Storytelling in Personal Branding: How to Make Your Reputation Work for You

Your personal brand is unique to you, and the stories you share about your brand create an emotional connection with your ideal client, stimulating their engagement with you. Each time they interact with your brand, you get the opportunity to solidify your reputation. Every positive interaction you can create reinforces that reputation and develops brand loyalty, leading to personal brand growth. 

This is why storytelling is so powerful for all brands and why it’s an important part of the process for getting your reputation to work for you. 

Branding vs. Reputation. 

Before you can select the stories from your experiences to support your brand, you must clearly define your personal brand.

Your brand is your identity as a business. It has a distinct personality, and the way other people see your brand helps them to decide whether it is right for them. This is why you must be very intentional when building a personal brand. 

The greater the clarity you have about your brand the easier it will be for your ideal clients to connect with you and know, without a doubt, that you are the person they want to work with. 

Your reputation, on the other hand, is based on your client’s experience when working with your brand. 

For example, if you were a photographer, your personal brand might be, “Portraits that bring out the power and presence that live within you.” But even if you delivered on your brand promise with these amazing portraits, if you showed up late to shoots and didn’t deliver your pictures on time, your client’s might say you were unreliable or undependable. That would become your reputation.

Every personal and professional decision you make affects your brand’s reputation. This is why it’s so important to make sure all your decisions and actions align with your personal brand and the full experience you want your clients to have—even when you are under stress. That is when mistakes are often made, and a bad reputation can start to build. 

But when everything is aligned, no matter what is happening around you, your reputation will precede you and interactions with your brand will increase, as will your word-of-mouth marketing when happy clients tell other people about their experiences. 

How to Identify Your Personal Brand.

When building a personal brand, the goal is to make yourself the only choice in your specific niche for the audience or ideal client that you want to work with. Those people are a reflection of you, and the things you stand for will also resonate with them. The more authentic you are to yourself, the more vibrant your personal brand will be for your ideal clients and the stronger your reputation can become. 

There is a lot to consider when building a personal brand strategy. To get started answer the following questions in as much detail as possible:

• What are your values? (They will help define your brand’s voice and personality.)
• Why have you chosen to do what you do?  What pulls you toward it instead of something else?
• What are your unique skills and talents and how do they help your clients?
• What is the legacy you want to create with your personal brand?
• What do you promise clients that they will have after they work with you that they didn’t have before?
• How do you want people to feel when they work with you?
• What experiences define the way you want your brand to show up in the world? (These will shape your brand stories.)

This is by no means a complete list of questions for personal brand building. Be open to the ideas that come to you and let them take you in different directions during your discovery process. Then zero in on the characteristics of your personal brand that are most important to you. The more thorough you are with your exploration, the easier it will be to define a personal brand that resonates with the people you want to help most. 

 

How to Get Your Brand and Reputation Working for You

The best brand strategies dive really deeply into the brand audience. You need to know what matters to them and what makes your ideal clients tick. That is how you can speak to their hearts and start to build the experiences with your personal brand that lead to an exceptional reputation.

This is where a customer journey map comes in. A customer journey map shows every step your client takes with you, starting from the way they find you and will include things like your onboarding system, purchase experience, follow ups after the purchase and all the surprises and delights you deliver along the way.

Every single step of that journey is an opportunity to build and reinforce the reputation you want. Your clients have a lot of choices out there. You want to make sure that everything you do keeps them coming back for more, solidifying your reputation and ensuring that you are the only one for them. 

The Power of Brand Storytelling.

Once you have defined your personal brand and developed a customer journey map, you can start selecting the stories that reflect your brand, show what it can do for your ideal clients and reinforce the kind of reputation you want to build during each interaction they have with you.  

Brand storytelling is much more powerful than talking about features and benefits, which creates only a surface level connection. A powerful story goes deeper because it establishes an emotional bond between you and your client, based on your shared values and experiences, making your brand far more relatable.

Great brand storytelling helps your client feel like you “get” them. That builds trust and the foundation for your relationship! 

To test the theory, think about a brand you really love and look at it through a storytelling lens. 

Consider the emotional connection you have with it.

• What is it about their story that makes you feel that way? 
• What pulls you toward it? 
• How does it align with your personal values and the things that matter to you?

When you develop that same kind of emotional connection with your brand storytelling, people will want to work with you too, becoming just as loyal to your brand as you are to the reputable brands you love. 

The Biggest Mistake Many Business Owners Make with Personal Brand Storytelling.

Great brand storytelling makes the right person say to themselves that they want what you have to offer, doing the personal selling for you! However, many business owners inadvertently make a mistake that hinders brand relatability, ultimately limiting their personal brand growth and the opportunity to build a strong reputation. 

The mistake is that their brand stories make them the hero of the journey instead of the client. 

In business, it’s important to remember that the client is always the hero of the story. While you might be helping them get past a problem, they are the ones who:

• Face the challenge that your product or service solves.
• Approach your brand to guide them through the challenge. 
• Experience the transformation that your brand’s solution provides. 

To illustrate the difference between the two hero perspectives, let’s use the photographer’s brand from above and look at it from both angles. 

Here is a story with the business owner as the hero:

Ever since I picked up my first camera, I’ve been obsessed with capturing emotion and bringing out people’s personalities. To do that, I have created a space where you can relax and be you. I love to banter and build honest connections during each session, so the magic of your true inner self can come out to play. This is why the portraits I take of you are more than pictures with a great smile—they are a bold reflection of the power and presence that live within you.

Now, here is a story based on the client as the hero:

You already know who you are. It just hasn’t been captured in a photo yet. In your session, you will step into a space where you can relax and be you. We will chat and laugh, and through an honest connection, the magic of your true inner self will come out to play. This is why your portraits become more than pictures with a great smile—they are a bold reflection of the power and presence that live within you.

Can you see how the second story is focused more on the client’s perspective and that it is much more powerful because of it? 

The easier you can make it for your ideal clients to say yes to you with your brand stories, the easier it will be to take the steps to build your reputation and get it working for you. Once you have that established, your clients will start to become your brand ambassadors, as they share their stories about their positive experiences with the people they know. That will build your reputation even further, leading to even more personal brand growth—which is exactly what you want for your business! 

If you’ve taken these steps and feel like the goals you have set for your personal brand are still falling short of the mark, you might need to develop a new Personal Success Equation. 

Everyone has a formula that will deliver significant results, you just need to discover what yours is! That is why I created a short guide to help you do it. 

Regardless of where you are or what’s happened in your past, this guide will help you define your personal success equation. It’s the perfect accompaniment to your personal brand strategy!

CLICK HERE FOR THIS FREE GUIDE AND DEFINE YOUR PERSONALIZED FORMULA FOR SUCCESS TODAY!

BONUS! A Sharon Lechter Brand Reputation Tip

Your testimonials and reviews matter! Many people use them in their decision-making process before they purchase because they provide the social proof that your brand is reliable and trustworthy. 

Even a bad review is an opportunity to build trust. When handled well, you can demonstrate the level of your customer service as you work together to find a resolution to the problem.

So be sure to ask each client for a testimonial and/or a review to help spread the word about your personal brand, which will further build your reputation.