So What's Your Story

Have you ever been asked that question before?

What's your story?

Seems like a pretty loaded and personal question and it is. There is nothing to debate with this, but this is a Business Wednesday post and a question like this does not seem to fit into this topic.

I would say this question fits perfectly in the concept of business and not in an interview perspective but in one of my favorite topics, branding.

A couple months ago I wrote a post about how I love brands an branding. I brought up the definition of what a brand is and had three points that I focused on. Since the post was very specific on the idea of brands and what they stand for, I was unable to go into detail of my favorite parts about brands: that they tell a story!

Now I could go into the aspect where actual brands tell stories and could find multiple advertisements that could prove this point, but I feel like this would not be a relevant article. Of course advertisements should tell a story, that's why people remember certain ads, quote ads and will share ads on different social media sites.

Where I want to take you with Brand Storytelling is how it relates to personal branding. I love looking into personal branding, because that is the area of branding that combines both marketing and public relations together. This also has to connect both who you are in your personal essence and how you want to be perceived. It really is an interesting balance and even a delicate one when you take a deeper look.

So, "What's your story" can actually be broken down into three different points:

1. Who are you at your core?
2. What do you want to be known for?
3. How are you going to achieve this?

I really believe that this is the order you should tackle this when discovering your personal brand identity. It is important to understand who you are to the actions you need to take. But it is no good just to give a list, but to deeper explain why each of these points are important.

Who are you at your core?

 This is probably the hardest question to answer in my perspective. When you are personally branding yourself, you need to be true to yourself but also making sure that you are holding yourself to industry standard. It is hard to find that balance because there are times when you give up certain aspects of yourself to be able to fit a particular image and you are feeling miserable with everything that you are doing, because you are not who you are.

I will use myself as an example. In my bio, I admit who I am. I give you a glimpse of who I am so that you can understand my perspective and it won't be a total surprise on what I write. There was a time when I tried to change my core, but I was completely miserable. As soon as I admitted to myself that I am a geek who loves reading and writing, watching really odd movies and still is a fangirl over Disney princesses, I became a lot happier. I get that I am odd, but that is a part of my core that helps me look at things in a different different point of view.

What do you want to be known for?

Once you embrace your core, you need to decide what you want to be known for. This part is gauging what your priorities will be when you are trying to promote yourself. The process for this can take many forms depending on who you are. You can do this by creating a list or getting advice from someone who knows you well or meditate or however you process this type of information.

For me, I went through a period when I was evaluating this blog and wanted to know what to write and become a bit more consistent. It took me the entire month of November and December to decide what posts were received well. I evaluated these posts and tried to figure out the themes to do. What you experience in my blog and the themes I have picked are the most received.

How are you going to achieve this?

Taking action. I could be that person and leave it at that, because that's really what you have to do at this step. You need to take action and be consistent with it.

With me, I looked and found the posts that were most received. I could have simply looked at that information and said, "I don't care. I'll do what I want." That type of attitude is not one of the attributes I want associated with me, so I took my own criticism and started focusing a bit more on my writing. Yes, I do random Saturdays for my own personal enjoyment and those ones are more hit or miss than the other two days, but that one gives me the opportunity to stay true to my core.


I get that this may all sound good, but I bet you may be wondering how this exactly relates to Personal Brand Storytelling.

As a person who enjoys writing stories, this is easy. Think of these questions as the motivation as the protagonist (you) of the story (life). If you understand the core of the protagonist and what they want to be known for, then it is easy to understand the action they would take. I understand that life is not as organized as a story, but it is an easier way to view how to do personal branding.

Branding is supposed to present information and that information is you when it comes to personal branding. You just need to make sure that the best story is being told so that people will then have the perception that you want them to have. It's all about that impression.