What does it take to get your brand noticed?
While I have been writing for nearly 40 years, I didn’t get professionally published until I had the opportunity for a couple of short stories to be published in anthologies. That began in 2011 – ten years ago.
I dipped my toe into the self-publishing waters via nonfiction first. Taking a year of my Pathwalking blog posts, I did my first self-publishing in 2013.
After years of submitting to agents, rejections, and zero forward motion, I finally stepped up to the plate and self-published fiction. As 2014 came to a close, I published the first novel of my Source Chronicles series, Seeker.
After that, I worked in fits and starts with self-publishing. Until 2020. Last year, I self-published the first two novels of my sci-fi Void Incursion series and a standalone fantasy novel.
In 2021 I am publishing 6 novels. I am beginning a new sci-fi series I am SUPER excited about called Forgotten Fodder and continuing the Void Incursion series. Additionally, the Forgotten Fodder series will be recorded as audiobooks.
I can and do share all of this via social media, on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn. It reaches my friends and even further out via hashtags. This is all awesome – but unless my friends share, retweet, or otherwise spread the word – still limiting.
How do you get noticed? How do you get your brand out there, into the world, to generate buzz, gain interest, and ultimately more sales? That is, of course, the challenge.
Here are some thoughts on how to do this.
Get noticed via advertising
Advertising can be powerful, influential, controversial, the cure and cause of any number of ills. Truth in advertising is a fascinating notion that tends to straddle the line between fact and fiction (to a certain degree).
Advertising can take a whole lot of forms. This includes posts to social media, Google ads, TV, radio, newspapers, billboards, and on and on. For the most part, when it comes to writing and the arts – and self-publishing even more specifically – it’s digital advertising you need to look into.
This takes several different forms, too. You can advertise to specific demographics, certain people, interests, and so forth. An ad can be as broad or as focused as you would like it to be.
One thing to consider is advertising a specific item for sales and/or to boost your overall brand.
The largest challenge in advertising is how much it costs. You can spend a hundred dollars here, a couple of hundred there – or thousands. Knowing the effectiveness of advertising – and where it’s best to spend the money – probably requires a specialist.
There are agencies all over the internet you can find to assist with this. That, too, is going to cost money. If like me, you’re an independent business entity, spending money anywhere for anything can be majorly disconcerting.
Sure, you sometimes need to spend money to make money. But it’s best to be careful, clever, and wise in how you do this. But advertising is a definite means to an end to get noticed.
Blogs, podcasts, reviews, and other ideas to get noticed
One thing I would very much like to do is get some guest blog and podcasting stints. I would like to find blogs and podcasts on either the fiction or nonfiction topics I cover to get myself out there more.
I had one such opportunity and was interviewed as a guest on this podcast. It was a fascinating and fun experience. Did it get me more noticed? Maybe. It didn’t hurt, that’s for sure.
Amazon loves books that get reviews. There are ways to entice book reviewers to look your work over – and you can certainly spend money to hire a publicist to help get you more reviews. I must admit that, unfortunately, thus far that’s not amounted to as much as I should like. More reviews of any and all my work would be great.
This brings me to another issue. My first novels self-published also featured covers created by me. Compared to my newest works – where I hired a professional artist – they’re very mediocre at best. It is time, therefore, to redo them and modernize them. Also, I will take the opportunity to modify the formatting of the ebooks a bit, too.
The more I publish via Amazon the better I get at formatting and blurbs.
Cons, speaking opportunities, and the like are an excellent way to get noticed – when we’re not in the middle of a global pandemic. For the rest of 2021 – or at the very least until the fall – this is a non-starter. That’s not to say you can’t seek virtual variants of these for opportunities. But attending cons and talks online is not the same as the in-person experience.
What else helps you get noticed?
This is the conundrum I face as I strive to build and increase my brand. How do I get more people to see my works – and most importantly BUY THEM?
I’m exploring this all the time. I have Googled, more than once, ways to get noticed. One thing I believe I need to do is to seek out or create a writing community to spend more time with.
I am a part of several groups on Facebook for this purpose. There are frequent interactions with other writers as we share ideas and help one another out with advancing our work, stories, and gaining recognition.
But – you have to be careful because too much self-promotion tends to violate group rules. When it comes to getting noticed that’s a big part of the process.
And that’s the final challenge. Self-promotion can feel a whole lot like bragging. For some writers and other artists, this is super-challenging because of their introverted nature. It feels wrong and like it’s against your general personality.
For me, an ambivert (introvert with extrovert tendencies), the danger is fears of pomposity, arrogance, and seeming narcissistic. Long ago I tended to self-aggrandize and talk a lot about myself due to insecurities and self-esteem issues. While that was practically a lifetime ago – it’s a going concern I remain mindful of.
What does it take to get your brand noticed? Persistence. Believe in yourself, your work, your art, and keep going. Push. Do the work, improve upon it, do the best you can. It all begins there. After that, you’re better positioned to get noticed.
Thank you for being part of my ongoing journey, for joining me, and for inspiring me and my craft.
This is the ninety-sixth article exploring the ongoing creative process. Please take a moment to check out the collection of my published works, which can be found here.
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