Once you’ve established your niche you can build your brand around it. Your voice, visual branding, marketing content etc. all need to set expectations for your audience and to do this they need to fit together and be consistent.
Alongside this you’re also going to want to consider the symbolism of your brand – what images and symbols go hand in hand with your writing style? Things like swords and crowns are closely linked with fantasy. Planets, technology etc. automatically make you think of science fiction.
If you write cosy romances then it wouldn’t be of benefit to use lots of dark colours and harsh typography for your brand – soft colours such as pinks, yellows, creams, corals etc. and cursive typography much better portray the expectations of a cosy romance. If you write dark fantasy you’re going to want to go with a much darker colour scheme and a typography that evokes that fantasy feel – serif fonts are very popular with dark fantasy especially if they are reminiscent of a mediaeval style font. If you’re a children’s author you’re going to want to choose typography that clearly shows who your target audience is, children aren’t drawn in by the formal Times New Roman instead choose a font that mimics handwriting, or chalk, even something fun that doesn’t sit in a straight line.
You’re also going to need a strong tagline – your tag line should encompass who you are as an author/as a brand, like the rest of your branding, it needs to set up expectations for your audience. It’s like an elevator pitch for your book, but even shorter and obviously is about you, the author, as a whole. But similar to an elevator pitch helps you pitch your book quickly, your tagline helps to pitch yourself quickly. It’s the hook that’ll bring your ideal audience in.
These choices for your brand then need to be presented consistently to your audience. Stick to your chosen primary and secondary typography and colour schemes for social media graphics, the style of your website etc. so that your branding becomes easily recognisable. You should be able to share content and your audience is able to tell it’s you, without seeing your name. That’s how you know you’ve established your brand effectively.
We are very visual creatures and especially when it comes to social media, where it’s very loud and busy with millions of accounts posting at all hours of the day, we need to grab our audiences attention and if your visual branding is clear and consistent it’s more likely to catch their eye and stop the scroll so they can take in your content and engage with it.
S. M. MITCHELL 