If you're in business on the internet—whether you're marketing books, tee shirts on shopify, or widgets of some sort—branding is of extreme importance.
WHAT IS BRANDING
Branding is telling the world who you are and what you have to offer.
A more formal definition is that branding is the process of creating a distinct identity for your business and/or product in the mind of consumers, specifically, those consumers who are your target audience.
At its basic level, branding is created by a company's logo or a product's image, the use of a consistent visual design, your goal or mission statement as to what you're doing or selling and why, and the style of the way you communicate to your consumers.
AUTHORS & OTHER ARTISTS NEED BRANDING
If your an author or other artist, the above translates into your name, your photograph rather than a logo although some authors are now creating a logo to represent what they offer in books, your books—cover art, voice, genre, etc.—your website, blog, and social media pages, your author tagline and/or credit line.
For example, my tagline is "Writing Romance—One Sexy Book at a Time" and my credit line is NY Times and USA Today Bestselling Author. My tagline tells readers that they're getting a Romance with sexy scenes. If I could add extra words, I'd use One Man/One Woman to indicate that this is sexy traditional romance, but that would make the tagline way too long.
8 WAYS TO BUILD NAME RECOGNITION
1. Use your "real" name meaning the name under which you wish to do business for everything the public sees, not something cute like I did back in 2005 when I started this blog and named it SlingWords.
2. Write compelling biographies for every website you join if you're joining because of your business. If you're an author, Amazon Central, BookBub, Draft2Digital, all the social media sites to which you belong, etc. Make your biograph interesting. Shake it up and change it at least once a year. (I'm doing that now.)
3. Write reviews for books, products, and other things you use. You're a writer, so write reviews. It's time well invested because it hones skills. Make it a policy not to leave bad reviews because you're doing this for professional reasons. You want positive name recognition so if you can't say something nice, then say nothing at all.
4. Add your URLs, but not all of them, to your signature file for emails and forums, and always follow the group rules.
5. Choose one major social media you'll work. No one can do them all and do them well. Make a plan on what you'll post and when. Don't post the same message to every webpage.
7. Blog often on your own blog, group blogs, and guest blog when you have the time. Make it more than a "buy my book" blog post.
8. Do newsletter swaps with other authors so you reach a different audience.
TAKEAWAY TRUTH
In marketing, it's known that a name must be read/seen/heard at least 9 times before someone remembers it. Even if your promotion budget is zero, you can still create name recognition by using the targeted approach above.
Excellent advice!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Liz.
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