How To Build An Author Brand

September 20, 2022December 5, 2022 Neera

One of my readers wrote, “I like the idea of a learning plan. I especially need to get organized for an author brand.”

That triggered the thought — I need a learning plan for building an author brand.

I have been writing full time for over three years and haven’t bothered with branding.

When I was new to this game (yes, I have begun to see that everything is a game), I tried to engage a branding expert to help me build my author brand. He gave me a quote of $13,000.

That was just his consulting fee. I said, “Thank you,” and ran.

I had put branding aside and concentrated on writing. Although I have spent much more money on writing and marketing courses than the branding coach asked for, I still haven’t gone back to building a brand.

Today I want to discuss with you the reason behind that.

But before I do that, I first want to discuss what an author brand means to me.

What is an author brand?

If you listen to branding gurus on YouTube and blogs, they will make you believe a brand is a logo, a colour scheme, a slogan, or a website homepage with specific images and fonts.

Yes, these elements are helpful to branding, but they are not your brand.

A brand is a much simpler concept.

Your author brand is your promise to your readers.

It’s the perception your readers have of you. It’s how your readers identify you.

Branding is recognition beyond the physical aspects of your business and your persona. It’s the thought that others have when hearing your name or your business name. It directly represents you, what you stand for and what you do.

Stephen King’s brand, in three words, is imaginative, gripping, and suspenseful.

Why do authors need a brand?

Your brand is the hat you wear while writing and serving your readers.

There are a plethora of reasons you would want to wear your brand hat:

First, it helps you differentiate from other authors in the same industry who possibly write on the same topics as you.
It gives a better perception of your work, core values, strengths, and unique offerings.
It helps your readers to recognize your work.
It converts potential readers into fans.
It increases your visibility.
It helps you to fulfil your readers’ expectations.
It helps create your author platform.
It builds trust amongst your audience.
It helps you build quality relationships with your readers.
And it creates an impenetrable layer of authenticity.

I write about writing, creativity, and productivity. Countless other writers are writing about the same things. What differentiates me from them is that I write from an amateur’s point of view.

That’s my brand.

My promise to my readers is that I do not pretend to be a know-all. I am here to learn. And whatever I learn, I pass it on.

Do we need to spend money on branding?

The best form of branding is costless.

You don’t need to purchase different products to ‘start’ branding.

A better way to build a reputable brand is by being present, consistent, authentic, valuable, and unforgettable. As an author, these aspects of your brand are free.

You don’t have to spend thousands of dollars to engage in image building to build your brand.

You’re a storyteller, and a brand is a story. Tell your story authentically and you have a brand.

Each author has a unique backstory. Mine is that I sucked at writing. Rather than accepting it as my weakness, I made it my strength. I connect with those writers who think their writing sucks (which most writers do).

I began building my brand a long time before I published my first book. I was building it when I was writing my blog, I was building it when I was writing articles on Medium, and I am building it through The Whimsical Writer newsletter and LinkedIn posts.

So, how should you build your brand?

The answer is — through your writing.

Nurture your unique style of writing.

That is why readers read your articles, subscribe to your newsletter, or pick up your books to read. Fulfill their expectations.

But it’s not enough to be good at what you write.

You need to create an emotional connection with your readers – often before they’ve read your work.

You need to open communication channels with your readers. You need to encourage them to talk to you, either through your website or social media. Ask them questions. Invite their opinion. And when they respond, write back to them. Keep the conversation going.

It is not as hard as it sounds. I have formed many friendships with readers worldwide through Medium articles and LinkedIn. These people have become my cheerleaders. They read everything I write and encourage me through my project more than my family or physical life friends do.

Jeff Bezos is right when he said:

“A brand is what other people say about you when you’re not in the room.”

Another thing you can do is become a storyteller.

Early in my writing career, I realized I couldn’t become a literary writer because I lacked the skills. But I can become a good storyteller.

Being a skilled storyteller means being able to deliver a story in a way that is whimsical, amazing, and irresistible, and forces your audience to bow at your feet metaphorically. People love good stories.

Tell stories from life. Sharing personal stories is hard, but it gets easier with time. Besides, most of our information is already on the internet, either on Facebook or Instagram, so why not share it with our readers who connect with us at a much deeper level through our writing?

Author Branding is different from Book Branding

Book branding is about how good the book is and how well-packaged it is to attract the target audience. Is the cover right? Does it include all the elements of the genre? Would it appeal to the target audience?

An author’s branding establishes that the writer is the perfect person to solve readers’ problems. Readers don’t care about your book; they only care about what your book can do for them.

A fiction author’s brand promises this book will be as entertaining as the previous one.

Effective branding is foundational to developing your writer platform and audience-building efforts.

I hope I have addressed some questions in your mind, Carol.

But you still would need to make a Learning Plan for your brand, and it will take you a while to get to the point you want to get with your brand. But keep the above information in your mind while creating your brand, and don’t just stop at a logo, a colour scheme, and a slogan.

Although I have moved along since I tried to engage a branding expert, I still am nowhere near where I want my brand to be.

So, I if you are looking to build your author brand, here are some questions you need to ponder.

What is your uniqueness?
What is your brand in three words?
Who are your audience? What are their needs?
What channels of communication do you have with your audience? How often do you communicate with them?
What problems do you solve?
What level are your storytelling skills?
Have you discroved your voice?
How are your growing your audience?
What are your distinctive physical features (logo, color scheme, slogan)?
What books/ articles, podcasts, and other resources you need to learn more about author branding.

Here are some resources:

The Power Of Subtraction

September 13, 2022December 5, 2022 Neera

Richard and Maurice were running a barbeque restaurant in Los Angeles, but it wasn’t doing very well. So they took a brief break to decide what to do.

They audited their sales receipts to see which products were selling more. Once they found out, they wondered: why don’t we focus on these products that are doing well? So, courageously, they slashed their menu from 25 items to a mere 9.

That’s when “McDonald’s Barbeque” actually started growing. The McDonald brothers could improve their food and reduce their costs by reducing their product line. And serve more customers per hour! That’s how Ray Kroc got interested in partnering with the brothers and franchising McDonald’s.

Subtraction is the key to excellence.

Ask a good chef how to make the soup more flavourful, and he’ll tell you to add a few more spices to it. But ask a great chef how to make the soup more flavourful, and he will tell you to boil away excess water.

Ask any Pulitzer prize-winning author, and they will tell you that the art of editing is more important than the art of writing.

Why does subtraction work?

As James Clear says:

There are two paths to improvement”

Option 1: Do more great work.

Option 2: Do less bad work.

Doing less of what is not working intensifies our focus on doing more of what is working. And that is why subtraction helps us succeed faster. By subtracting the inessential, we enable the essential to shine much brighter.

Adding is easier. Subtracting is not.

And that’s because we are hard-wired to add.

Leidy Klotz and his colleagues from the University of Virginia have conducted various experiments that prove that we humans are inclined towards addition.

When an incoming University president asked for ideas to improve things on campus, only 11% of the suggestions involved getting rid of something. Instead, 89% of requests were geared towards adding and doing new things.

In a study where college students were asked to improve their essays and resubmit them, only 17% did so by removing parts of them. 83% of the essays had a higher word count.

Takeaway

Subtract the inessential to intensify your focus on what works best.
Add monthly reminders to your calendar with a prompt question: “What can I subtract from my workload to focus on core projects?”

Don’t Set SMART Goals

August 30, 2022December 5, 2022 Neera

Maxwell Maltz was a plastic surgeon in the 1950s. He made a scintillating discovery in a new scientific field of his day — cybernetics. He wrote in the book Psycho-Cybernetics that our “subconscious mind” is not just a mind but a goal-striving servo-mechanism.

He compared it to a torpedo or heat-seeking missile. It needs clear-cut targets to work on. And if you don’t give it one, it will find one.

Then why is it that most people don’t achieve their goals? There is no shortage of goals or goal-setters in the world.

That is because:

“These goals are filtered through the self-image, and if inconsistent, are rejected or modified.” — Maxwell Maltz

For the last five decades, we have been fed to set SMART goals. As you might be aware, SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. Usually, the kind of goals we would set would be either outcome-based or process-based.

Outcome-based goal — Lose five pounds in three months.

Process-based goal — High-impact exercise for 30 minutes each day for three months.

The trouble is, both don’t work.

James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits, has been studying habits and goal setting for more than a decade. Two of his famous quotes are:

“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.”

“Your goal is your desired outcome. Your system is the collection of daily habits that will get you there.”

James reckons your identity holds you back. He recommends setting identity-based goals.

An identity is a self-image chosen by you for you. And when things truly matter to you, you’re truly committed to making them happen. That’s because “the more pride you have in a particular aspect of your identity, the more motivated you will be to maintain the habits associated with it.”

This is in line with Maxwell’s observation that your goals are filtered through your self-image and if they are not in line, they are either rejected or modified.

An identity-based goal is — I’m the type of woman that never misses a workout.

Here are a few more examples

Outcome-based goal — To earn $10,000 from writing by the end of this year.

Process-based goal — To write 200 articles on Medium and publish five e-books by the end of this year.

Identity-based goal — I am a market-savvy writer who can sell her work fair price.

Outcome-based goal — To write 2 to 3 articles a week.

Process-based goal — Write 750 words a day.

Identity-based goal — I am a writer who writes fast and fluently.

When I had outcome-based or process-based goals, I didn’t make much progress with my writing.

Rather I fought my own goals by keep telling myself that I was not a good writer.

As soon as I started seeing myself as a writer, I became a much more fluent writer. I am consistently writing 4 -5 articles a week on Medium and Substack and a post a day on LinkedIn.

In addition, I have written and published four books.

Add Spirituality To Your Goal Setting

Another thing that works is making your goals higher than yourself.

Recently, I came across a three-questions technique by Vishen Lakhiani to find out your end-goal.

End Goals is the term Vishen uses for identity-based goals.

The three questions Vishan Lakhiani poses are:

What are the experiences you want in your life?
How do you need to grow to have those experiences?
How can you contribute to the rest of the world?

There is a lot of merit in looking at goal-setting in this way.

When you think about experiencing the life of a lean and fit person, the motivation is much deeper and long-standing.

And since experience is embedded at the emotional level, the desire to achieve it is much stronger.

The second question is even more magical.

It makes you concentrate on the skills for the experience you want.

I realized I needed to put more of my work “out there” to grow as a writer.

So I started a Substack newsletter and started publishing short-form posts on social media and increased the frequency of article writing on Medium. Within months, I have become my “desired identity.”

The third question adds the spiritual element to the goal-setting.

When you make your goal bigger than your personal achievement, when there is an element of contributing to the universe, then the force of the universe clears the path for you (I wrote about it in Four Levels of Consciousness and How To Make Sure You Listen To Inspiration When It Whispers)

Here is the link to the video about the 3 Question Technique. And here is the format to use the 3 Question Technique:

How To Create Digital Products Using Your Current Knowledge

August 23, 2022December 5, 2022 Neera

Creating a digital product that they could sell is every new creator’s dream. Digital products are an amazing way to add a revenue stream.

The beauty of digital products is that they allow you to package knowledge you already have or skills and services you already performed into a product that you can build once and sell countless times. That allows you to save a lot of time, a lot of overhead and reach a lot more customers.

What is so special about digital products?

They’re a low investment.
They’re more profitable than physical goods because you don’t have to worry about shipping or replenishing inventory.
You don’t have to deal with the hassle of constantly producing stock, storing shipping, or any other logistics.
You can automate the delivery, and you can serve your niche at scale by providing valuable information.
Not only that, but the shifted digital business models and online education is a powerful market factor working in your favor. eLearning for example is projected to be worth $331 billion by 2025.

What should you create?

You don’t need to be an expert in what you do in order to create a digital product. You need to be two years ahead of the people you are teaching.

Think of something you have learned in the past two years. Chances are other people also want to learn the same skill. You can teach them through your product.

People prefer to learn from someone who is a little ahead of them rather than from experts. Experts are too far ahead in the game. Beginners can’t relate to them.

Make a list of the things you are good at. Things people ask your help for. It could be — how to create a website or how to choose a good board game to play when you have friends over.

Make a list.

Then choose one thing that you can work on straight away.

Once you have done that, let’s get started.

How to create a digital product

The first thing that you need to do when creating a digital product is to answer a very simple question.

What problem can you solve and what opportunity can you provide?

At the core, there are two main reasons people purchase a product.

To move further away from pain
To unlock a benefit.

In either case, these people are seeking to improve their lives meaningfully. So what you need to do is create a problem statement.

A problem statement is a concise description that highlights the gap between the barriers your target market is facing and their desired end state.

The reason you want to do this is so that you clearly articulate what the idea is and why it is useful in the context of the marketplace.

Writing a problem statement is actually quite simple.

It should be more like a paragraph that a sentence. Start by stating the desire. Then point out what is stopping them from fulfilling that desire. Then propose how they can fulfil their desire and how your product is going to help them reach that.

Last week, I created a digital product. The problem statement for that was:

Creating a digital product is every new creator’s dream. But most of them don’t do it because they don’t know what problem they should pick, how to create it and how to write the sales letter. They either keep postponing it. Or they start creating it, and when they get stuck, they give up.

My guide can help you create your first product in three hours. It will help you write the sales letter and select a platform where to publish it for repeat business.

Do you see how the problem statement helps frame and articulate my digital product idea and why it is valuable in the market?

Then I stated how my product was going to help them solve their problem.

This guide can help.

Written in a short and succinct manner, this short guide gives you all the information you need on:

• What to create as your first product.

• How to create it.

• Where to publish it.

• How to improve it.

• How to write a sales page.

Examples of products.

No matter whether you’re making software, a course or a digital download, don’t skip this step.

I have created a guide that can help with the entire process. You can download it here for free.

Hope it will inspire and help you with writing your first product.

How To Slow Down And Pay Attention

August 18, 2022December 5, 2022 Neera

Our whole life is rush rush rush.

We have become so accustomed to rushing that if we are not rushing to get somewhere or to do something, or to finish something that if we are not rushing, we feel we are not doing anything.

This is what I used to feel anyway.

Writing, on the other hand, is quite the opposite. To be a good writer, you need to slow down. You need to become more observant. You need to take in sensory clues and synthesize them. You need to allow your mind to make connections. To draw insights.

This week I was going through some old notes of mine when I came across one of the exercises in Rob Walker’s Art of Noticing newsletter back in 2020.

Take a familiar walk and identify five boring things that are of no interest whatsoever.

I decided to try that. Since it has been raining here, I decided to try this exercise while driving to the gym in the morning.

Invariably I am late for the gym. So while driving, my whole focus is to get past other cars and get through the light while it is still green (still within speed limits) to that I can make it to the class in time.

Needless to say, I start my day with unnecessary stress.

But on Tuesday, as I was noticing the boring things that were of no interest whatsoever, the things I would ignore otherwise, I relaxed a bit.

This is what I noticed:

Steam coming from the Canberra hospital building’s air-conditioning.
The hint of green on every branch of the willow tree by the creek.
An abandoned shopping trolly.
A wheely electronic sign-board that was switched off
The empty skating slopes of at the corner of the park

Then I forgot all about these things during the day.

The next morning when I was writing the morning pages, these things came back to me, and I wrote them down. While doing that, I started pondering why I noticed these things and not the other things.

Was my mind biased to pick these things?

Why did the steam coming from the Canberra hospital building’s air-conditioning stand out more than anything else?

Memories came rushing in. For the past eight years, Canberra Hospital has played a prominent role in our lives. I visited it frequently when both my parents and my mother-in-law were in and out of the facility with various aliments. I have spent many nights there. Sometimes I will go there in the middle of winter nights, and as soon as I would see the steam coming from the chimney on the tenth floor of the building, a sense of relief will fall on me. The air conditioning is working. It is warm in there. My parents are warm and comfortable. They are being looked after.

The boring thing wasn’t boring at all. There was a deeper meaning associated with it.

The hint of green on the willow tree by the creek announced that spring was just two weeks away.

The abandoned trolly reminded me of the homeless person I had seen in the city years ago, whose entire belonging were in a shopping trolly. How do the homeless survive the Canberra winter out in the open? Did this trolly belong to some homeless person too?

The wheel electronic signboard played a prominent role in our lives during the drought years in Canberra not so long ago. Each day while driving back, the commuters would read the water level in the dam and how much water Canberrians used that day. People stopped wasting water. They were careful while watering their gardens and conserved water as much as they could. The consumption reduced to half and then kept going down. The local government said that wheely electronic signboards they had installed at various arterial routes played a big part. Today that signboard wasn’t silent. There was no need. We have had plenty of rain this year.

This was an exercise in paying attention. It helped me to slow down and find the meaning of trivial things.

Attention is not a resource, but a way of being alive to the world.

Dan Nixon wrote an essay in which he talked about how attention is misunderstood and misused in the ‘attention economy.’

The ‘attention economy,’ portrays our attention as a limited resource at the center of the informational ecosystem, where various information outlets are competing to grab our attention.

But our attention is much more than that.

Attention is what joins us with the outside world. ‘Instrumentally’ attending is important, sure. But we also have the capacity to attend in a more ‘exploratory’ way: to be truly open to whatever we find before us, without any particular agenda.

Dan Nixon talks about a trip to Japan where he found himself with few free hours in Tokyo. Stepping out into the busy district of Shibuya, he wandered aimlessly amid the neon signs and crowds of people.

My senses met the wall of smoke and the cacophony of sound as I passed through a busy pachinko parlour. For the entire morning, my attention was in ‘exploratory’ mode. That stood in contrast to, say, when I had to focus on navigating the metro system later that day.

By treating attention as a resource, and engaging both hemispheres of the brain (left logical and right creative)we can ‘deliver’ the world to us in two different ways.

The left hemisphere of the brain analyzes and categorizes things so that it can use them towards some end.

By contrast, the brain’s right hemisphere adopts an exploratory mode of attending: a more embodied awareness, one that is open to whatever presents itself to us in all its fullness.

This mode of ‘exploratory attention’ comes into play, for instance, when we pay attention to other people, to the natural world, and to works of art.

It is also the exploratory mode of attention that can connect us to our deepest sense of purpose.

This is what American philosopher William James had in mind in 1890 when he wrote:

What we attend to is reality. — William James

The simple but profound idea is that what we pay attention to, and how we pay attention, shapes our reality, moment to moment, day to day, and so on.

What are you paying attention to?

How To Convert Anecdotes Into Stories Using A Simple Framework

August 16, 2022December 5, 2022 Neera

Last week I was scrolling through my LinkedIn feeds while sipping the steaming hot tea on a chilly winter morning when a story caught my eye.

It was captivating and well-written, but what really intrigued me was the footnote. The author mentioned that she developed the story with the help of a story coach, and if anyone wanted to develop their story, they should DM (direct message) him.

Now, if there is one thing that I have been struggling with for the past three years, is telling stories from everyday life. I am very good at telling other people’s stories. But when it comes to telling stories from my own life, I feel inhibited.

So, I sent him a contact request. He immediately accepted it, and sent me a welcome note.

I was impressed.

I wrote back, telling him that I wanted to improve my storytelling skills. What would he suggest I should do?

He sent me a link to a TED Talk.

I listened to it, and before it was over, my mind was made up.

I wrote to him saying, “I am setting myself a personal challenge — To write 30 stories in 30 days on LinkedIn. Announcing it to you makes it official.”

“Then consider it official,” he wrote back.

As soon as I got his response, I said to myself, “OMG! What have I done? Am I even equipped to pull it through? In two weeks, I will be traveling. There is no way I could meet the challenge.”

I can go back and tell him that it was a mistake.

Or don’t go back at all. I don’t owe him anything.

But hang on, what will be the price of pulling myself out?

I will not learn storytelling. What’s the big deal?

Hang on. It is a big deal. I want to get better at storytelling. This is my chance. Why not give it a go? Write as many days as I can. Learn as much as I could. I have nothing to lose. Only to gain.

So, this was it.

I published the above story as Story #1. The story got 2760 impressions and 42 likes. I received more than 20 comments.

Since then, I have been writing a story a day. I even created a hashtag #30days30stories. Other people joined in, and we have a nice thread going where people are telling their stories while learning the craft of storytelling.

I have learned more about storytelling in the last week than I did in the past three years.

And it started by putting myself out there.

How to craft a story?

On the very first story, the story coach Dan Manning wrote to me,

“You can make any story better by getting really specific on the moment of change. Here it is in this story:

I listened to it, and before it was over, my mind was made up. I wrote to him saying, “I am setting myself a personal challenge — To write 30 stories in 30 days on LinkedIn. Announcing it to you makes it official.”

In all of your stories, make sure your audience knows this is THE moment they have been waiting for.

Later I had a Zoom call with him, and we talked about storytelling. He gave me a simple framework to craft my stories.

That framework was a goldmine. Using it, practically any anecdote from everyday life can be converted into a story.

It looks like this:

A story starts with a change. In your anecdote, look where the change is occurring and start building your story from there. Describe what was the situation (or the person) before the change and how it (the situation or person) changed after the change.

If there is no change, there is no story.

Phillip Berry Osborne said:

“Ultimately, the key to personal-experience stories is change. Where our personal lives are concerned, in fact, change is probably the biggest single challenge we all face and share.

That’s why the best personal stories explore our transition in life — if only to encourage us to accept ourselves in some new context or as we’re becoming.

Such transition or change is vital to storytelling since it’s bound up with the overall message that underscores any good story — and yet, too often, writers fail in this one key area of change and, especially, the message that comes out of it.

Another important element of a story is meaning.

Without a message, a story is like an egg without a shell.

Many of us, as writers, neglect this fundamental requirement.

We, humans, love stories because we are looking for meaning in them. Meaning could be as simple as:

making a decision to do something or not to do something.
an insight
a lesson
an epiphany
a realization.

Pick those moments in your day and weave your stories around them.

Follow me on LinkedIn, and you can read my stories there.

So want kind of stories can you write?

There are three kinds of stories:

Stories that motivate you and make you feel focused, and enhance your memory (dopamine generating)
Stories that make be more generous, trust and bond(Oxytocin generating)
Stories that make us laugh (Endorphine generating)

Want to learn more about them, watch this TED Talk.