Recently, I came across an article entitled “Three Steps to A Winning Personal Brand”. This article resonates with me because writing and publishing your book is also very much about enhancing your personal brand in the market and we can adopt the same steps.

In the article, the three steps to creating a winning brand are summarised as 3 Es: Extract, Express and Exude. We can also adopt the 3 steps to writing and publishing a book as follows:

Extract Phase

In the Extract Phase, it is essentially about extracting your brand essence that you wish to portray and put in your book. Before you can do that, you need to think hard about who you are and what makes you unique. When you managed to unearth your unique promise of value, then you will be able to start conceptualising the book idea and creating the book content that will enhance the personal brand that you are building. In this phase, you should first identify and write down your purpose for publishing, your unique differentiation, competitive titles and also how you will reach out to your target readers.

The output from the Extract Phase would look something like a publishing proposal and of course your completed manuscript. With that in hand, you are ready to move to the Express Phase where you develop and execute the communication and marketing plan.

Express Phase

The Express Phase is about identifying marketing channels and communication tools to reach your target reader effectively. A book is a powerful tool for you to stand out from competition because it helps you to build visibility and credibility. But this is only possible if the book reaches the hands of your target reader. A published book that sits in your storeroom collecting dust will never help to enhance your personal brand.

Having identified your target reader profile, you evaluate communication tools that can help you generate awareness for your book. Other than readers, your book needs to be in the hands of people who will be instrumental in expanding your success. You have to research, identify and prioritise both offline and online means that can help you maximise the impact. This could be through news coverage, books reviews, author interviews, expert articles, book blog etc. An effective marketing plan must complement an effective communications plan because the last thing you want is that interested readers could not obtain a copy of your book. The marketing plan will identify channels that you can make your book available and remember that bookstore is only one of the channels. It is not uncommon to come across authors who sell more copies of their book through their alternate channels than through bookstores. Other than just a physical book, you can also explore other means to express the book like audio book, e-book, etc. that can help you maximise the outreach from the same contents.

The output from the Express Phase is a comprehensive Book Communications and Marketing Plan that you can execute. You are then ready to move on to the third and final phase, Exude.

Exude Phase

In the Express Phase, you developed a strategy for making your book visible to those who need to know about you so that you can achieve your goals. In this final Exude Phase, it is really about living your brand. You will align everything that surrounds you with your branding. This environment includes your social and professional network.

So whether you are giving a talk, conducting a workshop, granting an interview, networking or participating in social media, you should ensure that all activities are supporting your personal Brand and you leverage on your book as the branding tool.

To summarise, your book is an effective tool that can help you to enhance your personal branding. To maximise the reach and impact, you can adopt the 3-E process of Extract, Express and finally Exude to reinforce your unique promise of value through the book.

To help you or your organisation turn ideas into marketable books, contact us today. We provide a one-stop publishing service that takes individuals and organizations from idea to market. Our objective is to lower the barriers to getting published and to make professional publishing accessible to all and with a personal touch.