This is a puzzle which has vexed me for some time, and it’s possible I stumbled across an answer during a routine walk. What’s more, it’s been a liberating experience.   Here’s the beginning of my post, which went up on Writer Unboxed while I was away on holiday. (Yay!)

Weather permitting, most Saturday mornings, I stroll a safe and pleasant three miles to the mall where I visit the library, the bookstore, and the grocer. I pick up fresh produce for dinner—the more salad-makings the better—then loop around and head home. On the way back, I’m usually euphoric, flush with endorphins, time outdoors, and the knowledge that I’ve facilitated my family’s health and made a minor contribution to fuel-conservation.

But on one recent occasion, as I waited for a pedestrian light to change, a marketing concept inserted itself into my brain.

At the time, I was puzzling over the concept of branding, which, like most marketing principles, remains an elusive and scary prospect to me. I know it’s too early to be worrying about this for my fiction, but I’ve been blogging for a few years now. I still don’t know what promise I’m making to my readers in that venue. (My tagline is Art. Attitude. Vitamin C. Screams “unique value proposition”, doesn’t it?) If branding is this unintuitive a process for blogging, what does that mean for my fiction? Will I inadvertently shoe-horn myself into an ill-fitting concept and have to start all over again? I’m prepared to make mistakes, but if a little forethought can save me from obvious errors, why not see if I can figure out an approach in advance?

To read more, go to This Mystical Thing Called Branding.

[message type=”simple”]If you’d like to receive notification when I post new content on Tartitude, sign up here. Or connect with me on Twitter (@jan_ohara) and Facebook.[/message]