By Ronald Gabriel
Everybody has a brand. When you say you are a ‘coffee lover’ or an ‘avid reader’, you are establishing traits that everyone around you associates with your brand.
Similarly, your author brand is how people identify you as an author. It is everything; from your requirements, and standards, to your voice, and opinions. Your brand identity is the story you share with your audience to engage with them. It’s what makes your work stand out from the thousands of others out there who are vying for attention.
If you are trying to set up your author brand then you are in the right place. You have less than 7 seconds to make a first impression to gain an edge over your competitors.
Here are 5 proven tips to help you do just that.
1. Define your Niche
Your niche is the backbone of your brand.
The proverb — jack of all trades and master of none, fits perfectly in this scenario. You cannot produce well-written material about foreign topics. Identifying your expertise makes it easier for you to write, and define a target audience for your work.
This factor is iterated in every article you will read about author branding, and rightly so. Your niche presents your unique selling point. It cuts all the clutter out of your brand in a way that your audience can connect with your strengths.
Make a mark on your readers by putting your best foot forward through your expertise to make your brand memorable.
2. Understand the Target Audience
Knowing your target audience is the next step towards building a unique author brand. Try your best to figure out who will align best with your material. In branding lingo, these are called ‘customer personas’. As a brand, you need to align your brand to cater to the expectations of your targeted audience.
Doing this would help you create a more customer-centric online presence. Also, keep in mind that this can take up some time and effort but will be worth the engagement. The results include precise information and data that can help you nurture your audience.
When you give the audience what they want, you will automatically weed out the competitors.
3. Carve an Aesthetic Identity
When it comes to your brand identity, visual aesthetics are an important differentiating factor. A few components include the logo, colour palette, typeface, visual cues, and graphics of your brand.
From 55 Branding Statistics to Know for 2021 via Renderforest
Colour psychology is the real deal. Choosing signature colours helps demarcate your brand from your competitors by eliciting various sentiments. What’s more, incorporating consistent colour palettes can increase brand awareness by 80%.
You should opt for typefaces and graphics that are coherent with your brand message. These tie in your personal objectives as an author with the desires of your readers.
4. Establish credibility
People like to come back to authors who they can trust or are familiar with. More than 68% of readers think transparency is the most attractive quality in a brand.
If you’re wondering how one gets strangers to believe in your brand, creating a portfolio can be a great start. Create no code websites through website builders such as Webflow quite easily through their online guides. These websites become the singular destinations that display your best work.
Engage truthfully, be willing to answer questions, and portray the human behind the brand through well-curated narratives. After all, your audience will gauge your credibility through your actions and mission statements. Having a credible author brand will help you create a loyal reader base that will always have faith in your work.
5. Focus on consistency
Consistency is a proven way to outshine all your competitors. Approximately 60% of millennials expect consistency across different platforms from their brands.
Brand consistency can be observed when you post consistent content and information on all fronts. It ensures instant recognition and accumulates positive association with your brand.
Moreover, you can strengthen your brand identity by posting content about your work and your niche consistently on your social media channels. Maintaining consistency also ensures that your audience associates your brand with certain traits, which would definitely differentiate you from the rest.
Wrapping up
At the end of the day, it all comes down to what value your brand can provide your customer. It can be difficult to sift through the clutter and find the strategies that will really work for your brand. If you feel like you’re getting lost in the crowd, you can still use these strategies to improve your author brand.
The key to making your brand stand out is to create content that is unique and that resonates with your audience. Make sure that you’re always creating content that is relevant to your audience and that you’re working to provide real value to your readers.
Ronald Gabriel is the Assistant editor at Commerce Mentors. He has over 8 years of experience in writing about eCommerce, Retail, Marketing, and Technology. He is also a numbers guy who enjoys his Crossword and Sudoku. When not editing or writing, he can be found watching reruns of Anime and sketching some characters of his own.
