Don’t Have a Writing Project to Promote?
You Can Still Market Your Brand
As an author or professional writer, much of your job requires you to market your work to 
get your books and articles in front of your target readers. This could include speaking engagements, interviews, online advertisements, and networking with other writers and authors.
But even when you don’t have a project in circulation or distribution, it’s important to market your brand. These tips will tell you how.
Learn New Skills and Earn a Degree
Depending on your writing type, you may receive professional help from publishers, publicists, and marketing agencies when it’s time to promote a project. But when you’re promoting your brand as a writer or author, these same resources may not be available to you. You
may need to take this on yourself, especially if you’re just starting and don’t have the budget to enlist professional help.
To learn the skills you’ll need to succeed as a writer or author, you might consider returning to school to to earn your bachelor’s degree in business. With a business degree, you’ll learn how to communicate both verbally and nonverbally, use different types of technology, and ultimately, think like a business owner and entrepreneur. Authors and freelance writers are business owners and improving your business skills will allow you to market yourself as such.
In addition to enrolling in an accredited online degree program, there are some other ways to learn the marketing skills you’ll need to succeed as a professional writer. Amanda DiSilvestro of SearchEngine Journal offers eight free course recommendations that cover topics such as content marketing and building a professional website with WordPress.
Narrow Down Your Target Audience
Once you’ve learned a bit more about marketing and business, you can begin to put these new skills into practice. Writers & Artists suggests starting by narrowing down your target audience and figuring out who your readers are: what are their demographics, interests, and preferred genres? Where do they live and how do they engage with your fellow writers and authors?
Understanding your target market will help you to tailor your marketing and branding efforts to your target audience and gain more readers, followers, buyers, or subscribers.
Build and Promote Your Writer or Author Brand
After narrowing down your target audience, Book Beaver notes that you’ll be ready to start building your brand as a writer or author, including using a pen name. Here are some things to consider when building your brand and to market your writing.
● Brand voice. This includes your logo, style, and author headshot. You’ll incorporate your brand voice when promoting your writing business.
● Author website. Your author’s website should include links to your social media pages; a calendar of events, book signings, and speaking engagements; and a list of your published books or articles (as well as links to where these works can be read or purchased).
● Social media presence. Which social media channels will you use to connect with your readers? This will depend on your target audience, marketing goals, and
● Content marketing. By creating valuable and shareable content, you can develop a following of potential readers who will be interested in what you have to say. Click here to learn more about content creation.
Now that you’ve built your brand, you can promote it and engage with your readers online. As a few ideas, you could start and maintain a blog, and share updates about the books and articles you’ll be publishing in the future, hold contests and giveaways, and conduct polls to better understand what your readers want.
If you’re collaborating with other professionals to market your writing, several online tools can be used to edit and share projects with your team. A few of these tools include Google Docs, Canva, and Trello.
Final Words
As a professional writer or author, building your brand and developing an online presence is just the start. It’s important to build an online presence and maintain one while you market your writing— even when you don’t have any recent projects to promote. Use this time to learn new skills or earn a degree, connect with your target audience, and build long-lasting relationships with your readers. You can do all of this and more by building your personal brand as an author or writer!
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