Your author brand is the identity or personality you show your readers. Whether you’ve purposefully created one or not, you have an author brand, so deliberately creating one that will present your desired message and stand out in your readers’ minds is a good idea. Here are some steps to developing an author brand.
- Determine your audience (your ideal readers). You likely already know this answer, since it’s important to know your audience when writing. Once you know your ideal reader, you know what they like and don’t like and can better appeal to them with your author brand. You can write blog posts that will address these readers interests and concerns, you can market to their interests, and you can create imagery they will like.
- Determine your voice. This is the voice you use on social media, on your website, in your newsletter, and in your blog posts. Are you witty? Funny? Deep? Wise? Whimsical? How do you want to represent yourself?
- Create a tagline and short bio. This should use the voice you’ve established and appeal to your target audience. When writing, think about what you do (your day job, if you have one), your background, your hobbies, your kids, your pets, where you live, any special expertise you have, and so on. The tagline should be just a few words that you use to describe yourself, and you may use it in headers on your website, Facebook, and emails, or as a bio on Twitter. The bio should be a short paragraph that gives more information.
- Take a professional headshot. You’ll use this image everywhere to help establish your brand: your website, social media, Amazon, promotion sites, and so on. Your headshot should represent your voice and should be the same on all sites.
- Create a logo. This can be a publishing logo or just your name stylized in a certain font. You would use this on your website, in your newsletters, on your Facebook page, and on any marketing material.
- Choose the visuals.
- Choose two or three brand colors that you’ll use on your website and your emails. These should portray the feeling of your brand.
- Choose a few images that portray your brand to use on your website. These can be focused on the broad genre you write or on the personality you’re trying to portray.
- Create a well-designed website. Your website should be fast and easy to use, with simple navigation and no typos, and must appeal to your target audience.
What have you done to establish your author brand? We'd love to hear in the comments below! Or check out our tips on building an author platform.
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