How your brand story can help you stand out authentically
When it comes to standing out and getting name recognition, one of the biggest mistakes I see with freelancers and small business owners is that they don’t share stories about themselves.
Most business owners don’t get personal enough because they’re trying to be professional. But what happens when you don’t get personal enough is that you fade into the noise and people forget about you.
So what should you do instead? Tell stories. Stories are sticky. Stories engage us in ways that data and statistics and generic information just don’t.
CONTENT
- Stories are sticky.
- What is the brand story?
- Struggle
- New Direction
- Turning Point
- Realization
- Connection
- Recap & Challenge
Stories are sticky.
When we hear a story, we insert ourselves in it. We put ourselves in the character’s shoes. We do this because we’re all a little bit narcissistic and we each tend to think of ourselves as the center of our individual lives.
Putting ourselves in someone else’s shoes helps us understand their feelings better. This means that we get better at thinking of the person who’s telling the story as a whole real person.
I admit, this can sound silly. You might be thinking, “Of course every person is a whole real person.” But sadly that’s actually not how most of us treat each other — at least it isn’t until we have formed some sort of a personal connection.
When you tell stories, your audience — your listeners, your viewers, your readers — get to understand you better. They form a personal connection with you, and that connection is what makes you memorable.
When I talk to my clients about telling stories about themselves, some of the most common responses I get are:
“I feel really uncomfortable about talking about myself.”
“I hate this idea because it feels like self promotion and that always feels icky.”
“I’m worried about what other people are going to think when they see me talking about myself all the freakin time.”
So if you are thinking any of these things, please know that it’s all normal. And this is exactly why I want to talk to you about the brand story.
PART 1
Struggle
PART 2
New Direction
PART 3
Turning Point
PART 4
Realization
The realization is where you describe something that you became aware of, or something that you came to understand more clearly as a result of the turning point in Part 3.
PART 5
Connection
PART 6
Recap & Challenge
So that is the brand story! The five parts are:
- Struggle
- New direction
- Turning point
- Realization
- Connection
I want to challenge you to write the first draft of your brand story and share it.