Developing your personal brand: Time is everything
When talking about creating ones “personal brand”, we usually talk about two key elements: time and the tools you have available to develop that brand.
Today we’re going to talk about how to establish that personal brand over time.
Rome wasn’t built in a day, and so won’t your brand as a screenwriter. It’s a slow, long and constant process of putting out there what you work on, and keep improving it as you and your work evolves.
But, to be more practical, let’s see which elements are going to help you build that personal brand of yours. As screenwriters, you tend to be quite invisible, people who pretty much disappear once the script has been bought by a producer or production company. We know establishing your brand is a difficult enterprise, as you tend to be anonymous, safe behind your writing, but it is crucial you get out of your shell and try to become more active, if you want to get closer to getting your scripts made into movies.
- Genre: do you specialize in a type of genre? Do you like writing horror stories or you’re more into intimate dramas? Exploit that, make those kinds of stories yours.
- Personality: the best and most useful tool you’ve got is yourself. Curate the image you want to give away as a writer. What other stuff have you worked on? Has it been produced or is it in development? Make those parts of your work and yourself stand out, the ones you think will attract your audience.
- Differentiation: find the elements that make you different and, ultimately, will make producers pay attention to what you’ve got to say. Do you have a blog? Do you curate some sort of profile on social media? (I am not talking about your personal Instagram or Facebook account) It’s a good idea to use the tools that the Internet has been providing us with, for ages now, to keep on working on your personal brand. Having a blog where you write about your work, or having a Youtube/Vimeo channel, will bring more value to that brand you’re trying to establish.
- Multiple projects: sometimes it’s good to stop working on a project you’re stuck on and put your energy into something else. Not only will help you creatively to get your mind off that idea that isn’t coming through, but the more projects you develop, more possibilities you’ll have that one of them gets attention from producers or investors. In other words: don’t put all your eggs in one basket.
As you can see, the possibilities are multiple. In the end, all of these tools are serving the purpose of what you want to communicate about yourself to your audience, to the market.
I invite you to start by making a list of what makes you “you”; seriously, once you figure out what you want to show about you to the world, you will gain an incredible asset to work with in selling your material and getting your stories made into films.
