

People love to see the non-business side of their favorite writers, so you’ll need to get personal. This doesn’t mean you’ll need to reveal your private life completely. It just means you’ll be giving them a sneak peek into who you are when you’re not an author.

That means you’ll share:

  • pictures of you with your dog
  • your family holiday photos
  • your thoughts on global or local events
  • your favorite musician
  • etc.

You need to let the people get to know you and start feeling like they’re your friends. The closer they feel to you, the more they’ll be interested in your work as a writer. Share the content that shows who you are as a person and allows them to learn about you every day.

3. Communicate

People following you on social media will love communicating with you and getting feedback on their comments, messages, or remarks. This is why to build a personal brand, you need to be active in responding to your followers.

That includes:

  • replying to the comments that ask a question or deserve your attention
  • thanking people for their nice words or support
  • answering DMs
  • reposting stories of people reading your book or mentioning you

Apart from giving feedback in this form, you should also try and inspire people to talk to you. You can ask questions, ask them to leave a comment, and share their thoughts. This way, you’ll be able to see how they feel and what their thoughts are on your new book or anything else you’d like to discuss.

4. Be Active

To build a personal brand, you need to present in people’s lives. And, every now and then when they’re scrolling their social media feed, they need to see or hear from you.

This will create a habit of checking your content and staying interested in what you’ll post next. To make this happen, you’ll need to:

  • post regularly (at least 3-4 time a week)
  • create engaging content that your audience will like reading or seeing
  • be innovative and post something fresh and different

Since you’re a writer, it shouldn’t be too hard to come up with interesting new ideas for your social media posts. Try making them fun, unique, and creative.

5. Show Consistency

Consistency is another super-important ingredient in your mixture for a winning personal brand on social media. Why? Because it makes you relatable and authentic.

Consistency means following a set of rules you created that define you as a brand. Those include:

  • your personality
  • your style of writing
  • your tone and voice
  • the colors you’re using
  • the type of visuals you’re posting

You should try and come up with a unique style, and use it in all your posts on all your social media. This comes through trial and error or, if you don’t like to risk, an editing company can do the work for you. This way you will help people recognize your posts before they even read it’s you.

This way, your brand is becoming truly powerful.

6. Understand Who’s Reading

As a writer, you can have a colorful audience of different people following you for different reasons. Understanding and knowing your audience is the key to successful brand building. Your audience can consist of:

  • young writers looking up to you
  • people who have been following your work from day one
  • new followers who only read one of your books

Learn who they are and create content for each of these target groups. Make sure there’s something for everyone.

7. Talk Work

Just because you’re trying to build a personal brand doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to talk about your work as a writer. On the contrary, your social media is supposed to help you build awareness about your latest work and overall career.

This means that you should include updates from your professional life on your social media. You should post about:

  • your work in progress such as a new book or switching to a new genre
  • the release date of your new book
  • promotions and events
  • behind the scenes of a writing session
  • announcements and big revelations

Your social media profiles are there to support your professional career and make a connection between you as a writer and you as an everyday person.

So, don’t be afraid to talk work, but make it fun, genuine, and authentic.

Final Thoughts

Building a personal brand on social media is a great way for writers to gain more attention and expand their readership. When you’re present online the right way, people have a chance to get to know you, like you, and develop an interest in your work.

Hopefully, the 7 tips we’ve shared above will help you build a strong personal brand on social media so use them to reach new career heights.

Jessica Fender is a professional writer and educational blogger at Bestwritingadvisor, an aggregator for useful college resources and websites. Jessica enjoys sharing her ideas to make writing and learning fun.

Categories
Platform and Branding

Hey, Writer. Let’s Talk About Your Brand!

Platform and Branding

Now more than ever, personal branding is important. Whether you’re scrolling through Instagram looking at the latest influencers’ posts, or on Twitter engulfed in a sea of book promotions, it may seem like everyone is pushing their personal brand.

Maybe you attended a writing conference and were declined representation due to your lack of platform. Maybe your book made it through pitching and garnered the interest of a publisher, only to have the marketing team squash your hopes of landing a contract. I’ve been there too. If you’re only here for writing, that’s ok. We have numerous articles on the writing craft. If you want to write for yourself, you can skip this article and go read another. However, if you want to write and build a career then keep reading.

Branding is a cornerstone to a solid writing career. That’s why we need to talk about it.

Writers embody their writing. Think of J. K. Rowling—a giant in her genre. But she is both known for what she writes and also who she is. The character of Harry is so endearing partly because we know Rowling’s past. To be an author with a career is to open yourself up to the public and show who you are.

That’s where branding comes in.

We don’t need to share every detail of our lives to get published, but we do need to share select details.

Notice the word select there. Brand comes down to what you choose to share.

What are you passionate about? What colors do you love? How do you decorate? Believe it or not, this all influences your brand. As a writer you will likely do some speaking and promoting. What you talk about hopefully comes from what you’re passionate about. How you dress when you speak hopefully is inspired by the colors you love. How you decorate will likely influence the type of photos you post on Instagram or your author Facebook page, or what you pin on your author Pinterest board.

We’ll continue future, in-depth discussions of author branding (as well as platform) but for now, can I assign some homework?

Look up your favorite authors and notice what they’re posting, tweeting, and blogging about. Notice trends. Notice recurring themes. Colors. Topics. Questions. Ways they engage with their followers.

Then look at your own social media and writer website. Notice trends, recurring themes, colors, topics, questions, and how you engage. Take note if there are discrepancies between your social media bio and what you’re posting about.

For now, that’s all you need to do—notice. Next time we’ll take it a step further.

Until then, happy writing!

Sarah Rexford is a Marketing Content Creator and writer. She helps authors build their platform through branding and copywriting. With a BA in Strategic Communications, Sarah equips writers to learn how to communicate their message through personal branding. She writes fiction and nonfiction and offers writers behind-the-scenes tips on the publishing industry through her blog itssarahrexford.com. She is represented by the C.Y.L.E Young Agency.

Instagram: @sarahjrexford
Twitter: @sarahjrexford
Web: itssarahrexford.com

Categories
Platform and Branding

Author Brand Crash Course

Platform and Branding

Personal brand is a big factor for writers today. Do you have one? If so, what is it? And how do you, through your brand, portray yourself to the world? These are some questions to ask if you’re newer to this thing called writing or simply focusing on your platform for the first time.

First things first: Do you have a brand?

I put brand into two categories, active brand and passive brand. Passive brand is the brand you don’t think about. It’s what you wear to buy groceries, the posts you share without considering your writing platform, the people you follow because you just like seeing their posts. Active brand is much different. It’s what you choose to wear to the writers conference, it’s the blog you work on for a week before sharing on Twitter, it’s the people you follow on Instagram so you can work on your platform.

Whether you realize it or not, everything you say, share, do, wear (the list goes on) communicates something to your followers. When considering your brand, focus on a few key areas.

I can’t tell you what areas those should be for you, that’s up to you as the writer, but here are some bullet points to get you thinking:

  • Social Media — Are you always consuming or do you engage and give away good content? Neither is right or wrong, but one establishes you as more of a student in the industry while the other establishes you as an expert in your field.
  • Style — When people meet you for the first time, what does what you wear tell them about who you are? Are you a casual person? A professional? Again, neither is right or wrong but it is important to be aware of how you come across.
  • Website — Is your website about you or your reader? Are you inviting your target audience to read about the topics you enjoy, or are you bringing fresh content that will help them in whatever niche you’ve chosen to write in?
  • Writing — If people follow you on social media or subscribe to your site and then go read your books, they expect it to align with the rest of your brand. Ask, does my writing align with who I’m showing the world I am? (Imagine if Stephen King had a blog strictly focused on cat memes. As amazing as that would be, it would be rather confusing for the reader.)

If this feels like a lot, don’t be discouraged. Start small and grow from there. The good thing about a personal brand is it grows and changes as you do. Enjoy the journey of discovery and connecting with your readers along the way. If you’re a writer, you’re here for the long game. Personal brand is part of the process. And if you can write a book from scratch, you can definitely build your brand from what’s already started. You got this!

Sarah Rexford is a Marketing Content Creator and writer. She helps authors build their platform through branding and copywriting. With a BA in Strategic Communications, Sarah equips writers to learn how to communicate their message through personal branding. She writes fiction and nonfiction and offers writers behind-the-scenes tips on the publishing industry through her blog itssarahrexford.com. She is represented by the C.Y.L.E Young Agency.

Instagram: @sarahjrexford
Twitter: @sarahjrexford
Web: itssarahrexford.com

Categories
Authorpreneur

Build a Brand 3: Define Your brand’s Personality

In my last article, I introduced the idea of an author creating a brand personality and outlined three ways an author can create a solid personality. Simply put, your book’s personality is the way it makes readers feel when they pick it up or read it. This article will focus on how you, as an author, can decide what you want your brand’s personality to be.

Here are three steps to keep in mind as you decide how to define your brand’s personality.

First, keep it simple. Try to define your own human personality in 2-3 words. That can be tough, and it might be helpful to ask someone else to define you. The same is true with branding a product. It can be a challenge to describe your books in 2-3 adjectives. But that’s what you want to do.

Simple messages are more likely to get through to readers because we are bombarded by complex issues daily. Think, what do you want readers to think of as soon as they hear your name? Do some introspective analysis until you can answer this question in two or three words.

Are you a Victorian romance writer? You can probably describe your books as passionate and elegant. If you’re a mystery writer, three adjectives that could easily describe your book are intriguing, suspenseful, and dark. You may want to consider keeping those adjectives in mind as you work on your next book cover, plan your book launch, or your next market campaigns. Reach out if you’d like personalized help planning your next campaign.

Also, be sure to consider your interests. A writer has the most impact when writing from the heart. Your unique passions and experience will combine to making your product memorable.

A good tip is to ask friends who have read your books how they would describe them in a few words. Make their feedback a key part of developing your brand’s personality. And that’s a perfect segue to where I want to go next.

Listen to readers. Readers will define you. Whether a business lives or dies depends, in large part, on its ability to listen to consumers. Sometimes we’re surprised by the kind of people that respond to our writing. Maybe you were writing a story for a YA audience and it ended up resonating with adults!

That’s great, but the feedback you hear from readers (positive or negative) can provide critical information about how they see your work. Once you know how readers see your work, you can better target your marketing campaigns and even let that information guide your future writing projects.

I once ran an online marketing campaign for a historical romantic suspense novel I’d written called Bride Tree. When analyzing the demographics of the people that responded to my campaign, I realized that the bulk of them were, not surprisingly, women. What I did find noteworthy was the fact that the ad appealed to mostly women between the ages of 18 and 35. Why?

Because the brilliant pop of red on Bride Tree’s cover, and the aura of mystery and intrigue created by the masked face of Queen Marie-Antoinette, appealed to the “exciting” and “sophisticated” personalities in the market. When I am a marketing campaign for Bride Tree, it makes sense for me to make sure that the wording of my ads and the audiences that I try to reach already show a penchant for that kind of product such as women in that age range who shop products lines such as Chanel or Coach.

Finally, don’t stress. While figuring out how you as an author want to be perceived by readers, remember that you are not locked into a “set” brand personality. Just as each of us grows and changes but remains the same person, so your brand can grow and change as you write more books while retaining the same core aspects that make you unique as an author.

When I think of C.S. Lewis for example, the first thought that enters my mind is fantasy or science fiction. However Lewis was also known for his non-fiction titles that shared common themes with his fiction. My point is, while you do want some consistency between books, don’t be afraid to launch out into something new as it will collectively work together to develop your brand’s personality.

It’s important to realize that, while each of your books contributes to your overall brand personality, each book also has a personality of its own that will be determined by its genre, cover, plot etc. . .

For example, Bride Tree was a bit of a maverick. I don’t typically write historical romantic suspense and, as such, Bride Tree has its own personality. Yet it brings in elements that are common to all my books—espionage, political intrigue, and action laced with romance.

Many authors write in multiple genres at least once in their careers. There are several solid benefits to doing so, including diversifying your portfolio, reaching new readers, seeing which personality type resonates best with your target audience, and helping you grow as a writer. Varying up your brand’s personality can also entice readers to move from one series you’ve written to others that might be of a different genre.

Once you’ve identified what you want your overall brand personality to look like, use that as a basis for creating your social media presence, your website and, of course, your books.
Write with confidence,
JPR

JP Robinson gained experience in the marketing field doing promotional work for multi-million dollar medical facilities and non-profit groups over the past decade. He is an international speaker, educator, and prolific author of both fiction and non-fiction.

JP also conducts writing seminars in various parts of the country and heads Logos Publications, LLC, an emerging publishing and book marketing team.

When he isn’t writing or teaching, JP loves spending time with his wonderful wife and children.

Categories
Authorpreneur

Build a Brand 2: It’s all about personality

A few days ago, my wife returned from the grocery store with two different brands of coffee: Lavazza and Caribou. While Lavazza is a household favorite, I immediately claimed the Caribou coffee. Why? Because its cover spoke to me. The rustic image of a caribou in the wild resonated with the part of me that loves being in the woods.

Simply put, a brand’s personality is the way that the products make people feel. As a rule, we tend to like people whose personalities match our own. We do the same with products. And businesses know that.

Companies spend millions of dollars building up their brand’s personality. They know that consumers make decisions to buy, or not to buy, products based on how much the product (and by extension, the brand as a whole) matches their own personality.

While Lavazza and Caribou both produce awesome coffee (at least in my opinion!), I opted for Caribou because it connects with my personality.

So what kind of brand personalities are there, and how can authors leverage this information to their own advantage?

In the ‘90s, a social psychologist, Dr. Jennifer Aaker, identified five dimensions that form the general basis for marketers understanding of brand identity. They are:

  • Excitement (brands that are trendy, and daring like Red Bull)
  • Sincerity (or brands that capitalize on a “family” feel, like Southwest Airlines)
  • Ruggedness (which focuses on a more masculine you-can-handle anything attitude like  . . .  Caribou)
  • Competence (which promotes products that are hardworking and secure like Apple),
  • Sophistication (which focuses on high-end, typically feminine products like Chanel or Dove).

Your readers are consumers. Therefore, they will decide whether or not to “buy your product” (a.k.a read your book) in part based upon the way its personality makes them feel. There’s no way to please everyone but you can leverage this aspect of being authorpreneur to maximize your potential with your target audience.

Here are three steps to give your “brand” of writing its own personality.

Observe: Look at the work of other successful authors in your genre. As a reader, how would you describe their books? Do you see them as being in the exciting category, sincere, rugged, competent, sophisticated or a mix of the above? Don’t just look at the big names out there.

Once you’ve done this, decide what aspects of those books you can incorporate into your own work—things such as cover design and interior formatting. Is there one character featured on the cover or are there many? Are the pages cream or white? These are the things that give a book its feel . . . or personality.

Also consider what makes your book different from other authors in your genre. How can you feature those differences so you’re giving your readers something fresh yet trending?

Plan: Think about who you want to read your book. If you could create the ideal reader, what kind of personality traits would he have? If your ideal reader is a daring, young woman, then you want your book to push excitement and possibly sophistication. If your book is geared toward children of aging parents, for example, you might want to take a “sincere” or “competent” approach.

Think about your image. What we wear often reflects our personality. The same is true of your book.

Your image isn’t just the cover—it’s also the methods you use to connect with readers. To make the most of your social media audience, make sure your online presence reflects your brand’s personality. While Facebook should play a role in your marketing mix, authors that are more “youth-focused” or have a more “exciting” personality might want to build an audience on social media channels that are perceived as being “newer” such as Instagram .

Authors who want to build an audience that favors “honest” or “competent” trends might consider focusing the bulk of their online time on longer blog posts and Facebook groups.   

Keep in mind that, because you’re marketing to readers, your audience will most likely be comfortable reading blog posts, but readers are also visual people who love pictures, videos etc . . .  So present your book’s personality in a way that is likely to resonate with your target market.

For marketing ideas, tips on how to build a brand and more, check out my website: www.JPRobinsonBooks.com

JP Robinson gained experience in the marketing field doing promotional work for multi-million dollar medical facilities and non-profit groups over the past decade. He is an international speaker, educator, and prolific author of both fiction and non-fiction.

JP also conducts writing seminars in various parts of the country and heads Logos Publications, LLC, an emerging publishing and book marketing team.

When he isn’t writing or teaching, JP loves spending time with his wonderful wife and children.

Categories
Writers Chat

Personal Branding & Marketing Best Practices

In this Writers Chat episode, award-winning author and MFA student in Communications: New Media and Marketing Bethany Jett shares tips and best practices on how writers and authors can utilize marketing tips and create a stellar personal brand.

Join us!

Writers Chat is hosted live each Tuesday for an hour starting at 10 AM CT / 11 AM ET on Zoom. Participants mute their audio and video during the filming, then we open up the room for anyone who wishes to participate with our guests. The “After Party” is a fifteen-minutes of off-the-record sharing and conversation.

Additionally, you can grow your network and add to the conversation by joining our Facebook Group.