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Author branding hacks

Simple Ways To Build Authenticity and Credibility Around Your Author Brand

by Jane Anne August 17, 2022

written by Jane Anne

Properly setting up your author brand on social media doesn’t make your branding journey entirely complete.

Yes, it is an excellent idea to pitch your tent on the home front of a social media platform and have it professionally organized to attract your target audience and grow your reader base.

Still, it isn’t enough to just pack up and go on a beach cruise because you’ve set up your author’s page on social media. It takes a lot more than a beautiful bio, an enticing portfolio, and a nice logo to build authenticity and credibility around your author brand.

Expect members of your family, friends, and close associates who’ll stick around your social media pages, people generally will not waste their time on a brand that isn’t authentic and credible enough to entice and captivate their attention, nor will they stick around for a dormant brand.

Read Author Branding Mistakes New Writers Make On Social Media

Growing your author brand on social media takes a lot of work, consistency, courage, determination, and frankly a heavy dose of strategy to pull off (as the experts will say) but you can still pull off an 8/10 pass mark on your author brand if you apply the simple practices I’ll share in the post.

Here are 5 simple ways to build authenticity and credibility around your author’s brand on social media.

Cultivate the habit of showing up on social media

In every social media playbook there is and ever will be, this is one of the golden rules there is to excelling at anything on social media.

Showing up is a rule of thumb on social media because it is a fast-paced world and there are millions of people on social media striving to break through the elite space like you are.

Carving out a space for your brand on social media isn’t enough, you have to show up and interact with your growing community.

There is no reality where you grow plants without watering them, so also there’s no magic to growing your authenticity and credibility on social media without showing up to drive its growth.

Does this mean you’ll have to be present every single day on social media?

The simple answer is, that you don’t. Rather what you should do is have a social media schedule, which is basically your on and off days on social media. This way you get to also have a life and do invest more time in what matters – writing your book, or anything else you’ve planned to do.

Read Best Practices To Adopt When Setting Up Your Author Brand On Social Media

Cultivate the habit of talking about your author’s brand

Talking about your author’s brand on social media is a great way to build authenticity and credibility. It gives your audience a clear picture of what your author brand represents, what it hopes to achieve, how your readers play a role, what you’re offering, and what you expect in return.

An example: My author brand on social media portrays a writer whose main genre is romance and erotica. My central message is to write heartwarming, suspenseful, steamy, and sensual romance and erotic stories which my readers can enjoy and relate with.

Also, as an author, I try to infuse unconventionality into my storyline. This way I break through the norms of the expected and dive into the unexpected, which gives an exciting edge to my stories.

Talking about my brand through my posts, reels, collaborations, conversations, and my social media bio, has helped me build a credible and authentic name for my growing brand as a romance and erotic author.

Don’t be ashamed to talk about your author brand at every chance you get. Don’t think your audience will figure it out on their own. They won’t, at least not all of them.

As a budding author, learn to crawl out of your shell and talk about your author brand in an engaging way on social media.

Read Reasons Why Author Branding is Important For Aspiring Authors

Cultivate the habit of sharing your work on social media

To buttress my earlier point, you cannot just set up a page on social media and glide into the sunset without a backward glance.

As enticing as that feels, you can’t win doing that.

You may feel consumed by a myriad of emotions when you think about showing up to share your work on social media. I know, because I felt the same way too when I decided to pitch my tent on social media officially.

I was overwhelmed by what people will think of me as an erotic author, but I took it as a challenge to prove to myself that I’ll not be deterred by naysayers, rather I’ll learn from my experiences as I forged ahead.

That determination has done more good than harm to my growth on social media. My brand speaks for itself; my published and unpublished work speaks even louder.

You don’t have to have written a 100k-word novel to feel confident enough to share your work on social media. You don’t need to have accolades first before showing up.

To gain credibility and build authenticity with your author brand on social media, you’ll have to build a base for it through sharing your works on social media.

There’s no accolade bigger than sharing a piece you believe in with your growing community. It is the most authentic way to gain trust/build a loyal community on social media.

Read Grow Your Author Brand Through Collaborations As An Aspiring Author

Cultivate the habit of interacting with your community

Pitching your tent on social media means you’ve accepted to become a chatterbox with your community. Not literally, but you get the point.

Simply posting content on your page and abandoning it won’t help. You need to carve out time for interaction with your community. Social media experts say interacting with your community twenty minutes before and after posting gives your content the leverage it needs to get noticed.

That aside, it shows positive sportsmanship, a good vibe, and team spirit which shows your account is alive and active.

Having an active account gives your social media page all the credibility it needs. When your posts are recent, your comments are meaningful, your contents are entertaining & valuable, your page is alive and thriving, and it reeks of authenticity and credibility to every individual who comes across your page.

Read Reasons Why Networking is Important To Grow Your Author Brand

Cultivate the habit of originality

Being original with your author brand is and will always be your best bet to build authenticity and credibility on social media. When you strive for originality with your brand, it becomes tailored to you alone.

Originality with your author brand ensures that you’re unmistakably identified in the crowd. It helps you stand out from the majority, draws your ideal audience to you, and opens the door to endless possibilities.

However, it might not be an easy feat to pull off because there are several other contents similar to yours. This doesn’t make it impossible; because the best way to portray originality is to do what you know how to do best.

Be yourself with a little tweak to give you an edge and your brand, all the difference it needs to stand out.

Endnotes:

Building authenticity and credibility around your author brand is of great importance to you as a budding writer because it sets the pace for your growth, recognition, and excellence on social media.

You cannot suddenly become a force with your author brand if you begin at the grassroots. Waiting until you’ve become a prominent author to pitch your tent on social media is running a fool’s errand because, without fertile soil, the seedling cannot sprout.

Ensure you take notes on the 5 simple ways to build authenticity and credibility with your author brand on social media because it’ll help make or break your brand on social media.

Did you find this post educating? Use the comment box below to drop your thoughts on this post.

August 17, 2022 0 comment

Author Branding Social Media

Best Practices To Adopt When Setting Up Your Author Brand On Social Media

by Jane Anne August 10, 2022

written by Jane Anne

In this sequel to my previous post on author branding mistakes new writers make on social media, I will enlighten you on the best practices to adopt when setting up your author brand on social media.

Before jumping in to set up your author brand on social media, there are a few things about social media author branding you should know about.

Visibility

Your author’s brand needs to be visually appealing. I’m talking colors, logos, fonts, format, style, website, and content.

Originality

Your author’s brand needs to be unique to you alone. I’m talking about content tone, voice, type of content, etc.

Personality

Your author’s brand needs to be an extension of who you are and what you do. It should convey things you believe in, what you are excited about, why you do what you do, your control message, and your branding theme.

Connectivity

Your author’s brand needs to have a focused target audience or a set of target audiences that you want to connect with.

Strategy

This involves careful planning on how to project your brand the right way, reach your target audience, showcase your brand, spread your message, and establish yourself as an authority in your given niche or niches.

Read: Top 10 reasons why networking is important to grow your authors brand

Setting up your author brand on social media as a budding creative needn’t become a deal breaker, where you begin to ponder and chew your nails on how to get it right or try your best to ensure perfection with your channel of choice when in truth all you have to do is to experiment as you go.

No one totally gets it right the first time, because as an author you keep learning, growing, and evolving until you’ve become confident and experienced which also reflects in your branding journey as you go.

So, I advise you to take it one step at a time until you’ve found what works for you if you’re building your author brand alone.

However, it is a different ball game if you decide to hire a social media author branding expert to do the work for you. Either way, the truth is you’ve decided to build your author’s brand on social media, which is a bold step to take as a budding author.

Read: Grow your author brand through collaborations as an aspiring author

Another thing to understand before setting up your brand on social media is that social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, and a host of others have patterns of content creation unique to them, and you should carefully evaluate them before jumping on the social trains.

This is because you don’t want to be caught hanging by a thread with your sanity on the line. Besides, why choose a platform that will demand more than you can give when there are others you can excel at?

Examples of some social media platforms are as follows:

TikTok is heavy on video content creation
Instagram has a blend of pictures, posts formats & video content creation
Twitter is heavy on short, captivating post tweets or interesting post threads
Facebook is heavy on picture and post formats, plus a splash of video content.
LinkedIn is heavy on picture and post formats
Pinterest is heavy on picture pins & idea pins
Youtube is heavy on videos content creation

With this in mind, it becomes easier to pick and choose the platforms that resonate well with your author branding and go for a handful you can properly manage. I’ll advise you to pick three for a start and grow from there.

Read: 6 Reasons why aspiring authors should embrace author branding

The real question is, how do you set your author’s brand on social media as a newbie writer/author? What do you need to do and how do you do it properly?

Well, you’re in luck because I have drafted 6 best practices to adopt when setting up your author brand on social media.

Carry Out a Social Media Audit

One of the best things to do before setting up your brand on social media is to carry out a social media audit. This is simply a way for you to vet the platforms I listed above to determine which combinations will suit your brand the most.

As a newbie author, you must begin your author branding on platforms you can handle easily, platforms you understand well, and platforms that won’t make you go crazy trying to keep up with trends.

As an author myself, I use Pinterest to highlight some of my books, short stories, and excerpts and share a link to my youtube channel. I use my Youtube channel to showcase my book trailers, book mail, video teasers, and vlog.

Although my major social media of focus is Twitter & Instagram. I use these two as a support system to push separate areas of my author’s brand.

For my blog, I’m focusing my energy on Instagram for visibility, Youtube for long-form video content sharing, and Pinterest for reach.

With this, you can see how I have carefully positioned and set up my author brand on these social media platforms because it syncs well with my brand.

Establish Your Content Pillars

Establishing your content pillars for your social media platforms is very important because you don’t want to start building your author’s brand without a clear message or theme in mind.

A useful tip is to carve out your content pillars from your brand’s message. Whatever your brand stands for should form a major part of your content pillars on social media so you can align your brand’s aspiration with your content on social media.

My author brand is centered around writing heartwarming, suspense-filled, steamy romance and erotic stories with heavy inference on friendship, family, and love because I believe with these three combos, life gets easier, more enjoyable, and more fun, despite what my characters will be dragged through.

For my blogging brand, I chose to center my content pillars around helping budding authors understand the writing process, the basics of writing, tips and hacks to help them grow as budding authors, and preaching self-care.

Your content pillars will inform what your content format should look like and how best to pass your message across on your social platforms; so, take time to think about your brand’s central message, and draft your content pillars from there.

Decide on Your Content Format

Deciding on what content format to choose is highly dependent on what type of content you want to distribute, your social media platform of choice, and your level of creative skill.

One of the best and easiest social media content creation tools out there is Canva. It has beautiful templates with premade designs you can edit and repurpose for your social media page.

The only downside so far is, that you have to manually create your own youtube videos because their templates for long-form videos are few. I’m guessing that the idea behind that is because Youtube is more of a face-time, video content creation platform.

This was a problem for me because I’m camera shy, but I eventually found other ways to create my youtube videos that are super easy and exciting too.

Youtube videos aside, Canva will help you create some beautiful, eye-catching, templates in whatever format you choose (videos, reels, tweets, carousels, single posts, infographics, picture posts, etc.)

Also, if you decide to go with a mix of formats, like reels, posts, carousels & videos for Instagram, you’ll have to draw up a page content format for your post so it doesn’t come off as tacky when you publish it without a sequence.

Set Up Your Professional Author Profiles

One of the gravest mistakes you can make is setting up an author’s brand without a professional profile. I mean no logo, photo, bio, link-in-bio, post, or portfolio. You are simply setting up your author brand for epic failure.

Ensure you have everything to make your profile stand out from your crowd, and ensure to make it uniform across your social trail. This will help your brand’s visibility on social media and help it become easily recognizable and attributable to you.

Set up a Social Media Schedule For Content Creation

Consistency is a key factor when setting up your author brand on social media. You cannot stick your neck out the first day and retreat into your shell the following day.

One of the best ways to help maintain consistency as a budding author/writer building a brand on social media is to set up a social media schedule.

Setting up a personal schedule helps you prepare a calendar of content ideas for a period and how you intend to share them on your social media platforms. This is super helpful for budding creatives because it gives you room to brainstorm content ideas, draft these ideas early on, and arrange them in an orderly fashion ready for posting.

You could draft an entire month’s worth of content, and save it for scheduling on social media which saves you time and energy and frees you from the shackles of content creation burnout in the short run.

It will also save you the stress of always thinking about what to post.

Plan and Schedule Your Posts

Lastly, one of the best practices you can adopt as a budding creative is planning and scheduling your weekly post on social media.

The fact that you have made a month’s worth of content doesn’t mean it will post itself. You must draft a content plan for your page, have a visual board of how your content should appear on your social media pages, and plan accordingly.

You can also repurpose your content for better visibility, understanding, and engagement.

After planning your post patterns, formats, and style, you can schedule a week’s work of social media posts using the following apps.

Canva In-app scheduler
Plannable
Post Planner

Endnotes

Adopting these best practices when setting up your author brand on social media will ensure a seamless and stress-free transition for you. Some of the mistakes new writers make on social media steam from a lack of awareness, fear, uncertainties, and doubts about their capabilities.

There is only one thing you should note. Building your author’s brand will take a lot of time, effort, and consistency to get off the ground as a budding creative. It is not for you to give up on your first two or five tries. No, Building your brand should be done with long-term progress in mind.

Best of luck with your author brand, awesome creative.

Did you find this post useful? Kindly leave a comment below.

August 10, 2022 0 comment

Author Branding Social Media

Author Branding Mistakes New Writers Make on Social Media That Hurts Your Brand Growth

by Jane Anne July 8, 2022

written by Jane Anne

There are certain author branding mistakes new writers make on social media that hurt your brand growth in the long run.

An author’s brand is an extension of yourself as a writer that projects your message, originality, and authenticity to your audience.

It tells a lot about you, your works, your creative perspective with your art, and identifiable elements that are only attributable to you.

Your brand speaks loudly about Why you do what you do and What you are most passionate about.

As a writer, having an active brand on social media is well worth the effort because that’s how you turn fans into followers, and followers into readers.

Investing time into building your author’s brand on social media is important because it speaks for you even in absentia and informs your audience Who you are without you saying a word.

Your author’s brand is distinguishable by its colors, voice, persona, webpage, content, genre, story format, theme, fonts, style, etc. representing your originality and authenticity in your space.

Proper branding breeds recognition, credibility, and acceptability, on social media and opens the portal of opportunities in form of collaborations in diverse projects which can only happen if your author’s brand is positioned for it.

To gain recognition in your craft on social media you have to project yourself as an authority even as a beginner.

Read: Grow your author brand through collaborations as an aspiring author

Unfortunately, a lot of new writers fail woefully at understanding the game behind building a proper author’s brand for themselves on social media.

Some writers even feel nonchalant about making the effort to stand out from the crowd or be in the crowd, to begin with, which will inadvertently hurt their growth as budding writers and aspiring authors.

Deciding to become a writer is not enough in itself. There are other important things required of you to prove that you’re ready to follow through with your decision and give it your best shot.

One such thing is building your author’s brand on social media and growing a network around your craft.

Others include writing in itself, consistency, commitment, personal development, research, community building, and many more.

Read: Top 10 reasons why networking is important to grow your authors brand

One of the best places to showcase your brand is on social media and its affiliate networks which is a suitable match for your brand.

However, a lot of new writers do not understand or fully utilize their chosen platforms, making it harder to grow as a new writer which is devastating and frustrating to witness.

In this post, I will share 5 Author Branding Mistakes new writers make on social media that hurts their brand growth, with tips to fix/avoid these mistakes.

Social Media Author Branding Mistake #1: Having No Social Media Presence

This mistake is at the top of the list because having no social media presence is like living in the jungle as a writer and expecting someone to stumble across your work and take interest in it.

Stop daydreaming and snap out of it because it’s not happening.

Picking out a suitable platform for your chosen niche can be a hectic chore, but hiding away from the world entirely is not the solution.

Allowing fear, uncertainties, phobia, and sob stories about breaking out on social media to stop you is not enough to shelve your precious gift while pining away in a corner hoping for a miracle when you did absolutely nothing to attract it.

If you crave success, progress, and growth as a newbie writer and aspiring author, you will have to face your fears about social media and go for it.

Heck, you may not even come across this post to help you out.

How To Fix This Mistake:

Prepare your mind to accept the change and possibilities social media presents.
Ensure you take out time to evaluate the platforms that you wish to sign up for and grow your brand with.
Plan your growth and content strategy on these platforms.
Be willing to embrace the process and recognition on social media.

Social Media Author Branding Mistake #2: Having No Content On Social Media

I do not know which one hurts the most. That you aren’t on social media, or you abandoned your page and expect it to magically grow on its own.

My question is, how did you expect it to flourish or make an impact where there is nothing there to see, to begin with? What message did you intend to pass through a blank page?

What brand did you expect people to see other than unseriousness and inconsistency?

Not to offend or hurt you, but I’m pained when I take a genuine interest in reaching out to people who showed interest in my work, only to get to their pages and find it blank.

I’m unhappy because there could be so much potential hidden behind those blank pages, and no one gets to witness it.

You are reading this post because I put my blog out there, and you found my content relatable. Having no content on your social media page is as good as having no social media account in the first place.

How to Fix this Mistake:

Talk to a brand strategist or a social media strategist who can give help you out if you’re coming up blank with ideas for your page.
Take out time to map out your content pillars or pillar depending on what you eventually decide to make your page about.
Ensure your contents are in line with your brand message.

If your content pillar is heartwarming love stories, advocating for mental health, or dealing with debts and financial freedom, ensure that your contents reflect that central message.

Also, your content pillars can reflect your genre or genres of choice, so it blends with your authored books and the brand’s central message.

Author Branding Mistakes #3: Having Content Unrelated To Your Authors Brand

Imagine visiting a social media page that says it advocates for mental health, only to find out that it has no post relating to its advocacy, or links to pages relating to advocacy.

How will you feel? Disappointed I guess; or pissed that you didn’t get what you want out of the page; or angry that you were tricked.

Whichever feelings suffice, will lead to one action. Walking away unsatisfied.

As a newbie writer, you will do yourself more harm when you pose as a writer but have no content relating to your craft on your social media pages. Nobody will take you seriously.

Maybe a few families, friends, and acquaintances, but your ideal audience will never show up to identify with you on a page like that.

When you post content unrelated to your craft, you will only attract the audience that finds your content pleasing, not your ideal audience which will hurt your growth as a writer.

Having a dual personality online is one thing, but mixing both personalities on one page is catastrophic unless they somehow complement each other.

Asides from this, it is harmful to blend two personalities into one when they are unrelated to each.

How to Fix this Mistake:

Separate dual personalities between two accounts.
Use the platform that represents your writing brand only for content associated with it and your content pillars.
Avoid the urge to post everything that catches your fancy unless it falls in line with your content pillars.

Author Branding Mistake #4: Having A Private Social Media With No Content

This causes me to have a pounding migraine and a meltdown when I come across pages that are not only private but have no content. It is worse when there is no content, no bio, no link in their bio, no portfolio, nothing.

Just a blank, humorless, and unappealing page that simply states – Writer/Storyteller.

What story are you telling exactly? What is your page’s appeal that is inviting me to stay, encourage and grow with you as your ideal audience?

How do you expect to show credibility, authenticity, and authority with a blank page on social media? How?

As a new writer, you have no business with private social media pages or setting your posts to be viewed only by a closed circle. It doesn’t help to sequester yourself off the world like that.

Your personal accounts can be private, but your creator accounts should be made public, with relatable content, a sound bio, a portfolio, and a link in your bio to show off other parts of your brand.

You have to position your brand for acceptability before growth can occur.

How to Fix This Mistake:

Change your creator account settings to public, and ensure it is complete with a sound bio and relatable content.
If your account must be private, ensure it has a sound bio telling your ideal audience about your page. Also, please ensure it has content in it.

Author Branding Mistakes #5: Lacking Consistency/Commitment

As a newbie writer/aspiring author, consistency is the key ingredient that will make or break your writing career.

Lack of consistency or commitment to building your author’s brand from the ground up or acting nonchalantly towards growing your brand is the cause of all the other mistakes listed above.

You cannot start something and not finish it – In the words of Kelvin Hart.

You cannot aspire for growth and not work through the process. You cannot want something so badly, and not go get it. In essence, you cannot wish for your author’s brand to grow without doing the work.

Tenacity, consistency, and commitment are the first things you need to be dogged about building your brand on social media.

With excellent brand visibility, the trickle of your ideal audience will begin in earnest, followed by steady upward growth, which brings great opportunities for you as a newbie writer.

How to Fix this Mistake:

To avoid being swamped and overwhelmed, devise a content plan.
Pick days to show up and be active on your social media page. Interacting and communicating with others in your genre or niche of choice.
Batch create your content ahead of every week, and store them in folders until you need them.
Have a template designed and ready. This allows for ease in design, content consistency, and originality.

Endnotes:

It is with a heart full of love and appeals to you that I ask you to carry out a page audit on your social media pages, rebrand your page, and do things the right way if you’re a victim of one or more of the mistakes listed above.

Social media is a world filled with endless possibilities. An interconnected world of creatives like yourself who can add value to your craft, and support your creative art, if only you give it a shot by putting yourself out there.

Hiding away from social media means losing out on the best parts of your journey as a new writer because there is so much to learn from interacting with people who walk in your shoes and know exactly where it pinches.

You do not have to be afraid to put yourself out there. Do it with style, class, charisma, and the confidence of one who knows what she wants.

Did your find this post useful? Talk to me in the comment section below

July 8, 2022 0 comment

Author Branding

Grow Your Author Brand Through Collaborations As A New Writer

by Jane Anne March 14, 2022

written by Jane Anne

Every aspiring author aspires to become a published author and expand their author brand far beyond national waters. The drive to grow in leaps in and bounds keeps the fire burning in the hearts of every creative, same as you.

Creating a brand for yourself as an author is important because it will provide the visibility boost needed to get discovered by others – readers, authors, publishers, and creatives alike.

Building progress as an aspiring author and gaining momentum in your space can be propelled through collaborations with others in the same niche as you or outside your niche.

This happens organically because it entails leveraging each other’s platforms and presenting yourself to them.

Asides from getting it right from the start as an aspiring creative and implementing the level-up strategy to gain momentum, understanding the need to create positive and engaging connections around your brand are the beginning of preparing yourself for collaborations and connections with others.

This could come naturally when others seek you out to collaborate with you on something or you take the bold steps towards approaching those whom you would respect and would want to be associated with their brand as well as have them associate with yours.

It’s a mutual relationship and also a win-win situation because it’s a way for your collaborator to widen their audience reach as well as you. It could happen in several ways, in different patterns, on various platforms, and with any caliber of person or persons.

Collaborating with others could be in form of a group project, a personal conversation, a co-host, a program, a post, a story, a write-up, a shout-out, a review, an interview, cross-promotion of literary works, co-authorship, email recommendations, a retweet, a re-post, and as many other ways, there could be.

The trick with this is to do some of these acts selflessly, especially the ones that cost nothing.

This helps you draw awareness to yourself and your brand which in turn sparks a conversation through which connection is built. More often, it’s the little unexpected things that draw the most attention to your brand.

As much as you want to be intentional with growing your brand as an aspiring author, the entire focus shouldn’t be on you alone because the saying “we’re lifted by lifting others” is golden and evergreen.

Take your time to evaluate what your brand represents, and what you aim to achieve with each connection, and then build your strategy from there.

It doesn’t have to be tasking, just little efforts here and there would go a long way to get interested eyeballs on your brand.

This doesn’t suggest you limit yourself within your circle, no, feel free to stretch beyond your circle and interact with known brands surrounding your niche or the writing industry in general within your nationality and beyond.

While elucidating the need for collaboration as a tool to grow your author brand, it is important to note some of the benefits you will enjoy from practicing this.

Great Brand Visibility:

Collaborating with others within your community ensures great visibility for your brand because it puts you in front of people who might be interested in your brand but have no idea you exist.

This also creates room for you to engage and interact with possible connections that you could work with, soon.

The opportunities that could emerge from having great visibility are limitless and worth the efforts that have been employed to put it out there.

Organic Brand Promotions:

Leveraging the audience of others through collaboration ensures organic promotions for your brand because you have access to free traffic flowing from your collaborator’s platform into yours, the same as yours into theirs.

It ensures you have more eyeballs on your brand, keeps you topmost on their minds, and leaves them curious about your brand which may eventually spark a lasting connection.

This not only promotes your brand but also draws traffic to your creative works depending on what your collaboration aimed to achieve.

Promotes Brand Credibility:

A brand without credibility doesn’t have much authority in itself. Whatever your brand represents, be it you or your creative works, it needs credibility to soar and collaborations can provide that for you.

When you present your brand, yourself, or your work to others through collaborations, people want to stop and listen. It’s a way to build trust with your audience as well as theirs.

They see you in your zone, hear you present and talk about your brand and watch you walk them through what your brand represents. That leaves a lasting impression because word of mouth sells a lot faster.

Depending on what collaboration strategy you are engaged in, the goal should be to put yourself out there and let people see your brand for what it is. Allow yourself to trust the process and direct the flow whichever way you want it.

Build Anticipation Around Your Creative Works:

A major advantage of engaging in collaborations is usually to build anticipation around your creative works.

This could be in form of interviews with a host where you share snippets about your work, it could be in form of a shared post about your work, it could engage your collaborator as an advanced reader, or engage them as reviewers of your creative work.

However form it takes, you are inevitably leveraging their platform to draw more attention to yourself, your brand, and your work.

Take advantage of whichever opportunity presents itself, but ensure it aligns with your goals before jumping on it. Begin your scout from within your circle and expand the beacon from there.

Encourages Creativity:

Having a space to share your creative work with like-minded individuals who understand and appreciate your gift is enough motivation for any aspiring author to keep grinding including you.

There are such platforms on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Medium where individuals go out of their way to help publicize independent authors.

There are communities for every niche and simply staying intentional about what you want will open up these opportunities to you.

Collaborations present you to the world, push you outside of your comfort zone, help you create great connections that will challenge your creative ability, and make you strive to be better.

Encourages Community Building and Teamwork:

Building a team around your brand means less work and more contribution from everyone involved because everyone is a partaker in community building and intentional personal growth for everyone.

You get to have people on your side who will come through for you at any time as well as you will show up for them when needed.

It could be for promotions, cross-promotions, pre-launch campaigns, interviews, page engagements, awareness creation, creative help, research, co-authorship, and everything in between.

Another very common way to achieve this is by writing an anthology together, hosting a contest, entering a contest, hosting giveaways, sharing resource materials, making recommendations, creating a book club, and leveraging email lists.

Collaborations expand your reach and open you up to connect with amazing opportunities, intelligent people, talented authors/creatives, and other individuals who are available to help make your transition into the industry a success.

Building an author brand through collaboration is a sure way to ease the stress off your back and allow the flow to aid your growth. It is a process that’s worth a shot as an aspiring author and I encourage you to give it a try.

March 14, 2022 0 comment

Author Branding

Top 10 Reasons Why Networking is Important To Grow Your Author Brand

by Jane Anne February 28, 2022

written by Jane Anne

Author branding and Networking are very important to your career growth as a creative. Your network increases your net worth is a powerful wisdom word and the mainstay of steady growth as an aspiring author, writer, or creative.

Along with implementing the checklist to get it right from the start as a budding creative and the level-up strategy to keep you grounded in the industry, there is a need to be well-informed on the importance of networking in your community as a tool to grow your author brand.

As with any new venture, you need a base and a solid foundation to keep you sturdy and help climb your way up from the bottom, give your voice room to be heard, and provide a platform where you can share your works and engage with an already existing audience before you gradually begin to pick and choose yours.
Author networking will help you figure that out.

Creating a brand on social media without a proper networking plan will cause stunted growth for your brand, and creative career and make it harder to find a soft landing in the community.

Networking as an aspiring author should not be taken for granted and here are the top 10 reasons why networking is important to grow your author brand as an aspiring author.

1. Networking Creates Room For Massive Exposure

Connecting with the right individuals within your genre/niche market is a great way to hit the ground running as an aspiring author.

Make plans to properly utilize the communities within your niche market on social media like the #writingcommunity on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

You can seek out the #bookstagramcommunity on Instagram, the authors/writers forum on Twitter, aspiring creator’s communities on Facebook and many more.

On more personal grounds, seek out authors and creatives within your genre/niche, begin a conversation, watch stories, view ads, and engage with the content of creatives relating to your niche and promote each other.

There is a correlation between author branding and networking in the areas of growth and massive exposure when utilized properly.

Growing your author brand alone is slow and exhaustive but working hand in hand with members of your community will create room for explosive exposure to your brand.

2. Networking Creates Room For Recognition

It takes hard work, dedication, grit, staunch perseverance, and networking to gain recognition as a brand. It’s not all about writing and leaving the rest to luck; it’s about playing your cards right, engaging the right people in the process to help shake things up a bit, engaging the services of relevant personnel that can help move your brand along, and taking our time to reciprocate efforts in return.

Recognition comes with exposure. Exposure gets people curious about you and draws them into your circle, it feeds their minds on what to expect from you and creates an air of anticipation around your passion and what you have to deliver.

When your deliverables are top-notch, then comes the reviews, then the associations and collaborations, and eventually, your voice has gained autonomy and people want to hear and know more about you.

3. Networking Creates Room For Knowledge Expansion

Learning is an evolving process and no man is a wealth of knowledge or an island of his own. You’d be surprised at how fast-paced the world is running and the rate at which what we know changes for something better or is entirely wiped off as irrelevant in the modern-day world.

Keeping tabs on like-minded individuals in the community will expose you to a whole new world. I can vouch that there are things you’ll unlearn and relearn as you grow in your craft, things you will learn and hear about for the first time, things you will learn about their different variation and dimensions and how important they are to your craft and in general, you will grow a little every day.

4. Networking Creates Room For Collaboration.

When you decide to stay hidden, great benefits and opportunities will stay hidden from you too. One such benefit is collaboration with others in the community.

It could range from agreeing to cross-share posts from both parties to accepting an invitation to Instagram or Facebook live and making collaborative posts for your Youtube channels. It could also lead to writing a book together, creating content for a larger audience or simply working on a project together.

The benefits of collaboration are endless, and while some collaborations might come with small benefits others have the potential to catapult you to greater heights.

In all, treat each collaboration like a new project, engage with it, and deliver awesomely well because despite the reward, people are watching and your audience and visibility are increasing as well.

5. Networking Creates Room For Growth

Each new individual that connects with your brand, your content, and your works, is an automatic plus on your growth scale.

Networking allows you as an aspiring author to tap into the network of others. It allows you to advertise and showcase your brand to a newer audience.

It helps spread the word about who you are and what you do, thereby creating a chain link back to you.

Growth is important for success. It opens doors to opportunities that came to be because your networking plan was right on track.

6. Networking Creates Room For Advancement

With growth comes advancement and an increase in net worth.

Imagine stumbling across a great, life-changing opportunity, breaking through unimaginable barriers beyond the national borders, or snagging a lucrative deal for your work because the right connections clicked in all the right places and your work found its way into that goldmine.

Imagine the huge smile on your face at the moment and think back to how it all began, you’d find that it was attributable to the little amount of effort you employed while first starting, along the process, and even more so, when you’ve had a solid footing.

Do not shy away from putting yourself out there, you’d never know what awaits until you at least, try.

7. Networking Creates Room For Increased Net worth

Growth and advancement bring about an increased brand and personal net worth.

Net worth is relative to advancement. A positive tip of the scales in the upward curve from growth to advancement automatically increases your net worth. Brand exposure and recognition bring about steadily increased growth which acclimatizes into advancement.

Take it like promotion; every new stage added to your level, comes with additional benefits. Example: If as an aspiring author or budding creative, you make only five sales a month, then when you begin to break through the ice and gain ground through recognition, your net sales per month increase to fifty, that’s a huge difference.

A commendable one.

It is necessary to point out here that these changes will occur over time and isn’t an immediate quick fix to blow through the roof. You need to be patient and put in the work to get the right results in due season.

8. Networking Creates Room For Constructive Criticism

Life isn’t a bed of roses, so, never expect your creative journey to be rosy and thorn-free the entire ride.

If you find yourself in a community where all you do is right, find a new community and take flight from them.

When you put yourself out there and ask for an honest opinion about your work, you’d get it. The essence of constructive criticism from your network isn’t to pull you down or tarnish the image you’re trying to build; No, it is to help you improve in your craft and learn from the highlighted mistakes.

No one is out to get you, but you should also remember that the truth is a bitter pill to swallow and a sucker punch to the gut sometimes.

In truth, you cannot grow without criticism because you’d never evaluate yourself as wrong but someone on the outside and merely looking in will give you a good analysis of the faults and flaws we fail to see ourselves.

These criticisms could present themselves in the form of reviews, recommendations, and different opinions on issues.

Do not take the negativity to heart, rather, sieve out the essential parts needed to get you back on track and discard the rest for your peace of mind.

9. Networking Creates Room For Cross Promotion

As earlier said, networking gives you access to cross-promote your brand between audiences and sets you on the right path from exposure and recognition.

The beauty of networking is that everyone involved has something to gain and the pool of resources is larger unlike when you want to achieve that feat alone.

Tap into the power of networking with others in your sphere, keep an open mind in the social space and encourage yourself to seek out opportunities that will invariably help you grow your brand as an aspiring creative.

10. Networking Creates Room For Interconnection of Like-Minded Creatives

There are people, events, and places you’ll come encounter and be privileged to attend during this process that will leave you in awe.

Networking provides you with the opportunity to meet and greet these individuals, learn from them, and connect with new creatives and legends in your niche market.

It exposes you to another level of mastery and allows you to learn from these gurus and when the time is right, work with a few of them as you progress.

Begin with creating connections with the people in your immediate circle, show up for their events, engage in their activities, celebrate their wins, encourage your community as you grow, give back as much as you have received, share your honest opinions when asked, and watch in awe as these little efforts return in thousandfold with bountiful positive results.

Plan your networking strategy as an aspiring creative and scale up by building the right connections.

February 28, 2022 0 comment