Branding is as necessary as good content? Most marketing professionals agree.
Making yourself into a brand is hard when most bookstagrammers don't even know what being a brand means. If you are reaching for a social media success stick around for the secrets being revealed.
In a Forbes magazine article, a brand is described as:
"What your prospect thinks of when he or she hears your brand name. It’s everything the public thinks it knows about your name brand offering."
This means that a brand is everything your audience thinks when he/she looks at your account and thinks when hears your name: it is your message, your theme, your personality, your content.
Being a bookstagrammer means that you will face a big number of competition and transforming your account into a brand will help people know who you are and pick out your name from a million other accounts.
Think that your brand is you in a professional manner.
"A brand is a way of distinguishing yourself from other content creators, in a way that your content is easily recognised by your audience", said Mariana who is a bookstagrammer with more than 3K followers.
On the survey conducted, at least 40% of bookstagrammers didn’t know what their brand was.
1.Who are you? What do you want?
Knowing your tastes, your goals, your niche is key:
What do you want out of bookstagram?
What kind of message do you want to pass on?
Do you want to make some money?
Maybe get free books?
Sell a product? What kind of product?
What is your niche?
For example a goal can be:
"My goal is to have 10k followers", said Isabelle who is a bookstagrammer.
Here is a little quiz to help you out figuring out all these questions:
2.Theme and Style
Lauren who has plus 20K followers gives advice on the next video about branding:
Charlotte, who is a bookseller said: "Create an aesthetic - Before people get to know you and your content, they’ll just have a quickly glimpse into your brand and that first snapshot is what will grab them or have them scrolling on by".
Having a theme is one of the most defining things to do when making yourself a brand, the other is making sure you are being consistent in your message and content.
Theme is when an account is clearly put together by colours and style, here is one example:
Describe your theme to yourself in five words and then start researching inspiration with those words in mind, this way it will be easier to make it consistent!
"My theme is very soft in tone, with plenty of natural colours and textures from all of my books. I like that it all blends well and encompasses everything that I love", Charlotte said.
If you don´t know what colours you should use together, use a palette generator like this one:
3.Message
Defining your brand in one word is helpful to see that your message is:
Marie who is a bookstagrammer that knows her brand said, "my brand is honesty"
In this example, Marie can brand her post descriptions and bio to go with her branding word: Honesty. This way her audience will get to know her by this trait.
Your bio is just as important as your post descriptions:
Make sure your photo is reflective of who you are, I chose this one because I love artsy accounts and I want my audience to know that I am an account that has an art vibe. Selfies with bad quality for profile picture are a big no-no: because they say nothing about you.
Your name should imply in anyway who you are and that you are a bookstagrammer, so words like: book, bookish, page, reader are good options.
As for your bio everyone is different. I want to allure to my style which is vintage and my love for writing since my account is also a space for me to share my creative writing.
Including your CR (current read) is a bonus, this way your audience can see what your tastes are and can then start a conversation with you about them. Making them want to follow you because they can relate easily.
Angel, another person on the community, said, "Make your descriptions you. Always have them typed around the same style".
I always start my posts this way, and I follow this template in all my posts just changing the question. Adding a #qotd, which is a question of the day, helps your audience engaging with your post.
Charlotte added, "I do go by Bookseller Baggins, I have an aesthetic and I’m consistent in what I post, so possibly I fit into that category. I feel more accomplished with all of this now it’s more ‘put together’ and I definitely think it can help boost your engagement".
4. Publicity
Maria, a publishing student said, "Invest in publicity and find a niche".
Instagram likes promotion, and you as a business account, have access to the promotions feature that Instagram has built in. This will help you get a huge reach making sure that more people see your account.
Why is this important from a branding perspective?
It helps Instagram algorithm treat your account as a brand, and also help more people see your account which in itself makes your branding be known by a larger audience.
And this makes your brand more consistent.
Also, this way you can see if your branding is actually working, if you use promotions where the link is directly to your account and you reach 5000 accounts, but only 40% of those accounts follow you then something needs to change!