by Jeniffer Thompson
Personal branding is not a revolutionary concept, but it’s relatively new to authors. A personal brand can help to establish your authority, catapult your success, and solidify your future. Here’s a little secret: most entrepreneurs and authors promote their books and services, but they fail to promote themselves. Create a strong personal brand and one-time customers will become loyal followers, and dare I say, fans. By branding you, you create fans.
What’s your personal promise? How do you want people to describe you? What do you want to be known for? What experience or feeling do you want your readers to have when they read your books? What do you want them to do? Answering these questions before you begin your brand development will help you ensure the language of your brand reflects your true passion and your goals while also reaching your ideal reader.

What’s Revolutionary?

The internet has changed the way we communicate. Getting the word out is no longer about how much money you have to spend on radio adverts and billboard signs, it’s about how well you know your audience and then consistently offer them valuable content. If your message is packaged in a professional way, your audience is more likely to recognize your brand and trust it. Then, not only do they remember you, but they tell others about you—they become invested in you.
Authors often ask me how to sell more. The answer?

• Know your audience,
• connect with them in a meaningful and memorable way, then,
• stay connected.

And in today’s marketplace all of that is within your control. Defining your own personal style so that you resonate with your audience, and developing your online presence so that others sit up and take notice are now highly doable.

Are You Ready? The Ten Steps to Personal Branding

Having a brand can provide you with a roadmap that keeps you going, even when you feel like your self-confidence is waning.
A personal brand gives you the ability to continually build upon even the smallest of achievements, to capitalize upon on all of your successes, to stay relevant, and to continually strive to improve, to be better and even to be great.

1. Imagine Your Success Line to Help Illuminate Your Goals

What does your success look like? Where do you live? How are you making an impact? What do you look like? More importantly, how does the world view this successful you? Are you famous? What do you get up in the morning and dedicate your life to accomplishing? How do you feel?
Once you have a clear picture of what success looks and feels like, I want you to work backward along your success line and visualize the milestones that you will need to meet in order to achieve that success. What items might be on your roadmap? Things like: publishing your book, speaking at industry conferences, contributing articles to well-known magazines in your field, giving a TED Talk, appearing on well-known podcasts, or building a mailing list of fans.

2. Discover What You Are Willing to Invest and Create a Budget

Your budget is not just about money, it’s about time and even more importantly it’s about your emotional bandwidth.
When it comes to Money:
How much money can you comfortably invest? Get acquainted with both the low-budget and the higher-budget investments. Once you have a dollar amount in mind, you can budget for the things that will help build your brand in stages.
When it comes to Time and Emotional Bandwidth:
How much time do you have to invest? Ask yourself how you want to spend your time. How comfortable are you with performing or learning about the various tools available to you: blogging, social networking, podcasting, writing, video, speaking? In other words, uncover what gets you excited and brings you joy.
Contrary to popular opinion, you don’t need to do it all. In fact, if you choose to employ methods that exhaust you, then those methods and the time you spend doing them will ensure that you never reach your end-goal because you’ll end up broke, fatigued, and burned out.
Know all aspects of your budget and stick to what is comfortable; Remember that this is a long-term plan. It won’t happen overnight.

3. Claim Your Unique Voice

Please don’t worry about whether or not there are other people out there doing what you do. Demand for your ability is a good thing. It tells you that there’s an audience for your message. And no matter how many of them there are out there, there is only one you.
Here’s the key: what about your message is unique? Maybe you’re funny, or lyrical, or well-researched.
If this is hard for you:

• Sit down with friends or colleagues. Ask them to describe who you are at work. Ask them what they consider your super power. Ask them what you are good at, and conversely what you’re not so good at. This exercise may require some serious self-analysis. It requires you to be open and honest with yourself and capable of hearing constructive feedback.
• Develop a list of core values. Core values are the fundamental beliefs that drive your actions and decisions. These are the basis for what makes you unique and helps you remain consistent and true to your brand.

4. Know Your Audience on an Intimate Level

Your brand is ultimately your promise to your target audience.
Where is your audience? What social platforms do they hang out on? What magazines do they read? Where do they get their news? Knowing your target audience means understanding their needs and desires. Identify what your audience needs and how you can serve them. If you know what they need right now, you can provide value for the long term.

5. Know Who Influences Your Audience

I’m talking about your competition and the people who influence your buyers. These are the people who currently live and work in the space where your audience exists. They are fellow writers, authors, speakers, and thought leaders. These are the people you will learn the most from, the people you need to get close to. Ultimately, you need to identify only one influencer to find them all.
Follow your influencers on social and subscribe to their newsletters. Comment on and share their posts. Also, pay attention to the ways you can help this person. What is missing from her narrative that you can add? Do you see possible partnership or collaboration opportunities? And, last, what is she doing that you can do better?
Set a plan in place to get close to your influencers and become known to them.

6. Research and Collect Data

As you research, be sure to track it all; do not do this later. Create a tracking system that works for you (spreadsheet, Google Drive, a physical notebook that you carry in your purse, an App on your phone, etc.).
Every time you are inspired by a conversation, a podcast, an article, or you randomly have a good idea, write it down. And here’s the key: check in on your ideas once a week and create a system for putting those good ideas to work. Every aha moment is another building block in the foundation of your success.

7. Create Your Personal Roadmap

Remember your success line? Now it’s time to build the roadmap that will guide you to the end of the line. Create a plan to meet those milestones and schedule them for the next year. Things like content creation, networking, article submissions, speaking, and social media. Remember your budget. Don’t over commit or your plan will succeed.

8. Make Sure Rich Content Is Part of Your Plan

Your website will become the home base for everything you do. The content on your website allows you to control the narrative of your brand and the actions of your readers. People will find you in a variety of ways, but they will, you hope, all end up in the same place: your website.
Develop a content plan. It’s okay to have a loose idea of what you will write about, and it’s totally okay to introduce new concepts, but it’s critical that you do this in a strategic and mindful way. Begin by developing a list of concepts that you will write about. Play with new concepts and pay attention to what resonates with your joy and your audience.

9. Make it Pretty

A successful brand is more than a logo; it’s a signature color, a typeface, a style, an attitude. Your brand needs a consistent look and feel that will appear on your website, business card, email signature, customized social media accounts, one-sheets, and more.
What’s your look? How will people recognize you in every aspect of your brand? Are you edgy, soft, mysterious, professional, flippant, controversial, progressive, outrageous, cautious, or funny?
Keep in mind that the look you create needs to embody the feeling and tone of your voice; they support one another. From your logo and headshot to the way you dress, your products, giveaways, and even your social media posts, everything you create needs to follow a set of style guides that you establish from the beginning.

10. Connect the Dots

Set aside a specific day each week, month, or quarter to check in on the critical elements of your brand. You may decide to check in on some items more frequently, in order to stay connected to your plan.
Here are some examples of items to include on your checklist:

• Website traffic: learn how to effectively track your unique visitors, most popular and unpopular pages, bounce rate, and more, using Google analytics
• Content theme and website message (does it still ring true?)
• Social engagement: shares, likes, comments, click-throughs
• Blog categories: are they in line with your brand mission and core values, do they offer value to your audience, do they bring you joy?
• Posting calendar: create an annual calendar to guide you in your content-development and posting strategy. Track which posts get the most engagement and adjust your calendar as needed.
• Website resources and tips: add value to your content regularly, schedule new resources and tips quarterly so that your content does not grow stale.
• Credibility: add endorsements, testimonials, case studies, published works, speaker topics, and appearances to your bio and website often. Every little achievement must become part of the overall narrative.
• Public Profiles: every time you create an online profile, track it in a spreadsheet so you don’t forget about it and turn it into an anchor that holds you back.
• Bio versions: create several versions of your bio to be used for different purposes: professional bio, casual bio, a version for your book jacket, for social media, a speaker bio, and a media bio. Track where these are posted and check in often to ensure that they don’t get stale. Also, make sure to update them with your latest successes (impressive appearances, awards, associations, and more). Your bio is your introduction to your potential audience, make sure it represents you in the best way possible.

Jeniffer Thompson is a personal branding expert and digital-marketing strategist with more than 20 years of experience in the publishing industry. She is an award-winning publisher, author, and speaker who is passionate about delivering strategy-rich content and actionable tools that educate and empower authors. She lives in San Diego with her husband, Chad, their persnickety Manx cat, Mishka, and three fluffy chickens who love to follow her around and give her delicious eggs every day.