How To Build Your Brand Through Storytelling

You’ve worked with a brand strategist to create a logo you love, you’ve read all the books on branding for your small business, and you have established an action plan for the next 30 days… you want to build your brand but …

NOW WHAT?

As a Content and Ghost Writer, I hear a variation of this statement A LOT – “Catherine, I know what I want to say, but I don’t know HOW to say it.”

Fortunately, helping small business owners and entrepreneurs to first discover, and then develop, an authentic storytelling voice, is something that I absolutely love to do!

There’s something about that process of:

• Finding YOUR ideal audience through the creation of a Customer Persona
• Identifying Three Brand Pillars that will best represent you and your business
• Discovering a highly-customized plan to tell your story in an highly relatable way

…that never fails to get me inspired to work with each and every client to help you tell your BEST stories, in the most approachable of ways, and to ultimately, build your brand and GROW your business.

Ok, so let’s dive in to how to build your brand through storytelling.

 

First, one of the most essential parts of a strong brand (whether it’s personal or professional) is its CREDIBILITY. You need to have a clear and a strong message, and it also needs to be a consistent one. Your brand will appear wishy-washy if you try to cover too many topics or waver on where you stand on certain topics. Therefore, your catalogue of stories should contain a set number of themes and you should aim to stay within their parameters (most of the time, at least).

Another way to demonstrate credibility is by being true to your word. If you overpromise and then under deliver, you will lose trust, and once it’s gone, it will be almost impossible to get back.

Furthermore, build trust with your audience by integrating testimonials into your stories. If you have clients who have already seen great results with your product or service, then leverage their voices into powerful sound bites.

Second, in order to build your brand through storytelling, its important that what you share is COMPELLING. This means that your audience must care about what you’re saying and that it should have the potential to influence their purchasing behavior. Compelling stories are, 99 times out of 100, those that create an emotional response in the reader.

Stories shouldn’t be full of facts, stats, or self-promotion.

 

Instead, they should focus on identifying a problem (one that you know is of interest to your audience), and then on a solution to solve it. This is where the testimonials and reviews from existing customers come in. Share their success and triumph to inspire your current audience.

And third, use stories to be CREATIVE. Great marketing is always the most original. It makes us stop what we’re doing and take notice because it doesn’t look or sound like what we’ve seen before.

The best way to make your brand shine like a new copper penny is by getting creative with your content marketing.

And what excites me most about this is that there are SO many ways to do this:

• Experiment with a new social media platform that you haven’t used before
• Collaborate with an on-brand influencer and see how you can mutually benefit one another
• Try out a new format (ex. love writing, but scared of live video? Give it a go – success comes from stepping outside of our comfort zone).
• Invest a bit of time (it will be the best time you’ve ever spent) on exploring and levelling up your storytelling skills

Check out my FREE Resource; 5 Simple Storytelling Tricks to Boost your Awareness and Sales! HERE