Branding, Contributing and Promoting for Authors
I recently had a conversation with a few people on twitter about branding, as well as contributing content and spreading the word of content you find, while also still promoting your own stuff, and where the line is for that. Especially when it comes to authors and their blogs and twitter accounts. And considering the company I run with requires me to do many of the things authors actually need to do to get their stuff promoted I have a collection of resources to offer to other authors who have similar questions. After all, it’s not hard to come across posts that talk about what you should do with your branding but no one really discusses the fine line between branding and just advertising, and for authors it is crucial! So first I want to start with branding itself.
Branding for Authors
Authors have somewhat of a unique version of branding considering they aren’t technically building a business, but they still have to decide on a brand, which is often times either the name of their main series, or their author name. And out of all the stuff you will do to establish that brand, choosing it is actually going to be the easiest. But I’m not here to tell you how you should choose your brand. The biggest issue is establishing it. If you aren’t sure where to start there are plenty of posts around that like from Bad Red Head Media, who actually goes a little into site optimization. I’m going to give you all the juicy little details though when it comes to your content. After all, the most important thing a writer produces is the writing. But novel-writing and internet writing can actually be a bit different.
Do it for Others
I always hear from writers that they often write for themselves, and I can completely understand that, but I’ve never been down that path. I do write things I would want to read, yes, but I specifically WRITE because I want others to experience it. And when it comes to promoting and getting your ‘brand’ out there or your books, writing for others is the key! When you sit down to write a blog post or really anything, consider why you are writing it, what you are trying to say and most of all… what can a reader get out of reading it!
You’d think this is completely contrary to what a blog actually is: talking about yourself. You can talk about yourself! But it should lead somewhere, provide a lesson, produce humor, it should give something to the reader so that not only do they take something back from having read your blog post, but they want to share it with others because it impacted them.
I’ve always been a firm believer that humor goes a long way. And it might suck for some of you that say you just can’t tell a joke or get people to laugh at what you write, but if you suck at it, then work at it! That’s the only way it will get better. Humor is infectious across the internet too, the videos and blog posts and stories that tend to go viral are often ones that people can laugh at! Which brings me to the next thing.
Find the Emotion
There is one thing in common with every viral thing on the internet. Emotion. It doesn’t matter whether the writing or video makes a person laugh, cry, be inspired, or angry, they all elicit emotion from the people reading it. Of course it’s easier to say these kinds of things that actually do them, but among the writing scene Ksenia Anske often has a lot of inspirational things to say. It’s important to still be yourself, when trying to get emotional responses from people, and the best way to do that is to make sure you are putting emotion into your writing on the internet.
When you are putting in that emotion, people will see it. And if all you have is anger, tap into it. Don’t be afraid of the emotions that often get labeled bad. It’s not just things that people like that get promoted across the internet, it’s also the stuff that pisses people off. Of course, be ready for the backlash from that like when a reviewer trashed an Anne Rice novel and all the fans brought holy vampire vengeance down on her for expressing her opinion. But, I wouldn’t have linked to this reviewer or known them if they hadn’t caused that anger, so anger can be just as powerful.
Learn to Promote… Others
There’s a common idea in the SEO industry, that relevancy is crucial and when it comes to writers, relevancy can be stretched quite a bit. I talk about a lot of different things, from diversity and sexuality to fairy tales, but if there is one thing I do the most it is promoting others. Specifically I promote those that are in my same niche essentially. I talk about and write book reviews for writer’s like Malinda Lo (who has a great piece on LGBT stereotypes in writing) and Elora Bishop (who has a lesbian fairy tale project), because they have books that not only I find interesting and worth talking about, but also because I want others to experience that writing. And this promotion is a two-way street. You see, when someone then looks up reviews of books by those authors, they are likely to come across my blog reviewing it and discover I also have a book that would fit within those same categories as those authors.
By learning to promote others, you literally promote yourself. I’m not going to tell you the best way to promote others, there are hundreds of ways and all of them can be quite effective; retweets, linking them in your posts like I’ve been doing as providing resources, having conversations with them. It can all have an impact, and best of all, this isn’t even mentioning that those people you are essentially promoting are more likely to promote you back! And the less promoting you have to do of yourself, the better. Because no one likes a person who is constantly promoting only their works, especially if you are spamming everyone’s DM box on twitter the moment they follow you.
The Little Details
There’s so much more I could discuss on this topic, but I feel closing out with some of the minor things in the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) industry that benefit writers and are such small things that often get overlooked! And worst of all, no one ever talks about them, except people in SEO.
Titles
One of the big ones, is titles. Titles of your blog posts have massive impact on your internet visibility. Yes, witty titles can be great! But chances are when you title your post “The Sausage adventures!” and it’s a post about your experiences through high school, where you one time make references to sausages, it’s probably not the best title. Often times witty titles will make you less visible to the internet world and search engines, or visible to the wrong people. There is a compromise though. Go for the boring title like I have for this post, Branding, Contributing and Promoting for Authors, as your basic title; the one that ends up in the url. Then your first line can be with a ‘heading 1′ tag and be your more clever title.
By doing this, I ensure that the people (authors) looking for information on branding, contributing and promoting are able to find this post, while also having my wittiness clear the moment the post is opened up. It maximizes my exposure by drawing in the right people, and not those random people who were looking for sausage festival information.
Sub-headings
This is one of the areas that I often keep missing with my incredibly lengthy posts. Breaking up your blog posts makes people more likely to actually finish reading it. It’s all about bite-sizes. And that includes your paragraphs. Yes, in school you are taught that your paragraphs should be 5-8 sentences long. And I’m telling you throw that idea in the trash. It is perfectly acceptable to have a one sentence paragraph, in fact for dramatic effect it can be crucial!
When it comes down to it, your writing should have as much white space as possible. This is one of the areas that Ksenia Anske suffers with from her blog. It’s large paragraph chunks, which not everyone wants to bother reading because it just looks SO imposing to read through. By breaking it down in smaller paragraphs and adding sub-headings to it, you make it more digestible for the average reader that will come across it. You can also be quite witty with your sub-headings as you chose.
Although sub-headings are not the only thing you need to or can use. Bullet points, and numbering can be just as effective. In fact posts like on cracked which often do a numbering system show that sub-heading and numbering system in effect. They are more digestible because of it.
Maximize Your Impact
When posting, or especially contributing to other sites on the internet, maximizing your overall impact with that particular piece of writing can be everything! This includes making sure your posts are able to be up at certain times, so that the most people will see it when you first release it. But it also factors in things like keeping a steady schedule too. If people know you will have content on particular days, they are more likely to read it and spread it to others as well, something like a daily routine similar to a newspaper.
But there is an area of maximizing your impact that is always over-looked. It’s not just about the initial impact, but prolonged exposure as well. Making sure your title is fitting to the post will let it be found in search engines better, linking to that post in other posts you make on other sites will also spread exposure! If you previously talk about and provide tips on writing diversity into books, then instead of re-hashing things you said, linking to that article can have more of an impact and cover more without you saying as much on a side topic.
Don’t forget about tags either! What you tag your post with will also determine how well others find it. Which brings me to the final point.
Bibliography it up!
If you’ve done any kind of academic writing, you’d know very well and probably hate the bibliography. And I’m not saying you should include a list of resources where you got all your information for your post at the end of the article. But you should be linking throughout the article! To more than just you and your site. Putting links throughout the article is the internet way of providing your resources, and better yet! You can even provide references to stuff that would only make sense if someone read a particular thing on the internet. Want to make a joke in your post, but afraid most people would miss it because they haven’t read a particular web comic strip? Just link it with the joke!
One of the biggest things in SEO is using your links! Don’t be afraid to link stuff, don’t be afraid to take a moment in the middle of your blog post and go and search for particular videos or articles you want to spread to others. You’ll find people are more likely to enjoy and spread your posts out there when they also include other great posts. Plus the link color and text can also be a way of breaking up the white text, though you shouldn’t just link for the sake of linking, what you link should also be relevant in some way, like the two links in this paragraph to help authors with their ‘platform’ or otherwise called ‘brand’.
The End… of the World as we Know it?
As a final note, don’t forget to communicate. We live in an age where you don’t even need to write a book to have an impact on thousands of people. Just a tweet there, or a few words here and you can make a difference in thousands of lives with your written word. So interact, communicate, and most of all spread your word.
Cause everyone has a story to tell.
So what’s yours?
