When I was little, at my grandmother’s house there was a huge closet in the bedroom where I stayed. It was a closet that scared me a lot (I had read CSLewis in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and I was yuyu when things came out of it). One night, my grandmother left the closet loosely closed and it opened by itself. My hair almost went white from the shock, until I got closer, looked inside and realized that there were only clothes there. To take the writing service you have to visit us.
When we start boosting our personal brand , one of the first things we have to do is open those closets that impress us and realize that there are only clothes inside. And that our fears, those that paralyze us, that block us, that do not let us move forward, must be lowered to the ground.
And then, once we have overcome fear, work to achieve results with a well thought out strategy, define a road map. In marketing, it is not worth it to be a compass and improvise along the way, in marketing you have to be very map. And sow a lot to have something to pick up.
Because, if you don’t have a strategy, what happens happens. That you start a blog and networks without knowing what works. Because you have been told that having a blog and an instagram account are the pillars of your brand. But nobody has taught you to work your content with objectives and with SEO, aligned with your sales funnel.
It is not about posting just anything —some pretty flowers that you have seen on the side of the road, for example—, but content that helps you attract readers. People say: “the more followers and likes, the more I will sell” and it is not so. The followers do not feed. It is true that if those followers are qualified, yes. But your posts may not be aligned with your brand and your goals, and followers may not translate into sales of your books.
Building community is important.
How is a community created?
What would be the most effective strategies to grow a personal brand as a writer?
Today we are going to summarize them in this MOLPE post:
The direct ones
Live on Instagram or on another platform (such as webinars or master classes if you work in services) are very powerful. The voice, the way of exposing, has an impact that can reach hundreds of people.
Of course you can ask yourself: “I’m at the beginning of my venture as a writer, who is going to want to see me if I don’t have an audience?” You’re right: it’s very sad to see a live on Instagram with only two or three people connected (although it is true that people usually see them on a delayed basis). So the ideal is to start doing live interviews with people of your gender who already have an audience to drag their readers to your networks.
But… you have to offer that person something that interests them so that they agree to spend their time with you. So always think of a win-win. For example, organize a joint reading of your book?
physical talks
Face-to-face training is also a very effective way of giving our brand a boost. Not only because of the people who attend the training itself, but also because that training can be recorded and shared on networks later. It is a very powerful image product that will help you create synergies and attract readers.
And I also recommend that you set aside time each year to attend an in-person event of your genre. To connect with readers, writers, editors… all kinds of professionals in your genre. Remember, sow seeds so that you can reap fruits later.
The guest posting
When I started as a blogger, this was one of the most useful resources. I talk about it extensively in this chapter of the podcast , but although the blogosphere has changed since the beginning, the guestpost is something that can continue to be done with very good results. Be careful, do not do it in fits and starts; If you offer yourself, you must do it with very good content.
A nonfiction book of your genre
Writing a nonfiction book can lead fiction readers to your other books. And clients to your services. A nonfiction book can be the first step in your sales funnel. I eat?
I give you two examples with two of my non-fiction books:
How to Write Fantasy directs book readers to my fantasy books (by the way, The Dragonfly Society is on kindle deal this month).
Entrepreneurial writer directs readers to strategy session.
The book is also a tool to capture leads: one way to do it is to share the link of your lead magnet in the first pages of your book.
organize an event
When we give a talk at an event, it’s clear that it reinforces our personal brand, but organizing an event on your theme does it much more.
For example, Bea Blumen and Araceli Rovira organized the I Virtual Congress of Romantic Novels last year, boosting their account as writers and their networking within the genre.
Social media
The networks are an interesting channel to work on your personal brand, but you must not forget that they are not the end of the funnel but the beginning. The goal of having networks is to drive people to your subscriber list.
And that the content that you publish on networks must be qualified to become a benchmark in a specific subject. You will have heard the phrase “if you want to sell cat food, talk about cats” a thousand times. If you want to sell romantic novels, talk about this genre in all its aspects (books, authors, series, movies, events, podcasts…). And, please, organize yourself so that the content you upload is constant.
This book can help you with that.
traditional media
Traditional media is also an effective way to reinforce your brand image, but it’s not usually an effective way to sell more books. Let me explain: suppose you appear on the national newscast; Normally, watching the news there are readers and non-readers. Of the reading viewers, not all will be readers of your genre. And of those of your gender, not everyone will want to read your book. Therefore, the impact that you can have from a general medium on your target audience is less than if you appear in a podcast aimed at readers of your genre, although it may seem like less to you.
For traditional media to bring you a return, the number of impacts you must make is much higher than with other channels.
Evangelists and membership
Obviously, it is very very interesting that people who have read you or have tried your services or your courses recommend you. There is nothing like word of mouth to increase sales. In that sense, having superfans—or evangelists—is one of the criteria for a good personal brand. I already told you here about how to get reviews without crushing the staff.
Another option is affiliation: propose to the person who has read you or tried your services/courses to recommend you to their audience in exchange for a small commission on sales. It is important that this affiliation is sincere, that is, that they recommend you because they like you.
content marketing
Content marketing —what I am doing in this blog, in the podcast, or in the MOLPE YouTube channel— is a very powerful personal branding strategy but it is also a strategy that works in the long term and in which you are going to to have to be very constant for it to bear fruit. That you need a well-established keyword base and an optimized editorial calendar to be profitable (we can help you with that with strategy sessions), but above all the podcast —which currently has much less competition than the rest— is a very profitable strategy.
You have a course to help you organize everything on the platform
Personal branding is a farmer’s job
As I have told you throughout this article, you have to sow in order to reap. When my husband met me, he told his friends that he had met the woman he was going to marry. Fortunately, he didn’t tell me, because then he might have run off and we never would have gotten married. Getting to know each other and falling in love took a process of time and planting. Well, the same thing happens with your readers. Don’t wait for insta-love, dedicate yourself to sowing every day. Always without losing sight of the reader you want to attract.
When you know what the objectives you want to achieve are, you will be able to design a brand strategy with several of these actions and with a good value proposition, content that reaches and wins over your reader.