ramp up a personal brand with new AI tools
Book Marketing, Personal Branding

How to Ramp Up a Personal Brand with Canva’s New AI Tools

Why Canva? Well, 16 million paying subscribers and 150 million free monthly users believe it’s the tool that will make their content marketing sing. Some of us (like me) also use it to make workbooks, business cards, brochures or beautiful pitch decks.Canva can be used for anything visual, and that’s why it’s great for promoting books.I have already done plenty of mockups with my book cover in different variants. For my personal profile on Facebook, Magic Edit replaced a boring background with blue and gold balloons. It used to take hours in Photoshop to do what’s now done in a click or two.Now there are 10 more AI tools, some of which could be handy for authors:Magic Switch: Like Re-size on steroids, Switch converts your design into a range of formats with one click. For example, you could turn a slide…
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24 hours to improve your personal brand
Personal Branding,

24 Hours to Improve Your Personal Brand for Business Reasons

Say you’ve got 24 hours before a big potential client Googles your name, your brand. You’re faced with the frightening prospect of having nothing unique to say — and no idea how to project a solid ‘professional you’… without losing the ‘personal you’. This is where personal branding for business reasons comes in. Leading with your personal brand first starts off a little uncomfortable, but it is soon rewarding.My author blog became a testing ground for ‘personal brand’ style marketing because of all the marketing methods available, I preferred to write blogs. I also think it’s more powerful to put yourself in the spotlight instead of a company name. Think of Virgin; it would be far less compelling without the vivacious Richard Branson.Getting to the point… A vibrant personal brand with personal values, graphic style, colours, and a clear message…
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Brand Hub at Canva
Book Marketing, Personal Branding

Selling Personal Branding to a Sceptic

I often imagine a sceptical consultant, leaning on his metaphorical shovel, and asking, “I’ve already got a brand, why do I need a personal brand too?” The latest book, out soon, My Personal Brand covers much of this reasoning in detail, so here are the crib notes. (Incidentally, ‘sceptic’ is spelled with a ‘c’ in British English.) Click to view.Get 5 Tips to Get Unstuck as a Thought Leader – in printable format.A Personal Brand will carry more trust. While companies can build up trust in their brand over time, a personality-rich soloist can build trust faster, simply by showing their face to the camera. People like doing business with people, those they like. It has been shown that video content is the preferred format for viewing promotions, and Facebook Lives get 10X the engagement of other videos. Facebook Lives generally mean you…
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Get unstuck in thought leadership
Book Writing, Personal Branding

­­­­­­­­­­­5 Tips to Get Unstuck in Your Thought Leader (Author) Journey

I’m going to talk today about five tips to getting unstuck in your thought leader journey, and also mention a summit I’ve got coming up.Tip one is to invest in your training so that you can get further, faster. (Obviously, this relates to doing a virtual summit). Because if you don’t invest in your training in some way, even if it’s a free day, you won’t be able to get to your goals fast enough. It will take ages and it will be ad hoc learning. You won’t be condensing, like what we’re doing in this Authorpreneur Summit day. We’re going to condense your learning.And we’re going to make sure that you get the right mindset around marketing and media exposure and doing your own stories so that you don’t spend ages listening to that hubbub on the internet. They’re…
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personal branding ideas
Personal Branding

Why should you set up Your Personal Brand?

Okay, so I’ve accidentally written a whole book on digging into your personal brand. It all started with my video-recording the book outlining process from some blog topics and carried on from there.But then this question: why is it important to think about Personal Branding?Well, as an author of any kind, a personal brand will allow those who are visiting any of your web presences or books to start recognising your brand.I remember being overwhelmed with how to make a personal brand more cohesive. So, gradual improvements to it were more my thing. These are the steps I took. I created a brand kit with my colours and some fonts (still not great at following the fonts) and bought the navy top for use in my photograph. I made sure my tone of voice was similar everywhere. I also ensured…
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making personal brand plain english
Personal Branding

Making a Personal Brand, in Plain English

Of late I have been navel-gazing, I mean, assessing my values and brand. I’ve also been doing a content marketing course, which prompted me to gain further understanding about what information nonfiction authors look for. Then I realised that there is no such thing as a typical author. There are many reasons to write a book and just as many reasons to build a personal brand.This branding and values exercises is valuable. It had me thinking about things like: how does my personal brand portray me? How can someone create an authentic vibe?  What puts people off… and what do they really want to know about my background/values?Amy Green recently wrote in SmartCompany that personal branding is:“How you are recognised and remembered. It is the art of bringing together your strengths, skills and your true essence, then implementing strategies to…
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