Tag: importance of branding

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What On Earth Is My Brand?

carolyncordon

I’m a Writer, Poet, Editor, Art Installation Collector/Creater/Curator …, Creative Writing workshop presenter. From the first two in that list I make tiny bits of money, occasionally, and for the first, a larger bit of money once a year.

The rest of the items on that list are things I do as a volunteer, or for myself. You could say I’m a Creative, and you would be getting close to the truth, but, but, it isn’t a business, at least not yet it isn’t. The question is though, could I make it a business, and a maybe bigger question is, do I want to make it a business?

These ideas are in my head more right now because I’ve paid a reasonable amout of money to attend a day of ‘small or micro’ business workshops, all in the one place, all with the aim to teach me, and the others attending, how to be better at running their business.

I had a fit of enthusiasm and registered, willingly paying out the money, with barely a thought about whether I could actually call myself someone who was, or could be in business.

I sell my books every now and then, but most often for only enough money to get back the acual money put in to having the book printed. And the editing job I do for fun, well that’s for a monthly newsletter that I put out for free to obtain, but I actually pay money out to get it printed now.

Once upon a time, the newsletter was printed by myself in my job working in a council, then later it was printed by various offices of politicians. But those all fell though, so if I want to have this particular newsletter printed, I have to pay for it myself.

One of the things I do, and enjoy working on. But it doesn’t bring in any money for me, not yet. I’d love to get involved in tourism and show off what I’ve created, and even talk about it all to interested others.

Could that be a business? It would be great if it could be! Maybe I’ll find out how to do that, at the workshops I’m attending on Wednesday this week. Or maybe those baby plans will all flitter away, and I’ll go back to being a volunteer and not think about any ‘I could be in business’ ideas.

We’ll see. It will become clearer, anyway, by the end of the day on Wednesday. I might find a great Mentor who takes me under their wing and shows me what I could do in ways that don’t frighten me! Haha!

Caro the Creative, or something along those lines …

Writing

Branding -What Is My Main Focus?

carolyncordon

When a writer wishes to tell others what their writing is all about, it can sometimes seem they are a little bit of this, and that, a smidge of something else, and a morsel of something else. That’s not a useful description to be used for ‘Branding’ yourself in regards to your writing.

While it may be true, that you do a little of many things, it isn’t something a potential agent or publisher necessarily wants to hear. They may appreciate having a writer who can speak on many subjects, but they also want someone they can easily bundle up and present to the book buying public.

They want to be able to say something like: “Here is Author X, she writes brilliant thrillers,” for instance. But you might write thrillers, but also some romance, and haiku poetry, as well as some articles about your hang gliding adventures over the Murray River. How will they wrap up that oddly shaped and bulky package?

Perhaps a better way to look at “who you are” as a writer, could be to find a common thread that goes through all of your writing. So, yes you write all of those things, but you perhaps concentrate most, on finding the essence of the community, in all of the places you are writing about.

I suspect that would be my take on this subject, if I were to label my writing. I am focused on understanding how communities fit together, to get things happening. Communities such as where I live, the things I am interested in and the groups I deal with regarding those interests.

I write often about my life circumstances, in my various blogs, and there I find more community related things happening. My chronic illness, interest in dogs, gardening, and the sadder issue of sexual abuse, all of these things have connections with the overarching idea of ‘community’.

And of course the thing that takes up much of my time, is certainly intimately connected to community, and that is being the Editor of the Mallala Crossroad Chronicle. This newsletter is all about the community of Mallala, the biggest town close to where I live. I am writing a novel based on a town very much like Mallala, but with some differences to meet with various plot requirements.

My main character in that novel-to-be, works with council, and is working hard to get the best understanding on this new community she has moved to and is working with. The mythical town of “Talloola” is a community that is taking up much of my thinking, it being the town where that novel on its way is set in. Talloola is a bit like Mallala, a bit not like Mallala, but it is an important community to me, for sure.

So I happily and truly brand myself as “A writer with a strong focus on Community”.