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Elevate Your Author Brand: How to Conduct a Thorough Platform & Brand Audit

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Your online presence and personal brand are crucial aspects of building a successful career.

Your website, social media accounts, content, and personal brand all contribute to your overall “author platform” and can make or break your ability to connect with readers, gain visibility, and sell books.

But how do you know if your author platform and brand strategy are working for you?

The answer? By conducting a thorough audit.

In this post, I’ll walk you through the process of conducting an author platform and brand audit – including a comprehensive checklist to help you evaluate where you are now (so you can get to where you want to be).

Note: If you’d like to work together to conduct a platform and brand audit for your author business, click here to get all the details.

Website Audit

The first step in conducting an author platform audit is to evaluate your website. Your website is the hub of your online presence, and it’s important that it accurately reflects your brand and provides a positive experience for your readers.

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6-Month Business Planning Guide for Authors

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6-month business planning guide for authors

As an author, you know that publishing a book is just the beginning of your journey. In order to turn your book into a successful writing career, you need to have a clear plan in place. This 6-month business planning guide for authors will help you lay the foundation for long-term success.

Step 1: Define Your Goals

Before you can create a plan, you need to know what you’re working towards. Take some time to think about your goals as an author.

  • Do you want to make a full-time living from your writing?
  • Do you want to build a platform to help you land a traditional publishing deal?
  • Do you simply want to share your message with as many people as possible?

Your goals will shape every decision you make, so it’s important to be clear about what you want to achieve.

Write down your goals and keep them in a place where you can refer to them often. This will help you stay focused and motivated as you work towards your objectives.

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How to Build Brand Awareness Through YouTube Videos (for Authors)

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Brand awareness refers to people’s ability to recognize you and your creative work. It is the very first step in your marketing funnel. Brand awareness also helps you achieve your goals as an author by expanding your target audience, building brand affinity, and improving brand identity. In this guest post, Andre Oentoro simplifies the process of using YouTube videos to grow awareness for your author brand and business.

Brand awareness is very important for any author because it not only entices readers to buy your book but also keeps them coming back for more.

People are more likely to buy goods or use services from a business that they trust and as an author, your ‘business’ is no exception.

Your brand – how people perceive you and your creative work – is one of the first things that will draw readers in when they are searching for a solution to a problem they have or to fulfill an experience they desire.

In addition, if their experience with your brand is enjoyable, they are more likely to tell other people about your work which helps spread the word, further increasing your visibility and reach.

So, how can you build your brand awareness, and what is the best platform?

According to this post by Ahrefs.com, YouTube is the most visited website in the past few years. It is also the second-largest search engine, proving that people are crazy about video content.

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How to Launch a Book With No Platform: Your Lean Launch Plan

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Having a solid platform and network in place before you launch your book gives you and your book a powerful advantage. 

Having a ready-made fan base will significantly increase the odds that your book launch will be successful—and that the goals you’ve set for yourself and your book will be reached or surpassed. 

Yet, despite this, many authors find themselves with the launch of their book imminent, and no platform or community in sight. 

With a book in hand (or nearly so), and no time for the long-term, slow-and-steady platform-building approach, what’s a panicked author to do? 

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The Ultimate SEO Strategy for Writers: How to Increase Search Rankings and Get Noticed

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SEO strategy for writers

This guest post by Digital Marketing Specialist Jake Hughes is a complete SEO for beginners walk-through and guide. So if you’re new to SEO strategy or search engine optimization, and want a crash course, this SEO tutorial is for you.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is often overlooked by lots of writers and authors because the topic is seen as complex, time-consuming and the value isn’t always immediately obvious.

However, if you’re serious about developing an online presence for your author brand, book, or website, then you’re going to have to think about SEO. 

I promise that it’s not as scary (or boring) as it seems and you can impact your SEO without getting bogged down in the technical stuff. This is a no-coding required SEO strategy for writers that will help you to get more eyeballs on your work.

I know a few of you are still dubious. So before we discuss what it is and some of the strategies you can use, let’s go over the benefits of SEO.

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Authors with Platforms Sell Books.

It’s that simple.

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