Tuesday, April 23, 2019

How to Build Your Author Platform - Part 5 - Author Brand

Building a Recognizable Author Brand


As you travel on freeways and roadways, you undoubtedly received lots of brand messages without even realizing it. 

From the ever popular Starbucks logo to the logos of everyday products we consume daily, branding is a key marketing tool. 

Everything from the major sports teams, and popular drinks, to the diapers worn by our babies, have a recognizable brand and often we never give it a thought.

Even without billboards and magazine ads, companies have creative ways of telling you what they want to be known for in their marketing. Big brands spend millions on these clever ways of making you associate their name or product with certain values. Their branding is immediately associated with who they are and what they do.


Self-published Indie authors should be branding themselves in their communications also. All authors have a brand that will be judged by readers, media, and booksellers.

Why? We hear this response often... 

But I’m an Author, Not a Brand...

It is about making a decision regarding how you want to present yourself to your audience. It is important to actively position and present yourself as you wish to be seen.  A memorable brand is a part of making that good first impression, that you will build on for years to come. 

Determining Your Brand Values

It all starts with brand values. What are the things you want readers to turn to you
for? How do you want them to see you? 

This is the foundation of your author brand.  An exercise we use with our authors is having them brainstorm, writing words that will describe their brand values. 

For example, say you know an older female baker who writes cookbooks and wants to be known not only for her recipes and baking skills but also wants to incorporate a friendly, grandma-like approach to her author brand. Her values might be:

Reassuring
Feminine
Friendly
Traditional
Everyone’s favorite grandma


Try this exercise yourself. Think about what 5 words or phrases you want readers to associate with you and your books and consider how you could work those into your communications

If you have a friend or family member who has read your work, run through your list with
them and see if they agree. You might think you are giving off a certain impression but others may see you quite differently.

Do Your Values Match Your Words?

Once you have these core values written down, you need to keep them somewhere
you will see them a lot, i.e. on your whiteboard by your computer. The next time you
write a social media or blog post, check whether it is aligned with the values you want
to be known for. 

For example, blogging or tweeting about a bad date might be fine if you’re a romance author, but maybe not if you write business books.

Are Your Values Reflected in What Readers See? 

It’s not just what you say and how you say it, but also how you present yourself.
Some self-published authors fail because their brand does not look professional
enough—don’t make that mistake. 

You want people to start recognizing you, so you should have the same visual look and feel anywhere a reader might come across you/your books, i.e. your website, social media, business cards, book cover, etc. 

Establishing congruity is essential when considering your author branding. This means that you will want to be consistent in your colors and fonts and your logo will reflect what your topic matter is about. If your book is teaching confident public speaking for instance, you would not use a cartoonish childish logo. 

Your Author Brand in Action

If we take another look at our grandmotherly cookbook author, we can see how she
might put all these things together to give readers a really good idea of what she is
about and what we can expect from her brand.

Content: her blog and social media, of course, have a lot of recipes and friendly
advice for readers who have baking problems, but also other domestic hobbies,
such as gardening, as well as photos of her with her grandchildren, etc.

Colors: She tends to use pretty, soft, feminine pastel colors across her website
and social media, and she often wears these colors in her author photos too.

Fonts: The fonts used on her book covers, recipe videos, social media
graphics, etc. are traditional, pretty, and feminine.


Think seriously about how you want to be seen as an author. Your brand matters and
it should be something that you set for yourself.

All things considered, welcome to the world of an...

Authorpreneur!


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