How to Use Your Brand Story Effectively

content marketing
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You must understand at this point that you will not get others to pay attention to what you are doing if you don’t share your story. Your story will serve many different purposes. One of the most basic of those is that it makes you human.

You can’t connect with other people on a human level if you don’t show your vulnerability (or your human side) too. People will not allow you to hide your humanism if they have to show theirs. In fact, the more you share, the more they will share. There are several different types of stories that you can share with other people and the impact that you will have on them may be astronomical.

How to present your story

Human beings are touched by other people’s stories all of the time. Some stories touch people more than others and it is important to understand how much your story can possess. Your story can teach, comfort, compel, excite, and educate other people. It all depends on how you present the information. Your have the control.

An important part of your story is the testimonial part. If you are trying to impress your online connections, a great way to do that is by sharing testimonials from other people. In fact, you are the only person who cannot express to others how amazing your business is and how extensive your ability is to help other people to achieve what they want to achieve professionally. So, you may be wondering how you should write your story so that it has the maximum impact on other people.

Set up goals

The first thing that you need to do is to establish goals for your business. You need to figure out what you want to accomplish through your story. It is very important for you to understand that you are not merely telling your story for the sake of hearing yourself talk. You have a definite goal in mind. Of course, obviously, your goals must also be well thought out and chosen carefully. It is entirely possible that you will not be able to determine your goals until you speak with your online connect ions to find out what they need from you. It is very possible that you will end up with more than one goal, which is totally fine, as long as you make the effort to achieve all of those goals. The following are some possible goals that you may wish to consider:

  • Try to eliminate the objections of your existing and prospective clients.
  • Establish a connection with the other person that is solid.
  • Be a source of inspiration and motivation.
  • Get people to do what they have been putting off for a long time.
  • Integrate current, relevant, appropriate information into your story.
  • Be broad-minded when it comes to considering many different angles.
  • Express where your business’s value lies.
  • Create as many leads and you possibly can.
  • Express your uniqueness to other people.
  • Increase your “piece of the pie” (your business’s market share).

Interviewing your online connections to determine your goals

If you are gathering information from your online connections, there cannot be any fiction contained in your story. The information is real and it needs to be communicated in a way that makes that clear to everyone. If you are communicating your story to people with whom you already have an established relationship, it is still important to express to them exactly how valuable you and your business are and to show them how you are continually working on improving upon what you already have. When you are gleaning bits of information from other people to use as a part of your story, it is important that you recognize the value in what the other person is conveying to you.  The more you learn to do that, the better and more valuable the story will be.

You are now ready to craft the story

Now that you have done your homework and gathered the information that you want to put in your story, it is time to determine which type of story you are going to write. Your story must be powerful and it must contain information that truly touches the other person. If written well, it will do all of those things and more. It is important to remember that a story is not just a bunch of words on a page.  It is a journey that brings the reader from beginning to end.

  • As a writer, you should understand the importance of showing rather than telling. That is a fundamental principle of good writing.

  • Express the struggle and the conflict of the “characters” and then clearly demonstrate how those characters have resolved the issues. Of course, it is critical that your readers can relate to all of that personally.

  • If you are going to have a chance at  your online connections remembering your story (and thus engaging them beyond one conversation), you will have to make sure that your story is well rounded and that you involve all five senses (sight, smell, touch, sound, taste). This will make your story extremely memorable to other people.

Conclusion

Your stories will serve many purposes. As you are continuing to build your online content marketing repository, it is a great idea to populate it with stories that demonstrate all sorts of things that demonstrate the points that you want to make. Your story will engage people, draw them to you, and make them want to continue to interact with you. Make sure that your brand has a compelling story and that it touches the right people. Make sure that your story is person and that it is vulnerable. That is what people require and showing that vulnerability will definitely pay off.

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Author

  • Carolyn Cohn

    Carolyn Cohn is the Co-Founder & Chief Creative Services of CompuKol Communications. Carolyn manages CompuKol’s creative and editorial department, which consists of writers and editors. Her weekly blogs are syndicated globally. She has decades of editorial experience in online editing, and editing books, journal articles, abstracts, and promotional and educational materials. Carolyn earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo.