June 7, 2011 Marketing yourself No Comments

by Diane Holmes, Marketing-Zone: Marketing Yourself and Your Book

This is the fourth in a series on Author Branding. Previous articles include:
1. Author Branding vs. an Army of Writers
2. The Author’s Branding Manifesto
3. The Gleam in Your Author Brand (Brand Building Technique #1)

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The branding, marketing, and blogging world is all atwitter with the idea of storytelling as a way of communicating brand. This isn’t a new idea.

Look at non-fiction books. Many of these authors have personal stories that directly led to the creation of the content in that book. The passion for the topic has a personal meaning to the author and a place in his or her life-narrative.

That’s story, my friend!

Fiction writers, on the other hand, don’t usually have the same luxury of “my personal story” led to “this story about solving crimes in a New England town.”

What goes into Your Personal Story… if you don’t have one?

We’re used to a “Story that Sells” coming from the facts of someone’s life, the WHAT HAPPENED. But there are some other ways of looking at story that may be even more helpful.

Brand Building Technique #2:Your Story Is More Than Events and Facts

Check out these alternative ways to uncover your story. Click the links for great resources.

• Why you do what you do?
• Who are you AS you do what you do?
• How to you approach and experience what you do? What would your readers enjoy being told about the “thing” that brings you together (your writing)?
• How does your story relate to something your readers know and care about? What do you share in common? (Click here to read a great example of this under the header of “welcome”)
• How do you influence and change lives?
• What dreams and hardships do you explore or share in common with your reader?

In your writing and your life, there is something that speaks to you, and that same thing speaks to your reader. Make that your story.

It already brings you together. Name it. Tell it. Be it.

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Diane writes two columns for Freelance-Zone: Fiction-Zone: Leaps in Fiction Mastery and Marketing-Zone:Marketing-Zone: Marketing Yourself and Your Book.

She’s the Founder and Chief Alchemist of Pitch University – “Learn to pitch your book from the AGENTS and EDITORS who make their living at it. Learn. Pitch. Sell.”

by Diane Holmes, Marketing Yourself and Your Book

Imagine that a reader sees your new book at the bookstore.  Instantly, there’s a gleam in her eye. 

She’ll reach for your latest book, but in the fraction of a second before she can reach out, extend her arm, press her fingers against the cover, there is just the gleam.  That gleam is your brand.

(If you don’t write books, just substitute your type of writing.)

The beauty of thinking about your brand in this way is that it’s obvious that your brand is not one book.  Instead, it’s about a recognition in the reader’s mind, an excitement and delight and opinion about you as an author.

It may be based solely on the previous books you’ve written.  Or it may also include information collected about other “aspects of you.” But whatever the specific details, it has created what Kathryn Lorenzen, Creativity Coach, calls a “Hell, yes!” in the reader’s mind. 

Before the reader can process the thought, “Hey, I’d like to find out more about that book,” her brain made the leap to, “Hell, yes, want that, awesome.”  Or some set of concepts that equaled an immediate gleam in her eye and movement of her hand toward the book.

That’s what you want, right?  Readers whose immediate response is,”I”m so lucky!” because they’ve seen that your next book is out

Brand Building Technique #1:Your Book’s Delight Factor

Step #1:  You are standing in front of the latest book by your favorite author.  There’s a gleam in your eye.  Why?

Run through this exercise for several authors you love.  Get a feel for how you respond to different aspects and different authors with excitement.  Try fiction and non-fiction authors. You get that “Hell, yes,” but for very different reasons.

Step #2: Your reader is standing in front of your book, gleam in her eye, hand extended.  STOP.  Freeze that moment.

A) What is inside your book that has triggered that gleam?  What are the reader’s expectations that have contributed to the gleam? Just make your best guesses and make a list.

B) Compare that list to what captured your imagination about the project and what kept you excited as you wrote the book.  There should be some differences.  The point of doing this step is to make sure you’re not just capturing what appeals to you.

C) Do this exercise for the book you’re currently writing, your previously published books, and any unpublished books you hope will be part of your career.

If you write widely, you’ll want to do a separate round for each project.  But if your books are similar in topic, tone, and sensibility, you can probably capture the Delight Factor by grouping them.

Did you find the gleam?  We’ll build on this exercise next tine. Remember, Brand can be way more than your book, more than all your books combined.

But this is a great starting place.  So start.  Even if an author brand seems a foreign and dubious topic, you have to admit you want that gleam   You know you do.

This is the third in a series on Author Branding.  Previous articles include:
#1 Author Branding vs. an Army of Writers
#2 The Author’s Branding Manifesto

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Diane writes two columns for Freelance-Zone: Fiction-Zone: Leaps in Fiction Mastery and Marketing-Zone: Marketing-Zone: Marketing Yourself and Your Book.

She’s the Founder and Chief Alchemist of Pitch University – “Learn to pitch your book from the AGENTS and EDITORS who make their living at it.  Learn.  Pitch.  Sell.”

by Diane Holmes

Last we spoke on Author Branding, the conversation included Zombies and we hashed over whether “brand” is actually a curse word in disguise.

Brand ourselves?  (All together now….)  Like products?!  You mean come up with a way to sum up our uniqueness?

Picture by David Armano

And yet if I ask you if all writers are alike and can all write the same thing,  there’s not a writer reading this column who won’t argue that we’re each original, have individual voices, and are not in any way interchangeable.  (I think there’s a marketing word for pointing out unique qualities…. )

Wait.  I’m pausing to see if anyone saying, “Oh noes, I’m not original at all.  I strive to be a generic author, and I’m hoping that if another writer comes along, they’ll cast me aside because (all together now), it’s not like I bring anything unique to the table.”

Crickets.  (And they’re snickering.)

A Class On Branding Just for U

Today, I want to share Dan Amano’s  video on the topic of people and brands.  He founded Brand U.0 (“you point zero”), and I have a marketing crush on him.

This talk, given at the Chicago New Media Summit in 2008, is the best 20 minutes you’ll ever spend on building a personal brand.

First minute and a half showing the difference between a logo and a brand. J And just gets better and better!

Go watch RIGHT NOW. Then come back here.

Bottom Line Takeaway:

• Brand is not the product.
• Having a brand does not make you a product, because brand is about your gut.
• There’s a brand heaven and a brand hell based on how  other people experience your brand. Your brand and influence exists whether you care or not.
• Online, personal brands happen in an organic way, celebrating niches.
• You know you’re a web-lebrity if you have an action figure in your own image.
• David has 5 aspects of building a personal brand.  My favorite is “Be Remarkable.” That is the essence of every writer I know. we have remarkable things to say.  We arrived remarkable, and we have a remarkable dream that doubles as a career.  Pretty darn… remarkable.
• People who don’t create a personal brand still have them. They just don’t control them.

The Author’s Branding Manifesto

So, here’s what I want you to take away from this column on Author Branding.

1. Writers create meaning.
2. Branding creates meaning.
3. This is your chance to bring meaning to your personal brand (how others see you), instead of letting someone else do it.
4. It’s a creative act.
5. It’s not our enemy or a curse.  It’s our finest work brought to life.
6. And it’s the most creative thing we’ll ever do for our careers.

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Note: In the video, David mentions presentations on Slide Share.  You can find them here.

This is the second in a series on Author Branding.  Previous articles include:

#1 Author Branding vs. an Army of Writers

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Diane writes two columns for Freelance-Zone:

• Fiction-Zone: Leaps in Fiction Mastery and
• Marketing-Zone: Marketing-Zone: Marketing Yourself and Your Book. She’s the Founder and Chief Alchemist of Pitch University – “Learn to pitch your book from the AGENTS and EDITORS who make their living at it.  Learn.  Pitch.  Sell.”