Wattpad Guide: What We Talk About When We Talk About Wattpad (Tips & Strategy)

Identity - Names

TLDR: use a professional, serious, simple, sleek author name

Identity sometimes is a difficult thing to master and is an open ended question and a long term journey with which we struggle all our lives. The question Who Am I? exists in all literature and art from the beginning of time - to the end of time. But identity and branding is the start to everything. Even if you don't know who you are yet, pretend you do. Your audience and whoever you will engage in the future needs to have the assurance you know who you are and are ready to respect yourself.

We talked about aspiring for the greatest heights possible and the seriousness of writing - no matter what content. Let's stick with this and if you treat your writing seriously and wish to become a successful writer, soon or one day, then think of yourself right alongside the popular Wattpad authors, some of the ones I know (personally) from a range of different content are: @MichaelLimjoco, @LDCrichton @NickUskoski @TaranMatharu @liliancarmine but moreover, we need to align and present ourselves right from the get go on the same plane as professional bestselling authors, such as Margaret Atwood, R.L. Stine, Cory Doctorow who are all on Wattpad. Before we even talk about how good your content is, we need to talk about how serious your intent is. Is your intent serious enough to go that far? If you're determined about writing and being successful, then you'll also want to attract the right crowd, right from the beginning. You want the professionals and the influential members and writers to give you a chance to rub shoulders with them. They can help a lot. If you take a look through my following list, you notice that as we talk about names here, most of them have proper names and sound professional. That's what we want.

Indeed, what is the first thing you do on Wattpad? Create an account. I was talking with a friend just recently about usernames and especially gamer handles. There are stereotypical tags that you would always seem to see. XxXxXx______xxx or a ______2839271749 or CupcakesAreAwesome or SexyGirl/Boy or FamousCharacterName999 and so on and there maybe a dozen of them in the same place all at once. Take yourself seriously if you want others to take you seriously. Not everyone wants to take themselves that seriously however, of course.

Let's assume you would like to attract a not so serious audience, then you'll really need to come up with something good. A genius simple, clean, catchy, unique, usually funny name. No xxx or numbers. Don't make it too long either. You want your branding to be memorable and quick. If you need to play with commercialism and marketing ability, you want to be on the tip of everyone's tongue and catchy like Starbucks, not L'Homme et La Mer. Of course the latter may be classier, but also fitting for an obscure out of the way cafe in antique wood, that would require a lot of word of mouth. If you want to get rolling sooner than later, let's stick with the Starbucks. Your username may be the first thing someone sees and it needs to sear itself into someone's mind. If you look at the staff member who had gotten the name @kevin, it will leave a lasting impression because it is such a clean simple tag and a common name that no one else can claim or really compete with. But I often speak about extremes. I'm not asking you to make a five letter name.

But not everything memorable to you, will be memorable to someone else. You can pull off an insider joke or a cliche statement or a smart joke or some sort of obscure mathematic or Latin play on words and even then not everyone will find your wit charming. You will also be floating in a sea of similar user names, something about beauty, something about writing or poetry, some character name, something about love, something girl, or boy, or whatever words. It is common and is largely very subjective. Different age groups and different cultures or even language backgrounds of the perceiver will limit your appeal. So expanding your audience and reach may not be so easy.

You'll have to take what I say in stride. I'm not saying there is absolutely no way another kind of name will become successful: the Wattpad system promotes stories. But starting right from name creation, like an obsessive gamer who tries to edit his character's face and looks until it is absolutely perfect - and then changes it again after a while - we can minimize all hindrances to your process and improve all odds possible.

In my opinion, your name reflects your attitude on your art and then art again, is serious business and will impact whoever comes across your art. We all experience how works will affect us deeply. Some memes on the internet will portray funny things like falling in love with fictional characters, or being depressed because of a song. How you deliver your art, style, poise, persona etc is up to you but the message, possibly subliminal, is serious. Interestingly enough, for an author name, we don't want to create a corporate brand like Starbucks or Walmart or Wattpad. As an artist, we want to go the opposite route.

Here's my personal response on Wattpad. I actually do look at my notifications and scan the people that follow me or that interact. I'm sure other authors would as well - no matter what age or genre. I do a double take when I see a proper nice sounding regular name that sounds like an author with proper capitals (I actually regret not choosing to capitalize my T), who is mature and serious about their art, I may likely wander onto their profile quickly and wonder if they have quality writing too. This generates an opportunity for attention and reads. There are many users who will use not-so-serious names, and prefer cute or cool tags or numbers and other things - that is the norm. Most of them are readers or just here to chat and friend. You just can't tell the difference. Serious or successful authors or influential members who may be able to help, will likely just pass over those. You may be cutting off a potential swath of important visitors and readers. Your name can be appear neutral, professional and unique, just for being a proper name. This opens up a channel of respect and curiosity - what kind of person is behind the name? What content do they have? Your content will speak for itself, you don't need to make your name sound like your content before readers had a chance to judge for themselves whether they enjoy it or not - there may be accidental surprising discoveries after all.

If you're serious about your art, and want others to be serious about you - which you should be - pick out a good name, that would work as a real name, or your real name if you really wanted to. It should also be legible, meaning it's not a whole group of consonants or is particularly very hard to read.