OK, so those of you who keep up with my doings and undoings, know that I'll be attending the Killer Nashville mystery writers conference again this year.
(They love me. What can I say? Flipped Out is up for a Silver Falchion award, too, so if you're going, don't forget to vote, even if it isn't for me.)
Anyway, last year, I foolishly offered to do a workshop on branding. It didn't make the cut, since the workshop schedule was already full when this brilliant idea came to me.
This year, it made it onto the schedule without me even knowing about it. I got a newsletter from the conference touting my branding workshop, and that's how I found out that I was going to do one.
It'll take place on Friday, August 23rd, at 10:10, in the Vista-D conference room, if you find yourself at the Hutton that weekend. The complete schedule for the conference is HERE, if you're thinking of attending.
My question for you, as I attempt to put this workshop together, is as follows:
If you were to attend a workshop on branding, what would you like to come away with?
Are there any aspects of branding that are especially interesting to you?
What type of activities might you like to do, that would be of help to you in achieving your own branding goal?
Any aspect of branding in particular you'd like clarification on?
Is there a particular kind of handout you'd find helpful after the fact, when you were back home and trying to implement the things you'd learned?
I find the concept of branding to be absolutely fascinating, and I'm looking forward to sharing what I love about it, but I want my presentation to be useful, so if you'll help me out by guiding me in the right direction, I'd surely appreciate it.
11 comments:
I think you need to have a "JB RANCH" brand made (a la cattle brand) to use as a pointer :)
Good luck! My biggest question about branding is, what is the most effective way to promote yourself and your brand? Does blogging really work? Is it time-effective? What about Twitter/Facebook/Pinterest/Google+?
Have fun at the conference!
How does an unknown author with a yet-to-be-published novel get anyone to care about a blog or author page?
Given that we all have limited time, where should we be investing it?
What are the most important compnaents of a cohesive brand?
Good luck--sonds like a great workshop!!
Great questions. I'm with Susan, Lucy, and Caryn.
I'll add another. What if you write in more than 1 genre? Should you brand yourself separately for each genre (maybe with different pen names) or try to encompass them all under one? And how would you do that? I think you might have some experience with that;)
Larissa
I really want to go to Killer Nashville, but my scheduling might not work out this year. I'm signed up for a book festival the next weekend. Really bummed and would love to go to your workshop!
Yes, definitely, with so little time and so much to do, I would want to know the 3-4 "musts" of branding. What three things must I do/have to build a brand?
Also, as writers diversify, I'd want to hear the pros and cons of different names/different markets - does that dilute your brand or help readers avoid confusion?
Agree with Leslie above - I need a step by step branding workshop. I know quite a bit about branding, having attended two all day branding events and a two hours one for an organization using branding. Ten steps to branding power would be great - with a small amount of detail under each - that what to do sort of thing.
I think one of the first things folks might want to know is to take a deep breath. It's been my experience that branding shows up in everything you do - your blogs, your tweets, your FB interactions, as well as your books.
Your professional self is your brand. One thing many new authors (including me initially) don't do is to separate their personal and professional posts on FB.
I started out using FB only for professional reasons, but there is a limit to how many friends you can have. It is necessary to build up a readership on an author page which can have an unlimited amount of fans.
Now the trick is to move those thousand some odd folks over to the other page. If you have tips for that, I'd be ever so grateful!
I'm with Susan. I'd love to know the best place to put my limited time. The couple of branding classes I've attended made branding a full time job.
Wow. Everybody has said what I'd ask:
- Where do I invest my time (blog, Twitter, FB, Pinterest)?
- How do I get my name out?
- If I'm unpublished and unknown, how do I market my brand?
- What if you write multiple genres? Pen name? No? And how does that affect your brand?
Thanks for the input, y'all! Helps me figure out where to focus the workshop, yanno? Hope to see some of you there in August or September (when I'm talking branding with the Music City Romance Writers).
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