Brand: A trademark or distinctive name identifying a product or a manufacturer. (dictionary.com)

As an author you should brand yourself in a way that represents your passion or your ministry. But how to do that? Start by answering these questions:

• What drives your writing (i.e. why do write what you do?)?
• What message resonates with you that you want to share with others?
• If you had to sum up your writing in a sentence or two, what would you say?

Is a theme emerging? From that theme, you can develop a tag line. The original brand for my ministry, for example, was “New Day Ministry.” My key verse was, “But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, (Hebrews 3:13). Using that verse, I developed the following tag line:

However, this brand proved to be too vague, so I decided a more focused brand was needed. My passion is to teach children to love God with all their heart, soul, mind and strength, (Mark 12:30) and to teach moms to teach their children spiritual disciplines such as prayer, confession, fasting, etc.

Here’s what evolved from lots of time spent in prayer:

Think about the following as you begin to brainstorm your own brand:

• Branding is the process of setting yourself apart from everyone else
• Successful branding creates the perceptions that there’s no other resource like you (and your book)
• Profitable branding includes product development and marketing
• Once you find your niche, it’s your job to promote it like crazy!