Finding My Brand

I have taken a number of marketing classes. As I have mentioned previously, marketing is what I studied for my degree. That doesn't however make me an expert. In fact I think when it comes to personal ventures a good deal of the knowledge we gained beforehand tends to go right out the window and it is only from either taking a giant step back, or better yet coming from someone with an objective outside view, that we can see things that would help us as we promote ourselves and our work.

I have twice in the past created business cards for myself. While I cannot quantitatively say how much they help, it is something I have that I can hand to someone at events or when I am out working on a book or show that allows them to remember my name. As I continue to learn I have found ideas that would improve my positioning in the marketplace as well as ways to use items like business cards and swag to help boost my image. One of the most important things I had forgotten was that all of your marketing materials should tie together to present a uniformed front to your clients. In this case I need everything to come together so my readers can see something and know right away it is mine.

Colors and fonts are a great way to do that, also a logo that is memorable can keep you and your products in the forefront of someone's mind. My artistic director suggested a royal purple that fades to black with a silver writing. Not sure of the font yet but I think it is elegant enough to represent the world of writing while general in terms of not siding with any particular genre. This is important since I am not set on any one particular type of book at the moment. I have charity anthologies, a thriller, a romance and two YA dramas one based on a true story. I am still finding my home at the moment but I enjoy writing in the entire variety of genres.

I am also going to be tying the colors into my website and materials I take to shows with me. Once I have figures that out I want to use the font I have my name on the cover of my books to be used on my cards, materials and website as well. I am doing this to make sure my branding is readable and recognizable. It will take some time, partially because I have no idea how to do most of it but I will post pictures as I figure things out to help others that may be working on similar endeavors.