5 Author Branding Mistakes to Avoid

Publishing a book is a great way to establish your expertise and build credibility. But if you're planning to just sit back and rely on your book to build your brand for you, you're making a big mistake. And that might not be the only one. If you're wondering what not to do when building your author brand, then this video is for you. Hey there. I'm Julie the Book Broad, the founder of a fabulous self publishing firm called Book Launchers. Whether using it to launch a speaking career or become known as the thought leader in your field, your book is just one element of your bigger branding picture. Putting the entire puzzle together isn't easy. So here are five mistakes you should avoid when building your brand as an author. Mistake number one you're trying to serve too many audiences. You are not for everyone, and neither is your book, your product, or your service. If you try to make any everyone your target audience for your brand, you'll end up with no audience at all and no brand either. Your brand serves a purpose to help someone deal with something. So who is your brand serving and what is it helping them do? Just like when you're writing your book, you need to figure out who exactly will benefit from you and your brand for it to be effective. Your brand should be created for a specific person who is looking for a solution to a specific problem. Even pinpointing a demographic like women over 40 or millennials, that's not specific enough to really pinpoint and position your brand into the right spot. You may have a great solution that busy, overwhelmed moms may love, but not every mom will be struggling, which means not every mom out there is your ideal client. Getting into the nitty gritty specifics to nail down your target audience might feel like you're reducing your potential prospects. But by narrowing your audience, you're actually doing the opposite. You you're positioning your brand to attract more opportunities and connect with the right people instead of trying to connect with all the people. If you're struggling to identify your ideal client, it's often easier for you to consider the audience you don't want rather than the one you do want. So make a list. Start with writing down the traits or features of who you don't want to serve. Once you have that list of the things you don't want, it's much easier to identify what you do want. And once you do that, it will be much easier to pull together all of the other pieces of your author brand. Mistake number two Being inconsistent or intermittent. Creating your brand takes work a lot of hard work. It's a process of trial and error. You're going to have ups and downs, maybe even diagonals and sideways. But you can't build a successful brand if you and your message don't stay consistent throughout the process. Starting is probably the easiest part of the branding process because it's exciting, it's new, and that fresh motivation pumps up your energy and keeps you moving forward. But eventually that's gonna wear off, especially when the process gets tougher and progress slows down and your goal just looks way too far off. And when you hit that rough middle part of the process, your brand is gonna take a nosedive if you can't rely on your consistency to keep going When I started this channel, nobody was watching. But by posting content every Tuesday and Friday and listening to your questions, responding to your comments, go ahead, ask me something. In the comments below, I will reply. And consistently sharing similar messages throughout these videos, the channel has grown and so has my fabulous list of besties. Sean Hayes, Linda K. Lee, Rachel Robertson, Deborah Lloyd, Bill Miller, Mike Hurd, Mike Michael Fakherty. Just to name a few of my fabulous besties. Thank you. But they weren't always around. It took time to build those relationships. You're probably going to want to quit more than once. You're probably going to wonder if it's worth it, and you will most certainly question yourself, your efforts and your message. But sticking with a clear, concise and consistent message, no matter the ups and downs, is going to be one of the best things you can do to build a strong brand. When you're consistent, you don't have to tell people who you are, what you value, and what you can do for them. They'll already know. If you consistently do what you say you're going to do, people will trust you. And when people trust you, you can better connect and build a relationship with them. And that's what the foundation of a brand really is. The emotions, the experience, and the connection you offer to your clients. You probably won't have it perfectly figured out when you first start putting your message out there and interacting with your ideal client. Heck, I still learn and ref what I'm doing, and I've written three books and I'm working on another one, and I've done hundreds and hundreds of videos and probably over a hundred live streams. But as you listen to what people say and what they remember from your experiences with you, you'll figure out what's connecting and what isn't. It's a process, it's an evolution, and it only happens if you stay consistent with your message and consistent in your efforts to build your author brand, even when it gets tough or it feels like nobody's listening. Whether you realize it or not, that consistency is going to say a lot about you and your brand without ever opening your mouth. Number three, you're stuck on aesthetics when you should be focusing on emotions and experiences. When most people think about branding, they think about colors and logos and websites. And sure, a well designed logo, a stellar website, and a perfectly picked color palette is a plus. But those things aren't the keys to unlock your success. Because your personal brand is not your logo, website or colors. Those things don't matter if you aren't clear on who you are and how you're going to connect with others. Because at its core, your personal brand is you. Yes, you. Even at Book Launchers, where we are a team of dozens and dozens of experts, ultimately, the brand of Book Launchers has been driven by my own personal brand. It's an extension of me to a point, at least until the point where the company culture takes over. But still, it's not the logo that creates the brand, and it's not the logo that connects with your ideal reader and builds the relationship with them. It's how you make people feel, how you understand their pain and how their life is better because of you and your content and your services and that fancy logo. It isn't going to do the work to make that happen. That's your job. Mistake four you're living on social media instead of building your brand on a platform you can control. Listen, I love my home on YouTube and my YouTube besties, but if I only existed on YouTube and I didn't build my brand anywhere else, I'd be setting myself up for some potential trouble in the future. When it comes to social media, you're basically a tenant that doesn't pay much rent or any rent at all. And one day the landlord may decide to start charging you rent or throw your freeloading butt out entirely. So unless you want to be at the mercy of your online landlord, you need to build a community for your brand that you control. The best way to do that is to have a website. You own it, you control it, you design it, you develop it, whatever way works best for your brand. And you can invite people to opt into a newsletter through that website. And this is a great place to mention that you absolutely should connect with us to get our launch letter. It's a bi weekly email that will give you invites to our monthly complimentary deep dive training sessions and insights into publishing and promoting a great book. So go to book launchers.com or if you want a great download, go to book launchers.com 7Steps and download our guide to writing a book that will sell that will get you on our launch letter. Your website is your brand's home base. Even if you're a social media influencer, want to offer insights and encourage engagement, a blog is a great way to make that happen. Looking for a place to display all your testimonials? Design a page just to host them? Trying to connect to your audience by sharing stories and updates? Then you should have an email newsletter. No matter how a visitor gets to your website, your goal is to build a relationship with that person. It should be clear who you are, who you help, how you help, and the value that you provide. Those are the stepping stones that help you connect with the person on the other side of that screen. Then you can develop and deepen that connection through things like your blog or your newsletter without having to worry about that platform for your brand being snatched right out from under you. But just like your logo, your website is not your brand. You are. And if you're not embracing that, then you're making the biggest mistake of all. Mistake five. You're not embracing your entire story. And and it's holding you back from standing out as an author, your brand starts with your story. And not just the good parts. The good, the bad, the ugly, the smelly, the sunny, the funny, the hungry, and even the hairy parts too. Did someone ask for hairy? No? Okay. If you're trying to shape your story into something it's not, then you're building your brand on shaky foundation. And even worse, your priority probably going to be boring. If you want to build a brand that has a real impact and helps change people's lives, then you must stand out. And when you stand out, you risk being disliked or judged. And that can be terrifying. So instead of standing out, a lot of people water down their stories or cut all the ugly parts, or just try to fit into the same box as everyone else. Because that's safer and less scary than standing out and giving people the opportunity to knock you down. But you know what? If everyone likes you, then they probably really don't care what you have to say. And you're being too vanilla. And you're also probably not being honest. It might feel safe to be universally liked, but you won't be interesting enough to build a brand that matters. And you won't be building your brand. You'll be building the brand of an imaginary you that doesn't actually exist, and that's a tough gig to keep up after a while. We all have a brand, but few of us have taken time to cultivate it and become comfortable with who we are. When you embrace your story, all of your story, you define yourself on your own terms. You show the world who you are and what you bring to the table. And your competitive edge isn't a perfect marketing strategy or a huge amount of social media followers. Your competitive edge is you. And amazing things happen when you embrace who you are and how you become that person. Take Lizzie Cangrove for example. Her book Reclaim the Rebel is a guide of 12 rebellious acts to help women find self love through nutrition, movement and mindset. As a wellness coach, she helps her clients achieve unconditional love for their bodies by silencing their inner mean girl. And Lizzie is the expert to go to because she herself struggled with her inner mean girl and overcame an eating disorder. Her story is powerful and it connects to that ideal client. She embraced it as part of her brand and because of that, she's now helping clients all over the world achieve the kind of peace, love and happiness for themselves that she once struggled to find herself. Or check out Nick Kennedy, author of the Good Entrepreneur. Nick wrote his book to help entrepreneurs create both a successful business and an intentional legacy. He aims to inspire other business owners to walk a path of positive change that's bigger than money or status or success. And what makes him the expert? Well, here's a sneak peek right from the description of his book. After spending hundreds of hours in prison visiting his father and the same amount of time flying in a private plane or entrepreneur, Nick Kennedy started a search for meaning beyond the airline that he launched, grew and sold. Now that is a story that stands out. Defining yourself is essential to becoming the well known expert in your industry. Your unique assets, special characteristics, and that story behind it all is what makes you stand out. So don't stifle it. Share it. When you get comfortable with who you are, who you can help and why you want to help, you will worry less about fitting in and focus more on the work in front of you. Okay now if you want to know what to say when you send an email newsletter, this video is for you right here. And if you're good with that and you just want the latest and greatest video we've released, well that is right here. Smash that thumbs up button and then while you're smashing things, smash right into one of these videos. Because I'm waiting for you.