HERE’S WHAT NO ONE TELLS YOU ABOUT AUTHOR BRANDING.
If you are an author you might be familiar with the term Author branding. If you are a new author and haven’t heard of this term yet, it will come to your notice sooner or later. When you feel like showing up on social media and market your book, that’s when you need to take a dig into author branding. Personal branding is all about your uniqueness, strengths and, weaknesses so that you can build a business you of leverage. Author branding helps you to decide how you want your readers to perceive you. It gives you recognition in your industry and ensures that your readers return to you. You might wonder what should be done and avoided to get started. Before getting started ask yourself questions like
Who are your target audience
Why will they read your book
How will you stand apart
What value or message are you giving to your readers
These answers will determine your core brand aspects. Moreover, this highlights your professionalism.
Do’s
1. Clarity in Goal Setting
As an author you need to dig deep o find clarity. As competition grows you have to be clear about what you do and why you do and what impact it will have on your readers.
What are you working on? Where do you see yourself as an author at present?
Are you consistent with your work?
All these questions will require a good amount of soul-searching which is enough for an author to set clear goals.
2. Prioritize Your Values
As an author you should look at the bigger picture and calibrate your values
Are you ready to take risk by taking ownership of your writing career? The moment you prepare yourself for your upcoming responsibilities and risks, you are half-way there as mindset plays a significant role in any field to succeed.
Are you capable enough to take responsibility of your finances?
These questions will definitely give you a purpose of pursuing your writing career.
3. Know How to Brand Yourself
If you don’t know your ideal reader is, you’ll never attract them.
Once you’re done finding your ideal audience, next step should be to know your genre. If you write in multiple genres, mention them.
Thirdly, create a visual brand. Your brand should be visually attractive as well. The right usage of colors, fonts, content should be showcased clearly to your audience.
Don’ts
1. Not identifying the correct audience
If you fail to identify your correct audience, your values will never converge with that of your readers. You’ll fail to convey your message to your readers.
Connecting with them is difficult. If people don’t relate to your content, they won’t interact with your brand. As a result, your readers will not return to you.
2. No Understanding of the current market Scenario
As an author, your first step should be to understand the dynamics of your industry.
You should be aware of the trends that are leading to the industry’s growth.
It is even more crucial to keep an eye on your competitors marketing strategies. Compare them with yours but do this only to take inspiration and stand apart.
Be aware of the popular niches, pricing models and bestselling authors content.
3. Cheap quality production
If your packaging is outdates or poor then it’s time to level up. Your reader will no wan to pay money and get a book with poor packaging.
His also includes a well-designed book cover. The way your present yourself tells who you are.
Author branding is a growing and evolving process. Your perspectives change and you grow so don’t hold yourself back from playing around a little with your styles. Lastly, if I were to add my two cents we often make a mistake of writing our book first and expect our audience to come rather than building an audience and then writing a book. If you go by the later, generating sales become easy. However, you can still work towards building your audience through social media platforms and reach your brands to the target audience.
