How NOT to FUCK UP your Personal Brand!

By WriteFluence on December 1, 2020

Walk in to a book store and pick up a book. What are the things that make you want to buy that book?

The cover? Absolutely! No wonder they say don’t judge a book by it’s cover.

But let’s look beyond the cover. Are you one of those who flip the book and read the blurb on its back?

Well… We are all guilty of judging the book by its cover and the blurb on it. Would you want to spend your hours reading anything that’s absolutely not appealing to your eyes?

Take one of our editors for example – An absolute Grammar Nazi, she won’t read the article if she finds grammatical errors right at the beginning of the article. Ofcourse, who would want to read the article if you want to write a fantasy story about a witch whom you erroneously spelled out as which?

We will then have several moments of arguments over whether or not to publish the article by editing it the right way. After all, by publishing such articles aren’t we putting our own personal brand at stake?

Personal branding, did we say? Oh yes! It goes a long way. Would you ever upload that weird picture of yours on your driver’s license or more specifically your Aadhaar card, on your Facebook or Instagram profile pictures?

Personal branding is the constant state of learning how to influence the public perception of yourself as a credible brand in your field of expertise.

It’s as simple as that. Authors are judged totally by the reckless decisions they make about writing an article for submission to a firm or publisher and not proofreading it.

Personal branding is similar to corporate branding. It is who you are, the values you stand for, and the way in which you express those. Just as a company’s brand helps to communicate its value to customers and stand out from competition, a personal brand does the same for individuals, helping to communicate a unique identity and clear value to potential employers or clients.

Does every social feed of yours get the same number of likes? Some may be more popular than the others. Some may not get any traction.

Do traditional publishers publish every second book they receive? They receive thousands of them. Do you think they even indulge in reading those first three chapters that you send them for your book submissions?

Decisions are made within the first three sentences. In fact, decisions are made within the first silly mistake you would have made in your proposal draft to them.

So how do you as an author build your brand, the right way?

Let’s ponder over it.

What’s important to readers (customers) while choosing the right business brand that they would follow or buy (authors)?

Customers prefer brands that can carry themselves not just gracefully but also stay rooted despite of whatever heights they rise up to.

Example: Namak ho…? Tata ka!

Has India seen a more modest and generous man in the recent years?

Stay passionate, but humble with your words and you’ll have more readers than ever follow your work.

Make sure you never indulge in plagiarism. This is the cheapest way to gain popularity and doesn’t work in your favour when it comes to gaining the trust of people in the long run.

Use the right words to express your ideas. Personally, we wouldn’t want to read a blog that you name ‘Crap in my life’.

Strict no! Do not expect your crap (oops, article) to be respected by readers if you don’t respect your work, yourself.

There’s a very fine line between writing Erotica and writing vulgar (read, cheesy!) Do not go there if you don’t know how to handle it. Subtlety is the key to Erotica. You’ll end up categorising yourself amongst the thousands of ‘copy-paste writers’ on various (unfortunately renowned) websites; if you get too gruff with what you write.

Lastly, DO NOT get discouraged by rejection. Positivity is the key to personal branding. Noone wants to be around someone who constantly cribs about why things aren’t working for them. It’s just too much negativity.

Didn’t our parents tell us to be a sport when someone else won that elocution competition back in school?

Be that sport and shine on!

Writing a bestseller doesn’t happen overnight. It’s a long process of putting in years of hard work into building your brand by gaining the trust of people and working towards developing your language skills.

Organic followers or readers are what will make you a brand! Unless, you are Mr. or Miss. Richie Rich; and prefer paid branding over genuine appreciation of your work.

Happy writing!