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Read MoreTips For Positioning Your Book In A Crowded Field
One of the best examples of book title positioning and personal branding I’ve found in a long time is Jennifer Lee’s The Right-Brain Business Plan: A Creative, Visual Map for Success.
I was immediately impressed by the book’s positioning, it’s excellent execution, and its strong sales. The more I looked and read, the more I liked. There are over 400 business planning books listed on Amazon.com, but when you search business plan, Jennifer’s Right-Brain Business Plan currently shows up as Number 3.
More important, a you’ll see when you visit Jennifer Lee’s Right-Brain Business Plan and Artizen Coaching websites, the personal brand she created with her book has lead to growing stream of back-end products, services, and speaking opportunities.
This is author personal brand building at its best!
Origins of personal branding success
So, what can we learn from Jennifer Lee’s book positioning and personal branding success?
I tried to “reverse engineer” the steps she may have gone through. Here’s a possible scenario:
- Identify the competition. Start by identifying as many competing books in your field as possible. Create a list, mind map, spreadsheet, or stack of index cards with author and title information, plus online links, for as many competing books as possible. Include a rough indication of each title’s sales, so you can gauge the popularity of each title.
- Look for patterns. As you review competing books, look for patterns, characteristics, or attributes, shared by many of the titles. Be sensitive to your reactions as you analyze competing books. Use subjective terms like academic, dull, easy-to-understand, too detailed, hard-to-read, simplified, can’t relate to, etc., to describe each book.
- Group the titles into categories. Next, organize the titles into categories reflecting the patterns you’ve discovered. What are the characteristics you’ve discovered that apply to most of the books? More important, what are the characteristics associated with the most successful books? What are the characteristics associated with the least-successful books?
Writing your book & building your personal brand
Once your research has helped you understand the strengths and weaknesses of existing books, and the limitations of currently-available books, it will be easier for you to locate a fresh position for your book and your brand.
Locating the right position for your book and your personal brand will be even easier to the extent that you have previously targeted your ideal readers and created reader personas describing their characteristics.
Use visuals to support your brand
Next, look for ways you can create a unique visual identity to reflect your book and personal brand.
Visuals play an important role in brand building success. A few carefully-created visuals can the story of your book, create an immediate resonance with your intended readers, and set your title apart from the competition.
More important, the right graphics will create a family resemblance relating your book to your information products, i.e., worksheets, and your coaching, consulting, and speaking events, as you can see when you visit Jennifer Lee’s websites.
Once you’ve established an appropriate graphic style to support your position, use it consistently throughout your marketing and personal brand building. The graphics you use will rapidly become an important part of the equity associated with your personal brand.
Takeaway
It takes more than words to write a successful book and build a lasting personal brand. A lot of the work takes place before you begin to write. Success requires positioning your book relative to existing books in your field. Success also requires choosing a way to visually set your book apart from the competition. What are your thoughts on positioning books in a crowded field. Do you have any suggestions, or favorite examples, of equally well-positioned books you’d like to share as comments, below?
Author:
Roger C. Parker is an author, book coach, designer, consultant who works with authors, marketers, & business professionals to achieve success with brand-building books & practical marketing strategy. He helps create successful marketing materials that look great & get results, and can turn any complex marketing or writing task into baby steps. Visit his blog to learn more or ask a question.
LeadershipNow 140: February 2012 Compilation
Here are a selection of tweets from February 2012 that you might have missed:
- @LeaderChat: 7 Ways to Build Accountable Organizations @Forbes
- Joe Folkman: Thoughts and research on how to keep your strengths from becoming weaknesses
- Mike Henry Sr: 4 Steps to Building an Emotionally Intelligent Culture
- Stop peddling the status quo by @tomasacker
- Influence Begins on the Inside by @mjasmus
- A brilliant and meaningful idea, even if placed directly in people’s paths, is simply not enough to engage them today. ~ @TomAsacker
- Just One Thing: Don’t Presume You Know by @JamesStrock
- FT: The careerist: Managing the clever but lazy
- @wallybock 's 2/17/12 Weekend Imagination Igniters: How has information and transparency changed the way you work?
- The truth is that all of us attain the greatest success and happiness possible in this life whenever we use our...
- Are You Too Shy to Lead? by @DanielGolemanEI
- @DougSundheim: Introverted Leaders: The Right Mentors for Millennials - AMA Shift
- @Bill_George: A new Era for Global Leadership Development
- An Awesomely Simple Formula for Business Success by @AwesomelySimple
- @greatleadership: Top 10 Excuses for Being a Lousy Manager
- How IBM's Sam Palmisano Redefined the Global Corporation by @Bill_George
- @chesterelton: What to do about monsters at work?
- FT: All great leaders need great lieutenants - You can’t do your job if you are buried in ...
- Leaders: Replace the No Whining Sign by @KateNasser Lead by example.
- @walllybock 's Boss's Tip of the Day: Ben Franklin's Two Questions
- Leadership Is A Choice by @drbret
- @Archifilter: Should you Listen to your critics and seek feedback or Ignore your critics & follow your intuition?
- @Jim_Kouzes: Leaders can learn a lot about being authentic & handling adversity from Meryl Streep says @JohnBaldoni
- @DPForrester: No surprise, but a very interesting new study that there is no time to think as a leader.
- The Truth About Leadership by @LollyDaskal
- From @stefanstern: Stars vs drones: Workers of the world are divided (FT.com's future of the company series.)
- From @KevinEikenberry "Five Love Affairs Every Leader Should Have"
- "Failure Week" a festival designed to accustom students to the possibility that they won't always come out on top
- I don’t think you can hit purpose enough as a senior leader. You cannot oversell “Here’s why we’re here.”
- Read Never and Always by @drbret
- We Need A Courageous Conversation by @LollyDaskal
- Authentic Service is Built on Humility
- You Can't Run from Your Shadow by @FSonnenberg
- Conflict can happen when other people misinterpret our strengths.
- Who really benefits from putting high-tech gadgets in classrooms? LA Times
- HBR Video: Get Your Employees Engaged with @DougConant
- Read: What if leadership wasn't a promotion? by @wallybock
- Via @Bill_George Can introverts succeed in business? | Not the right question, it's about vision and investment in leadership dev.
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Read More
Getting Into HR?
Periodically, a reader's question has universal appeal and application so I am sharing both the question and my response. This particular question comes to me a lot, particularly from people who want to transition into the field of HR. With little to no formal education in HR and little job experience, what can the individual do to quickly impact their ability to work in our field? How would you respond to Ann's question?
... Read MoreAnd the winner is . . .
We recently held an iPad giveaway for our HRmarketer software subscribers. After our Beta launch of SocialEars in late 2011, we wanted to collect some feedback on how our clients were using and benefiting from SocialEars in their marketing and PR efforts.When developing our new social media listening and analytics 
software, we had our own ideas of how people could use the one million (and counting!) pieces of content we’ve archived and analyzed. We’re encouraged by the variety of ways our clients are using SocialEars to filter through “the noise,” quickly discover what’s trending in the HR space, find new content and “influencers,” and more!
After collecting testimonials for several weeks, we want to congratulate Stephen Anderson, Vice President of AFI International Group, whose name was drawn for the iPad giveaway!
Here is a sampling of what our clients are saying about SocialEars:
- “Social Ears is the only tool that allows me to see who is a true digital influencer in the topics important to my business. Other tools only let you see the most recent influencers, but Social Ears allows you to choose which metrics to review. This is the most user friendly social media tool I've ever used.” – Ashley Hurney, MTM Recognition
- “My favorite part about SocialEars is the way you can really customize what you're looking for, from the tag cloud to adjustable timeframes. It's just what I need as I start my own HR blog -- I can find credible voices talking about the issues I'm concerned about, all in one spot. No more endless googling! Thanks for this intuitive addition to your services!” – Jessica Wauhaus, CompData Surveys
- “SocialEars saved much time and headache by allowing me to seamlessly identify relevant industry editors to invite to an upcoming conference.” – Stephen Anderson, AFI International, IMAC
- “What a great new product to help thought leaders and companies connect with others who have similar interests and to best practice share! On the web, so many people are talking, but it is difficult to figure out who to listen to and where to spend your time! SocialEars really helps you make sense of how to do this and helps to maximize your time, as well as review your own impact on social media and your industry. I can’t wait to spend more time surfing this site and using the tool!” – Zachary Misko, Kelly OCG
- “Amazing tool to identify trending topics and influential people! Making my day that little bit easier! Thanks!” – Aoife Gorey, Profiles International
- “We are using SocialEars to identify what's being discussed in the industry to tailor our web content to what people want, and improve SEO.” – Geoff Simpson, Presagia
For more information about SocialEars, check out this recent TotalPicture Radio Podcast interview with our CEO Mark Willaman and SocialEars Lead Developer Peter Odryna.
Thanks to all of our clients who participated. And congrats again to Stephen! Enjoy your iPad!
