Photo from Morgue File

As an author, I know one of the most important things I need to do is build my brand. Building your author brand is how you get both yourself and your books well known enough that people recognize both. This isn't always an easy thing when you're a little known author in a sea of self-published and small e-pub published authors. But it's not impossible. Here are five tips for helping to build your author brand:

1. Use your name, not your book title. Many authors try to build their brand by using their book title rather than their name. The problem with this is that once you write your next book, then you're stuck with a website domain with the old title and people have no idea who you are. You end up having to re-build your brand based on your name all over again.

2. Blog, blog and blog some more! Blogs are a great way to build your brand. If you blog often enough, even twice a week is fine, then you'll get a following over time and people will remember your name, and hopefully your books!

3. Buy a domain. I can't stress this one enough. Domains are cheap, like $12.95 for a year. It's worth it and will help to build your brand. Oh, and make sure you use the name you write under, whether that's your real name or a pseudonym.

4. Attend online chats and get interviewed on online radio shows. Again, these help to build your brand. Even if you're not the sort to want to be in the spotlight, both of these are easy and you can do them from the comfort of your home. The more people hear about you, your books and your name the better.

5. Participate in Blog Hops and Blog Tours. Blog Hops and Blog Tours are another great way to build your brand, and they bring more new readers to your books. Blog Hops in particular since they are done with other authors will bring both your own readers and all the other author's readers as well, so they are a great way to maximize getting your name out there. Blog Tours bring in the regular readers of particular blogs who might not have otherwise seen you or your books. Both are a great way to build your brand and sell your books!

Remember it's all about the name. Whatever name you write under is the brand you want to build, so be sure and get your name out there wherever and whenever you can!

Photo from Morguefile

One of the things I've been playing around with is how to get the word out about this and other blogs that I write for. While it's easy to write the occasional post and hope someone visits, it's not enough to just Ping your blog and hope they come. So one of the things I've been toying with is how to use my RSS feed more effectively. In case you don't know what an RSS or Atom Feed is, it's simply a website address with a listing of all the most current posts on your blog.

Your RSS feed can be one of your most effective tools when it comes to getting the word out about your blog and your books. The easiest way to get the most out of your RSS feed is to tie it into your social media sites. Thanks to sites like Twitter Feed and Hootsuite this has become much easier. Although I find Twitter Feed to be the best tool to use to tie my RSS feed into my Twitter and FB accounts. RSS feeds with Hootsuite are a little more complicated and I've about given up on this tool for posting from my RSS feeds.

So, if you want to take the pain out of posting manually to your Twitter and FB pages sign up for a Twitter Feed account and set it up to automatically post to your social media anytime you post to your blog!

Photo from Stock Xchng

When you not only write but work a day job and have a family, finding time to write can be difficult, especially when you don't make writing your priority. Here are five tips for learning how to make your writing your priority.
1. Be selfish. Don't worry about this, it's okay to be selfish with respect to your writing, after all you're a better person when you're allowed the time write, and when you allow yourself the time to write. I know I am.

2. Schedule a time during your day each day to write. Whether that is when you first wake up, or before you go to bed at night, schedule a time to write. It doesn't have to be the same time every day, but make sure it is part of your regular schedule. That way you'll be sure to get your writing done, and you'll enjoy it more, and it will come easier when it becomes a habit to do so every day.

3. Have a writing plan. Decide what you're going to work on ahead of time. Whether that's blog posts, or your novel or freelance articles, and then stick to it. Try not to get distracted by other writing projects you may have. If you do find yourself doing so, gently bring yourself back to the planned writing project and begin working on it again.

4. Decide on how much time you're going to work on your writing project ahead of time. This way you can tell friends and family, "please don't interrupt me for thirty minutes or three hours whichever it may be. Then set a timer or use an online bell such as the mindfullness bell. Write until the bell goes off. Don't edit, don't go back and re-read what you've written, you're just writing now that's it. And remember it's okay to write badly, some of my best stuff has ended up being from stuff that initially was some of my worst writing!

5. Shut the door to your office and put out a do not disturb sign. If that won't work, maybe you don't have an office or writing cave to go into, go to a local coffee shop and purchase some tea put your headphones on with soothing music and then write until your bell goes off!

I hope you find these tips helpful! They're working for me and I hope they work for you as well.

Photo from MorgueFile

With all the new social media out there, it's hard to know how to use it effectively if you're an author. Many authors just throw up their hands and give up in fact, or they post a lot of personal stuff but not much about their books, or they go the other way and overdo talking about their books. So what's the best way to effectively use Social Media if you're an author?

Here are five tips to get you started:

1. Post about a mix of personal and promotional. This means it's okay to share some personal things about yourself and your life that you're comfortable sharing, but then also share when you have a new release, or excerpts or links to them  for example too.

2. Share useful author information. If you're like me, you probably have followers who are either aspiring authors or newly minted authors. One way to share useful information is do like I'm doing here and posting promo tips weekly. You can also post links to other author's/blogger's articles, free software and anything else that new or aspiring authors might find useful.

3. Share useful reader information. We always have to balance what we share with our followers between the authors in the group and the readers in the group. One way to help fellow authors is to post about when their books are free, or when they've posted new freebies, or when they have an interesting blog post that contains a sneak peak to a new book. I don't personally consider other authors competition, I figure there are enough readers to go around, so I like to share the love so to speak. When you do this you build good will both with your fellow authors and readers alike.

4. Post regularly, but not too much! There's a fine line between overdoing it when it comes to posting to Social Media and posting enough to keep yourself in the reader's thoughts. Too much is posting forty or fifty times a day, and yes, I've seen people do this. Regularly is at least twice a day and not more than five times a day. If you do post more than five times make sure it's not all promo stuff and that you're engaging your readers by communicating with them.

5. Engage your readers. This means you post and then you check for comments and you respond to those comments. Hit and run posts will not get you new readers, instead, people will stop following you, stop responding to you and well you get the picture. This doesn't sell books, instead it turns readers off. So engage your readers, and followers, communicate with them often and you and your books will stay in the reader's eye.

That's it. If you follow these tips for using Social Media effectively, you'll never have to worry about losing readers! Good luck!