An important part of the marketing process is creating the brand. For small businesses brands are often based around the individual. It is possible to create a personal brand through storytelling, according to Miri Rodriguez, a Senior Storyteller at Microsoft and innovative brand consultant.
Rodriguez has worked with NASA, Adobe, Walmart, McKesson and Discover. She has pioneered organizational change through story design with empathy – transforming companies into more diverse, impactful and audience-focused organizations.
On the importance of branding, Rodriguez says an entrepreneur can best know who pioneers organizational change through story design with empathy. Her own transformation came after being diagnosed with the mutation gene, BRCA 1. This led to her becoming owner of ‘Be Mindful Be Happy’, a holistic well-being and happiness shop committed to supporting people to find inner peace, healing, and mindfulness.
Discussing the branding process more fully: “Story is 22 times more memorable than any other piece of information you’ll ever share,” says Rodriguez. “A good, emotional story awakens the brain with dopamine, cortisol, endorphins, and oxytocin. When building your personal brand, you can gain an audience by sharing a relatable journey, following a structured storytelling format. These three pieces to a brand story mission are critical to begin building your story with intention.”
Rodriguez puts forward three steps to building a successful personal brand story. These are:
Take ownership of your origin Story
Those chapters of your life (past) that you probably have not taken time to assess as part of who you are today and are becoming. Use a blank sheet of paper and mark the day you were born, then continue adding data points of people, moment, places that you remember and that somehow shaped who you are today. Tip: Even if they don’t seem important, your brain is bringing them up during this exercise for a reason so be sure to make note.
Take inventory of your brand story today
Take a deep assessment on how you show up today both online and offline. Use tools and analytics to see how people respond to you and what you are “known for”. Send anonymous surveys if you have to and ask the broad question: How do I show up? This will give you a good baseline of where you brand is today and where you want to take it with your story in the future.
Create a mission for your brand story
Who is this story dedicated to? What is it going to help them do? How is it going to make them feel?
