How to Build and Develop A Unique Author Brand

Want to know a secret? It’s a secret about half the authors we work with consider good news, and makes the other half panic.

Ready?

You already have an author brand.

Make no mistake. People already know you’re an author, and about your work. It might not be a lot of people. It might just be your family and writing group. But people know. And that means your writing has a reputation. That’s all a brand is: the reputation you have as an author, both for your personality and for the words and worlds you create.

You already have an author brand. The question is, how good or bad is it, and how much did you do on purpose.

Make no mistake. You have an author brand already. The question is, how good or bad is it and how much you did it on purpose. Without purposefully crafting and grooming your brand, you might end up with a brand like one of these:

Great writer, bad editor
Bad writer, but good marketer
Obviously a huge Game of Thrones fan
Okay writer, but kind of a jerk on social media

Do you want to be known by that sort of brand, or something equally bad or even worse? No. You do not. To avoid that, you need to intentionally, consistently, build the brand you wish you had.

So, How Do I Build My Unique Author Brand?

Building your brand (or rebuilding it, more exactly) is a journey with six steps. You’re never actually done with it, because even the most well-constructed brand needs constant updating and reaffirmation, but everybody starts in the same place.

The six steps to build a unique author brand are:

Identify Your Purpose
Create a Public Face
Perform Market Research
Develop Your Platform
Build Brand Awareness
Refine, Adapt, and Revise

That’s all there is to it. So, let’s begin with…

1. Identify Your Purpose

Like any good plan, developing your author brand begins with understanding what you want the end product to look like. What do you want fans and potential readers to think of when they think of you? Beginning to build your brand with this step informs all the remaining steps, so you’re never moving forward without knowing where to step.

There’s no universal “right answer” for the purpose and form of your author brand. Consider the brands of Hunter S. Thompson, J.K. Rowling, Tucker Max, Billy Graham, and Stephen King. They’re all very different, but the authors are all very successful. The only thing they have in common is that they are honestly, even aggressively, themselves.

Okay, here’s the plan:

Identify four or five authors you would most like to “be like when you grow up”
Study their social media, blog, videos, and other aspects of their brand
List the things they do that would work well for you and your brand
List the things they do that you would not want to have associated with
Use those components to write a “brand brief” describing how you would like to be publicly perceived

You’ll know you’re done when you have a list of descriptive traits and basic actions that can guide what you do with the next steps in this process.

2. Create a Public Face

By now you know what your public face should look like. The next step is to create that face in the places you interact with the public. You don’t need to get fancy or complex to start. Just begin with the components you already have: your blog, your social media platforms, and any classes or presentations you regularly give. If you write on assignment, take a look at your resume and work samples while you’re at it.

Building this basic public face accomplishes two goals. First, it aligns all the places you’re visible so they all show the same brand. Second, it builds a “toolbox” of banners, headshots, quotes, and landing pages you can use in the later steps.

Okay, here’s the plan:

List the places you have a public presence.
Gather a collection of photos and images, professionally done and properly sized, that represent your brand as you have defined it.
Create a collection of quotes, short lines, and bios that are in line with your brand
Update your public places one at a time, so they all match the brand you’re putting forward

You’ll know you’re done when each item on your list has been updated with your new, consistent, professional materials.

3. Perform Market Research

You know what your brand messaging will be, and you’ve set up to deliver that message. Now you need to identify the best ways to get that message in front of potential readers. In this step, you’ll learn about what your potential readers want, and how best to get them to see, interact with, and share your author brand.

It might seem smarter to do this step first, but remember how all successful author brands, no matter how different, are authentically themselves? You don’t want to try tuning your brand to what you think your audience wants. It’s dishonest, and doesn’t work. Instead, you identify who you are, then go find the audience that wants you.

Okay, here’s the plan:

Study the feeds of authors similar to you, noting what topics their fans are most passionate about
Scroll the profiles of fans who already love you, to find brands and books and shows they like in common
Identify the most common keywords associated with your author brand
Use Amazon to find out what your core audience is reading and buying
Have conversations with your fans, and fans of authors like you, to find out what they’d love to see more of

You’ll know you’re done when you have developed a solid profile describing your “superfan” audience. What they like, where they shop, who they read, and what’s most likely to get their attention.

4. Develop Your Platform

You know your brand. You know your audience. Bring the two together with an aggressive campaign of social media, newsletter, and blog action. During this phase, you’ll intentionally and systematically attract followers, friends, and subscribers who like your brand and want to interact with it more.

There are hundreds of different ways to do this successfully. Some work better. Some work worse. Some will work well for you, but poorly for other people. Some will do the opposite. Get started by trying out some of the ideas below:

Okay, here’s the plan:

Post thoughtful comments on the social media feeds of successful authors whose work is like yours
Share things that aren’t about you, but rather about things your fans will find interesting or exciting
Maintain and keep up with a social media content calendar to keep yourself on track
Network with influencers who are listened to by your core audience
Run a series of Facebook Live events where you answer questions, read your work, or share cool facts or news

You’ll know you’re done when you’ve reached a subscriber count or follower list of 500 (or doubled your count if you already have that many).

5. Build Brand Awareness

Your initial platform got built by interacting with people you had at least one contact in common with. These were the low-hanging fruit. Once you’ve maxed that out, it’s time to start developing contacts with strangers. It’s the only way to get your brand out in the larger world, and start making the sales you need to do this full time.

Reaching strangers means advertising. This costs money, but not a lot of money. Start small, and ramp up as the advertising begins to pay for itself in the form of increased sales. Try one of the following techniques this month, and another the next, and a third after that. Don’t try doing them all at once, because you won’t be able to focus well that way.

Okay, here’s the plan:

Run a Facebook or Amazon PPC ad about your work
Run a free giveaway ad enticing people to subscribe to your newsletter
Reach out to paid (or pay-with-a-book) reviewers to promote your work
Schedule a Bookbub or similar promotion to get the word spread wide
Book advertising on a podcast listened to by your core audience

You’ll know you’re done when you have data on the results of three different campaigns. You’ll use that data in the next step.

6. Refine, Adapt, and Revise

This is the step most authors do the least often, and the worst. By now, you’ve tried a number of techniquest to increase your platform and build your brand awareness. Some of them have worked. Some have failed utterly. Your job during this step is to identify which is which, and develop some ideas as to why.

Only by analyzing your results and iteratively testing new ideas can you begin getting the most out of the time, energy, creativity, and money you spend on promoting your unique author brand. This is the difference between professional marketing experts and amateurs, and until you can afford to hire a big gun to do the work for you, it’s up to you.

Okay, here’s the plan:

Analyze the performance of each attempt you’ve made to build platform and increase brand awareness
Find the three or four that performed the best and figure out what they have in common
Find the three or four that performed the worst and figure out what they have in common
Tweak your highest-performing efforts slightly to see if you can optimize them further
For your low-performing efforts, remove the common factor and replace it with one of the common factors from your high-performing efforts

You’ll know you’re done when…you’re never done. You must remain in this stage for the rest of your writing career, or until you make it big and can hire somebody to worry about it for you.

Look, We Never Promised This Would Be Easy…

But we do promise it will be both important, and helpful to your writing career. Start with the first step, then see how much of your public face corresponds well with that purpose you decided on. From there, the other steps in the process exist to help you make them match better.

Want us to help hold your hand through the process? We built a skill that you can do use that will ask you the important questions and use your feedback (both positive and negative) to create the perfect branding and design guidelines for your author business and pen name.

We show how to use it in Training #640: Easy Author Brand & Design Documents with Claude Code.