“No one brand can be all things to all people…By trying to be everything, the brand will end up being nothing at all.” – From The Experience Effect: Engage Your Customers with a Consistent and Memorable Brand Experience by Jim Joseph
con•gru•ous [kóng groo əss] adj
1. Appropriate: appropriate to or suitable for a purpose or situation (formal)
2. Corresponding or consistent: corresponding to or consistent with each other or something else
While writing is an art, publishing is a business. With the publishing world changing by the second, pundits are now telling authors that entrepreneurship is now a necessary component for long-term success. (Click here to watch a fascinating interview between Dan Blank and Colleen Lindsay on We Grow Media to see what I mean). No longer can authors write in silence and solitude, delivering their manuscript to publishers and expecting the marketing department to “take it from there”.
Especially with the glut of self-published work flooding the web, traditional authors are finding it even harder to stand out, engage readers and earn loyal followers.
Recently on Twitter, I Tweeted “Dear New Age Author: if your Tweets are incongruous with your books or ‘brand’, you might want to rethink being on the wire”.
Some agreed. One strongly disagreed.
What is the greatest way an author can become a “stand out” entrepreneur? I’ll tell you: By creating and defining her brand, and then acting consistent with that brand.
So what is branding, anyway? It is the “vibe” of your personality or product. It the unique flair that sets you apart from others. It’s what you or your books stand for.
Why does this matter at all? Well, apart from “brand recognition”, there’s the most important component of the brand experience to consider—the consumer.
You cannot create or define your brand if you don’t know your own audience.
That is, you must know whom it is you want to reach with your message. Who do you want to entertain with your words? Who do you see benefiting the most from your products? Knowing the answer to those questions will help you define your brand.
So what does it mean to be congruent with your brand? Let me start by explaining what it does NOT mean. Brand congruency does NOT mean:
1. Being afraid to let your freak flag fly
2. Refraining from stirring the pot
3. Shying away from provocative topics
4. Hiding your light under a bushel
Congruency doesn’t mean bland; on the contrary, it means consistency with your unique voice, personality and promises of your book, products or services.
So what is brand confusion, anyway?
Imagine that you come to associate your local bank with longevity, austerity and trustworthiness. Everything the bank has done for the last 50 years—the name, the colors of its logo, its slogan, its advertising, employee dress code, and managerial behavior—all reinforces that brand.
One day, the marketing department decides to change the bank carpeting to a bright orange, the slogan colors to fuchsia, the bank name to Funny Munny and the logo to a circus tent.
Um, yikes.
While this is an extreme, and crazy, example, this is exactly what brand confusion causes: a head-on crash between expectation and reality. This is especially disconcerting for your audience and readers when your name or books have been around for a decade or more, and, as an example, you try to swim the Twitterstream like a toddler entering white water rapids—spouting off stuff inconsistent with your brand.
Why does this matter? Now more than ever, consumers have huge BS detectors. And if THEY don’t, it’s very likely their Facebook friends, Google+ Circles and those they follow on Twitter DO have a big ol’ honkin’ BS detector.
What is BS, in this case?
Lack of congruency.
Individuals will equate lack of congruency with lack of authenticity, which will breed mistrust for many. Not only might this result in brand dilution, but also arguably lost sales and loyal readers.
Let me give you a fictitious example, especially since I happened to zero in on the New Age niche with my earlier Tweet: Imagine if you will a metaphysical author and healer calling himself The Butterfly King. His branding colors of choice are butter yellow and grape jelly purple, with butterflies adorning his website, logo and books. Consistent with his brand, his books and messages tout a lighthearted approach to spirituality, where All is One, love is god, tenderness triumphs and farts are flecked with fairy dust, smelling like fresh baked blueberry pie.
This noob gets on Twitter, and instead of his ethereal, uplifting advice that his audience comes to associate with his brand, he comes off as a George Carlin/Roseanne Barr/Archie Bunker mashup.
Yowzers.
Talk about cognitive dissonance!
So what is The Butterfly King to do to create brand congruity rather than brand confusion?
He has three solutions as I see it:
1. Censor himself and get in alignment with fairy dust fartin’
2. Create distinct social media IDs for his various interests/components
3. Redefine his brand to include those incongruous elements, or state the incongruities outright
Number 1 is self-explanatory. Number 2 would be the equivalent of an author donning a penname for brand distinction. For example, James Scott Bell, writing teacher extraordinaire and fiction writer in his own right, has recently created the pseudonym K. Bennett for his zombie lawyer series and explained his decision at the The Kill Zone blog. (Yes, you read right! Am I the only one excited to read the first book Pay Me in Flesh?)
In the future, I plan to write psychological thrillers and horror fiction. I already have my penname picked out. Why? Because I don’t want someone who knows my “brand” of straight-up Self Help reviews, mystical spirituality and practical Tarot application to encounter a major brain freeze when I start to write about sickos!
And yes, in this age of transparency, it wouldn’t be too hard to figure out a person’s nom de plume; but pennames aren’t for anonymity anymore as much as they are for brand distinction.
So what about number 3? Well, what if you happen to be a deeply spiritual person with profound insights…but you also have a potty mouth, trickster archetypal pattern and penchant for yelling when the Emperor has no clothes?
Why, that would be me! And that’s why, wherever possible, I describe myself with four Is: Innovator, Iconoclast, Initiator and Instigator. I also usually identify myself as a quadruple Scorpio. For me, this is what “warns” people that I’m not an ooey gooey type of New Age author (although it’s rumored that I have a marshmallow center…don’t believe it, though. It will ruin my brand.)
Doing number 3 will not guarantee that you won’t be misunderstood; in fact, odds are pretty good that you’ll still end up offending someone. But this won’t be because of brand confusion, as much as it will be the stragglers that may be unfamiliar with the totality of your brand (for example, only knowing one of your books, but never visiting your website, reading your blog or subscribing to your newsletter to get the “whole” of you).
Your brand can be as narrow or as expansive as you like. It can be fun, flirty or serious. Whatever you do, though, make sure your brand is defined and distinct, defended by your adherence to brand congruence. To remind you of why this is important, I’ll leave you with another quote from The Experience Effect by Jim Joseph:
“Essentially, positioning is how we want the consumer to think about our brand. It should differentiate…The brand experience actually becomes the positioning in consumers’ minds, and the experience effect is what puts it there. That’s why it’s so important to understand it, to get it right, and to keep it consistent. It ultimately determines how consumers feel about the brand and how they attach meaning and value to the brand. It’s also what will differentiate the brand from other brands in the same category.”
-- Janet Boyer, Amazon Top/Vine Reviewer, author of Back in Time Tarot, Tarot in Reverse (Schiffer 2012) and the Snowland Tarot (Schiffer 2013). Featured in Tales of the Revolution: True Stories of People Who Are Poking the Box and Making a Difference (A Domino Project eBook edited by Seth Godin)
