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About the Author - Shannon PeelShannon Peel is passionate about stories and how they connect people. People de-scribe her as intelligent, quick-witted, and creative, all things she takes pride in as she values intelligent thought and solution-based productivity.Shannon engages audiences by asking them to peel back the layers to nd the core of their values-based brand story. She challenges people to look at telling their stories from different points of view to discover how to reframe themselves as the hero. She helps brands who are trying to reach their ideal audiences by encouraging them to see their organization from the customer’s point of view so they can guide them along their journey from brand awareness to advocacy.Welcome to BrandAPeel: Brand Storytelling in the Digital Age Need a speaker for your event? Click to learn more about Shannon's presentation topics.

The BrandAPeel Objective:The objective of this book is to guide you through the process of creating a brand, whether it is a personal brand or a business brand. You will be able to access the information on these pages without purchasing the full access pass to gain a better understanding of branding in today’s digital world. If you want to create a brand for yourself and get the most out of this book, you will need to purchase the full access pass. This is a one time payment for access to everything this book offers. When you do, you will have access to all the videos, the workbook downloads, the community, and all of the content in each chapter. You will be guided through the process of building your digital footprint and creating your marketing funnel. As you go through the book, you will discover different paths to help you build your brand, funnel, footprint, and content on your own. Find support in these areas:1. Peer support in the community 2. Small group discussions and master minds3. One on one coaching sessions with Shannon Peel Once you purchase your full access pass you will be able to access the community, do it yourself step-by-step programs and workbooks to explore your own brand. The full access pass is a one time payment and you will have access as long as MarketAPeel is in business. BrandAPeel is one of the many titles MarketAPeel has published. If you want to publish an interactive, multimedia, digital book like BrandAPeel, contact Shannon Peel to discuss your options.

What is Brand Storytelling?I am going to assume you want to connect with potential customers and create abrand story to guide people from awareness to advocacy of your brand. If I’m right,you’ve come to the right place and I am happy to help you.I’ve searched the Internet. Asked business owners, marketers, and professionalswhat brand storytelling is and how a brand can make an impact on their audience. Inthe process I discovered, there is more than you think to crafting a brand story.Brand Storytelling and the Bigger StrategyMany parts need to come together to tell a bigger brand story. It is easy for allthe disconnected pieces to fracture the story and leave your audiencemember confused about what you do and how you can help them.You need a big picture strategy to bring the different marketing theories, pro-cesses, and platforms together: Content marketing, social media marketing, digitalmarketing, email marketing, SMS marketing, advertising, publicity, SEO, and differentmedia to guide audiences from awareness to advocacy.If you feel confused, imagine what your audience feels when they try to gureout what you do and how you can help them. By creating a clear strategythat maps out your ideal customer’s journey, you can guide them along the path from awareness to advocacy by answering the question: "Why are you the best option?"Is Brand Storytelling the Same as Marketing?Brand storytelling happens across the marketing industry on a number of differentchannels and verticals. It occurs when you communicate with others aboutwho you are, what you do, and how you can help. Brand Storytelling is about thebrand, the employees, the leadership, the customers, and the audience. 

Marketing is the structure of a funnel, the technical parts of customer journey, research of the market and how people behave within it. It is the processes and platforms you use to get your message in front of your audience. Brand storytelling encompasses everything from concept to advocacy along the dig-ital marketing funnel. It is used by everyone who has a connection with the customer, the potential customers, and the marketplace. Business leaders need to dene the story in the strategy planning process. Upper management uses the brand story to communicate with team leadsInvestment relations tell the brand story to raise funds and inform investors Marketing nds multiple ways to tell the brand story to connect with audiencesSales uses the brand story to persuade potential customers to buyCustomer Service uses the brand story when helping customers solve issuesCustomers tell the brand story when they make recommendationsBrand Storytelling starts with understanding who the brand is, what it wants to be known for, and then telling stories around how everything associated with the brand to exemplifying the core message. If your ideal customer doesn’t know your brand’s core message You have a brand storytelling problem.If your ideal customer doesn’t see your brand message You have a marketing problem.

I wanted to know how the buzz word Brand Storytelling was evolving and being de-ned by business owners, marketers, and those who tell the stories we consume.Here are some of the responses I received.Liza Kirsh, Chief Marketing Ofcer of Dymapak, “Brand storytelling is a key strategy for companies that want to stick out in the minds of consumers and shape narrativesabout themselves in the marketplace.”David Rowland - Head of Digital Marketing at EcoOnline, “Brand storytelling is the future of marketing because it is personal and human. The marketing industry is mov-ing away from impersonal, mass-marketing campaigns and instead focusing on com-municating with consumers in an intimate, individualized way. It’s about a relationshipbetween brand and consumer—not just a transaction.”
Daniel Carter, Marketing Specialist at PharmacyOnline.co.uk says, “Brand storytell-ing keeps your staff on the same page by recording your brand narrative. By devel-oping brand rules, you decrease the risk of the story being misinterpreted or misspo-ken. Documented principles serve as a reference to which every area of your businessshould align, down to the font of your storefront sign, because every component isimportant to present your story.”Adam Ng, the CEO and Founder of Trusted, “Brand storytelling is a cohesive, con-sistent narrative that intertwines the facts and emotions your brand evokes. It focuseson using a narrative to connect your customers to your brand by focusing on yourvalues, mission, and history.”As a content creator, writer, novelist, marketer, and advertising salesperson, I’ve beena brand storyteller long enough to know – it isn’t anything new. It’s not a buzz wordbut a long tried and true method to advertising, marketing, and selling. In his book,the Science of Advertising, Claude Hopkins, tells stories of how he used storytelling inadvertising at the turn of the 20th Century to get people to buy products from tires tothe new invention of quick cooking oatmeal.

How marketing and brand storytelling work together:Advertising: Uses brand storytelling to connect a brand with their audiences Content Marketing: The purpose of content marketing it to tell stories Digital Marketing: Lays out the brand story along the customer journey Email Marketing: We send emails to tell followers about our brand stories Social Media Marketing: Tell brand stories in sound bites on these platformsBlogging: Platforms like blogs are perfect places to tell brand storiesPR/ Publicity: When Journalists or media platforms publish your brand storyPodcasting: Like blogging a podcast is a great platform to tell your storyYouTube/ Vimeo: Telling a brand story using video is popularPhotography: Telling a brand story in pictures creates visual contentInfographics: Telling a brand story visually using graphics to show the storyebooks / Digital Magazines: Organise a brand story to guide readersWebsite Copy & Design: You tell your brand story on websites SEO: Crafting a brand story using keywords to drive trafc 

The brand is a company’s identity and thestory is the narrative various storytellers tellEver go through a social media feed trying to nd something to comment on, and allyou see is, “We are Great.” “Buy Now.” “List of features” posts? Marketers andcontent creators think they are telling a story when they talk about the brand’s bene-ts, features, and how it works but they are not storytelling. They are announcing, lec-turing, telling audiences what they want them to think. Many traditional storytellers dothe same thing, and the result is - a message that doesn’t resonate with the audience.Trust me, it is hard to bring you into a story when writing a book to teach you aboutbrand storytelling or tell you enough of a story that you’ll resonate with the problemand want the solution, but that is exactly the goal of good storytellers.I imagine you are struggling with either getting audience members to follow youor choose your solution to their problem. You are spending resources to createposts on social media, hoping to garner brand awareness so people will hireyour company. You post consistently. You tell stories. You share photos, videos,and graphics. Still they are not converting into sales and you are frustrated.I get it. I’ve been there. Can I ask, "Are you trying to get them to jump the grand canyon?" They aren’t Eval Knievel. They don't go from awareness to buy in one jump.Create a story to guide your audience through your digital footprint from awareness toadvocacy. Sure some times an Inuencer on Instagram says, "Hey go buy this lipstick,"and sales go up for a short period of time. NEWSFLASH - The inuencer has alreadytold a story to get their audience to trust them, identify with them, and open to buysomething they recommend. The lipstick is buying the Inuencer’s Brand Power.It isn't easy to guide people to your buy button. Your customer will experience road blocks and potholes. At times your ideal customer gets closer to your goal, the conversion point in the story... Then, their path takes a hairpin turn and it

looks like your potential customer is going the wrong way. Maybe they will fall downthe hill or perhaps they will follow the switch backs to get to the top of the hill andend up closer to the sale than you thought.The best stories have switchbacks, obstacles, andthat pesky villain who wants to win and the hero to lose.You as the storyteller need to let the story unfold and guide your ideal customertowards your checkout. Map out the customer journey, so you can understandhow they are feeling, what they are doing, and why they need your solution ateach checkpoint along their decision making process.The goal of marketing is to get your ideal customer to trust you enough to buy yourbrand or service. Telling stories helps because we intrinsically trust peoplewho are like us and a story gives more details about a brand than a logo does.Storytelling fosters a connection with your ideal customer by being relatable withshared experiences. When you tell them their story, you show that you understandtheir pain, you’ve solved the problem before, and you promise your solution will give them the results they desire.The most popular shows are successful because you are vested in the character'sstory. You are rooting for them to solve their problem before the episode ends. You, as the audience, are emotionally engaged in the outcome of the story. That is the goal of brand storytelling.

Brand Storytelling Keeps You UniqueI was watching presentations at a conference, when one of the speakers told people,“Due to the data we analyzed, these are the best colours, words, structure for a land-ing page.” Her advice was to nd the top performing landing pages and copy them toimprove your results.Slap your logo on and Voila instant success.I argue that your brand cannot connect with your ideal audience if you hack your wayby optimising data analytics to pick only the details the masses respond to in A/Btests. Sure, it makes sense to give audiences what they want, but not if you and yourcompetition look the same and there is no unique distinguishing features.Telling stories can help you stand out and give people individualized reasons tochoose you. Here is an example:“Your social media’s reach is low, and your brand story isn’t getting seen by the rightaudience. You work hard trying to get seen by potential customers, but you keepgetting a lower return on your investment. Worse, negative feelings are beginning toerode your motivation and the idea of giving up grows inside your mind.Joe was feeling the same way when he contacted me. He was about to pack it all inand quit. He was out of money, out of time, and out of patience.He’d tried every marketing trick the gurus told him to do. He was consistently posting,engaging, and creating content to promise people big results. But no one was re-sponding and he couldn’t get anyone to buy one of his programs.As I asked Joe questions, it became apparent that he was trying to be all things to allpeople. I understood that problem all too well because I’d been guilty of doing thesame thing once or twice.Joe’s shoulder’s slumped as he realized I was going to ask him to focus on one thingand disqualify people from being his customers. He shook his head, “But I can helpanyone with anything.”

“I believe you can. But just like you can’t please everyone, you can’t be everything either. You have to make it easy and simple for people to know what you do, why they need you, and when to call you.” As I worked with Joe to peel back the layers and get to know what he really loved to do, I learned more about him and the types of people he worked best with and which types of people he needed to avoid. I showed him techniques to help his audience pre-qualify or disqualify themselves from being his client. Over time he built a well connected digital footprint to meet his ideal client along their buying journey and spends time where they hang out instead of wasting time being where they aren’t. His process now guides the right people through his marketing funnel to sign up for his programs becuase they trust he will deliever what he promises. Today, Joe doesn’t waste time on discovery calls that go nowhere and he works with people he likes and considers friends. He no longer struggles to post content on social media or wastes time guring out the latest marketing hack to game the system. He has other people who love digital marketing working for him because his business is prota-ble due to clearly communicating his value to the right people at the right time.If you are struggling like Joe was, start telling the right story to the right person at the right time and everything will change. Who is Joe?Joe is my ideal client. This story has played out with different clients over the years as I’ve helped them to get to the core of their brand story. To tell a clear story and pro-tect your customer’s privacy, you need a Joe. Using a character to represent your ideal client may sound a bit underhanded and in-authentic, but you aren’t lying. I didn’t lie. I have helped various people the same way I helped Joe... But I don’t want to tell stories about specic clients. - Joe is real, but his name isn’t Joe and he’s more than one person. Create a Joe to use to tell stories about how you help people.

Studies show that our attention span is less than a goldsh, but this isn’t true. We havean attention span and can focus on things for longer than a New York minute. We justtake a fraction of a second to determine if we want to pay attention to the thing infront of us, before moving onto the next interesting thing vying for our attention.With so many brands competing for eyeballs on a small screen, audiences have an in-nite amount of content to cast aside when looking for something interesting. Due tomarketers and advertisers using the same data to create their content and copying eachother, it’s easy for people to swipe for the “NEXT” because we’ve seen it all before.Yuvi Alpert, Founder, Creative Director, and CEO of Noémie, “The internet has become overrun with short form advertising that has left our intended audience numband is why we leaned towards ways to connect with our customers on a human level,and we found that ability in storytelling. The average short-form advertising such aspop-ups, holds a viewers’ attention for less than three seconds, but storytelling pro-motions have engagement rates of up to ten times higher and sharing rates approach-ing nearly twenty percent.”Our Brands are Lost in the Content OverloadThere are more content creators today than ever before and they are screaming at thedigital world at the same time, resulting in nothing but noise. To stand out you needto do something different - you need to create an emotional connection with youraudience and give them something as a reward for their attention.How can You Get Seen Online with All That Content?Brand stories, when told right, enable brands to connect with their audiences and cus-tomers by putting them at the centre of the story. To do it right, you have to make itabout the audience, not about YOU. This can be hard, it can be down right impossibleat times, but somehow you have to gure out how to tell your ideal customer’s storyto them and guide them to choose your solution without sounding all salesy...

Humans are Hardwired for StoriesThe human mind constantly creates and consumes stories because they affect us physically and mentally. We love stories because they help us understand the world around us and clarify what we learn and experience. The brain sees no difference between reality and story.In brain studies, researchers discovered the same areas of the brain light up if the per-son is having a real world experience or watching a movie where characters are going through the experience. During an escalation of conict driven events in a story, chemical reactions take place within the brain, like the release of oxytocin and dopamine, ooding humans with a rush of emotions. This happens according to Marsha Rossiter, in her 2002 work, “Nar-rative and Stories in Adult Teaching and Learning”, because the audience becomes engaged and therefore remembers the story messages. Researcher Jerome Bruner found that messages delivered as stories can be up to 22x more memorable.Retrieving, reliving, or repeat watching of stories results in what Aristotle refers to as “prop-er peasure”—a catharsis— a slow unfolding of tragedy and catastrophe that then leads to the moment of realization and release—the “hamatea”—or experience of catharsis (1)Imagine your ideal customer feeling like they are going through the pain, using your solution and having the result they want. How can you tell them that story without sounding like a sales pitch or saying it over and over until they are numb and bored?First you need to know the core story you want to tell and then nd multiple stories that showcase that core message, mission, or value statement. Brand stories help marketers resonate with their audience by weaving common threads between them and their audience to create an emotional connection, helping people to remember what they learned, and make brand decisions. To ensure your marketing has impact, use brand storytelling techniques to successfully achieve your marketing goals.

Liza Kirsh, Chief Marketing Ofcer of Dymapak, “Brand storytelling is a key strategy for companies that want to stick out in the minds of consumers and shape narratives about themselves in the marketplace. Every company needs to fulll these capacities and they are only going to become more important in the future world of business. The ability to tell an effective brand story is a competitive advantage and this is only amplied in the realm of online business.”David Rowland - Head of Digital Marketing at EcoOnline. “Brand storytelling is the future of marketing because it is personal and human. The marketing industry is mov-ing away from impersonal, mass-marketing campaigns and instead focusing on com-municating with consumers in an intimate, individualized way. It’s about a relationship between brand and consumer—not just a transaction.”AlKarim Chatur, “Branding is your image and how your audience views and values you. If your actions are not aligned with your message as a result of constant reght-ing and responding, that eventually results in consuming your audience and will result in the demise or stagnation of your business”

Does Brand Storytelling Work?I have read countless books on selling, marketing, and advertising. From Brian Tracey’s Stories Sell CDs to Hey Whipple Squeeze This by Luke Sullivan and Sam Bennet, to Click: The Forces Behind How We Fully Engage with People, Work, and Everything We Do by the Brafman brothers. All these authors conrm that storytelling works.When I onboarded clients to teach them how to use an online reputation manage-ment system, I used stories to get buy-in so they would go through the process.When I sold advertising, I used my graphic skills to create a spec ad to take to a meet-ing. As I went through my sales pitch, I marked up the spec ad to tell the story thebusiness owner wanted to tell to the market. By the end, they were ready to buy be-cause they saw their story coming to life on the paper.Don’t just take my word for it - Here are what other marketing professionals say:Cody Candee of Bounce, “By telling the real stories of our customers, it showcased common problems, which in turn, demonstrated our service as the common-senseanswer to dealing with them. In doing so, we were able to message our brand, ratherthan having to explain it, making communicating the concept much easier. Storytellinggave our niche business the identity that matched the consumer’s need.”Robin Brown CEO at VIVIPINS* says, “Storytelling is the best way to describe what your brand is about, who you are and who should be connected to you. By tellinghonest, genuine stories, you dene yourself and your brand. Those who identify withyour ideals will be drawn to your content.”Chenadra Washington CEO, Founder Black Orchids PR, “In a society where many are striving to “nd their tribe,” brand storytelling is becoming a more appealing op-tion for marketing. Effective brand storytelling makes people feel like they are a partof something. It ignites feelings beyond the product or service that is being offered.

Sumeer Kaur, CEO and founder of Lashkaraa, “Today’s customers want to feel con-nected to what they buy. They don’t want to purchase items at a big box store but prefer to support smaller brands with a mission and values they can align with and a brand story they support.Telling brand stories helps customers identify with your brand and adopt it as their go to because your stories gives them the reasons to choose you over their competitor. If you want to stand out in today’s busy and loud Internet world, you need to have advo-cates out there talking about you and telling people to check out you brand. Word of mouth is key to success, but they have to have a story to tell and though most people can tell a story, few can tell a great story.In this book you will learn how to tell a story and how to guide your customers to tell your story to others.

What you will need:• This book• Journal• Support Getting Started:Start by dening your own purpose and objective in your journal. Questions to explore in your journal1. Why do you want to dene your brand? 2. What do you want to accomplish from this experience?3. What result will make you happy?Before You StartPublisher: MarketAPeel Editor / Writer: Shanon PeelDesign: Shannon PeelBrandAPeel is published by MarketAPeel939 Homer Street Unit 411 Vancouver, BC V6B 2W6 778-839-0521© Copyright 2023 MarketAPeel. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced into any information retrieval systems without the written permission of MarketAP-eel. The publishers are not responsi-ble in whole or part for any errors or omissions in this publication. ISSN: TBDMarketapeel.agency Want to know more about MarketAPeel's Services? View the portfolio

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This is a linkto go deeperinto the topicsThis icon takesyou to the indexTap the menu bars in theupper left to navigate thetable of contentsTap install on the upper rightcorner to access this book easilyon your device / desktopWelcome to theAPeeling Experience

What is a Brand?This Chapter is a deep dive into what branding is and what business owners need toknow about creating a brand. My Denition of BrandA company is an independent entity and like a person, it has a personality, values, avoice, an image, and a reputation. The brand is the essence of the company. Thingslike logos and websites are the clothes the brand wears, not the brand itself.How the Experts Dene BrandSeth Godin describes brand as “a set of expectations, memories, stories and relation-ships that, put together, impact a consumer’s decision to choose one product or ser-vice over another.”Marty Neumeier’s denition in his book Brand A-Z is, “A Brand is a customer’s perception of a product service or company, a corporate reputation.”According to Entrepreneur.com, your brand is, “Your promise to your customer. It tells them what they can expect from your products and services, and it differentiatesyour offering from your competitors’. Your brand is derived from who you are, whoyou want to be and who people perceive you to be.”The Branding Journal says, “You can consider a brand as the idea or image people have in mind when thinking about specic products of a company, both in a practi-cal (e.g. “the shoe is light-weight”) and emotional way (e.g. “the shoe makes me feelpowerful”). It is therefore not just the physical features that create a brand but also thefeelings that consumers develop towards the company’s product. This combinationof physical and emotional cues is triggered when exposed to the name, the logo, thevisual identity, or even the message communicated.”

What Others Say About the Word “Brand”Jason Barnard, says a, “Brand is what your audience perceives you to be. And the big digital players (Google, Facebook, Twitter, Apple, Microsoft...) have immense inuenceon that perception. We all need to start paying attention and managing this now.”The Tronvig Group says, Branding is the expression of the essential truth or value of an organization, product, or service. It is communication of characteristics, values, andattributes that clarify what this particular brand is and is not.Dominique Hart gives her denition of “Brand” as your unique and “Dynamik” (pro-nounced “Dynamic”) mark on the WORLD. It’s how your audience and the greater marketidentify the special way you serve them and the communities they live in. The best partabout it, and if done well, it’s all according to YOUR design.Ari Krzyzek shared , Your brand is not what you say it is; it’s what they say it is. Brand-ing is all about guring who you are.Holly Fisher says, “Your brand is how people see you. It’s their perception of you or your business and how you can make their life better.”Dane Sanders believes brand is the story people say about you when you’re not around.Jason Cercone adds, “A brand is how you tell the world who you are, what you do, and how you will be a valuable resource to others. This applies to the brand you buildfor your company, as well as your personal brand. Your brand puts the people in theseats and keeps them there!”Your brand, your business’ identity, and you, get to dene the story based on whoyou are and what you can offer the world. Branding your business is more than a logoand a website, it is understanding who you are and who your business is to the world.

More on how to define your brand in the how section, click to view.

The Importance of a Personal BrandIn this chapter, you will explore your own personal brand story and how it differs froma business brand story. Understanding yourself is vital when it comes to creating abrand, either personal or business. Whether you are an employed leader, like a CEOof a corporation, or the owner of a small business of one person - you need to knowwho you are and constructing a personal brand story will guide you when you create abusiness or professional brand.The work you do in this chapter will be the foundation for the rest of the book. Yes,knowing your own brand story is that important.“BUT SHANNON - I know my own story, I’ve lived it.”That is true. You have lived your story and told multiple parts of your story over andover again, but do you understand how others see you and the different roles you’vebeen cast in by others due to the way you’ve told your story?Just like Joe couldn’t be everything to everyone, your personal brand needs to havea clear message to tell people who you are and what they can expect from you. If youthought, “That sounds like a reputation.” You’d be right.Branding is Your ReputationYour reputation is what people say about you when you aren’t around based on theirinteractions with you, your product, your service, and your marketing message. Today,you are able to be part of your reputation’s conversation online.If someone posts a comment on social media about you or your business, you can ad-dress any negative comments and post gratitude for positive comments. By doing soyou are building your reputation.

Each social media mention, online review, and all your digital marketing content worktogether to build a larger picture of who you are. The more content the more com-plete the picture or the more confusing the picture... It all depends on how you tellthe story and how connected your digital footprint is to guide people from one storyto the other.Sometimes writers of TV shows need to move a plot a certain way so they will make aa character decide to behave a way that is contrary to what you know about that char-acter. I don’t know about you, but I nd it jarring and it can bump me out of the sto-ryline because of my reaction to the way the character is behaving.It would be like Spock coming to a party with a hat on backwards saying, “Let’s partydude.” It wouldn’t feel right. It would be odd and it leaves you questioning what youknow about the character. If the story continues to put Spock in the Wayne’s WorldSNL skit what does that say about Spock as a character?It has to do with our lizard brains, which are always on the look out for odd patternsthat could signal a dangerous situation. When the unexpected happens our brainshave to stop, pay attention to what happened, process it, make sure it isn’t a new dan-ger, all before it can move forward with the story.You don’t want your audience to feel something is wrong or wonder if you can betrusted because you aren’t showing up the way they expected you would. Your story-telling needs to consistently show people what you want them to know about you andkeep the outliers and out of character moments to a minium.That is why you need a personal brand story strategy.Branding Based on Your StrengthsQuick, make a list of everything you are good at. You know, those tasks that you arepassionate about and do better than anyone else. Focus your marketing message onthese strengths to set yourself apart and create a reputation based on what comeseasily for you.

As for those pesky weaknesses that could ruin your reputation? Either hire someone who is an expert at those tasks or nd a strategic partner to work on projects together.If you promise people that you will deliver on time, but you are a procastinator ex-traordinaire - you are going to fall on your face and miss expectations. Focus instead on the high quality you will deliver, when you nally get it done. That way, people will expect the high quality and not the on time delivery.When you know yourself, you can be clear about what others can expect from you.Brand Yourself as an ExpertWhat is the one thing you do that you do better than anyone else? Create a marketing message based on that service, product, or skill and once you have saturated all the media channels, start talking about the next thing.People want to hire or buy from someone they trust and knows what they are talking about. We want to deal with those people who can teach us something, who come across as experts because we want to know we are being taken care of by the best and not having the wool pulled over our eyes by a con artist.That is why you are reading this book and listening to what I have to say, because you see me as an expert who can help you dene your brand story and tell it to the mar-ketplace. If you don’t - I really want to know why you are reading this, let me know.Create a Personal Brand Whether you own a business, are a professional, or on the corporate ladder fast track, creating a personal brand with a website will help increase your success rate.Sales professionals who create strong personal brands build on their success, even if they’ve moved to another company because their following is still intact, which reects their potential to new companies and that is valuable.

If you are a Realtor, Insurance Broker, Financial Planner, or any other ‘Agent’ type po-sition, having a personal brand is vital to your success. At anytime you want to switch broker’s there will be little disruption to your cliental because your personal address doesn’t change, your website is still in operation, and your online reputation remains consistent.Don’t Hide Behind a Brand.People like to buy from people the like and trust. They engage with people online more than businesses and brand logos. No one wants to feel like they aren’t getting personal service and they want to know whom they are communicating with. No one likes to talk to AI robots online, no mat-ter how many businesses employ them. They are on social sites to create connections with people, not to develop a relationship with their phones. Make sure your brand has a personal touch with a professional, clear, friendly head-shot. Use the headshot on all your social media platforms for consistency.Create an Authentic BrandThey say the best lies are the ones based on truth. Even the best liars can’t keep all the facts straight and it is no different with your brand. Customer dissatisfaction is due to brands missing expectations. No one likes to nd out that the person they have been dealing with isn’t who they say they are, or worse, whom we think they are. No one likes to feel that they’ve been duped by a lie, a con, or a selsh jerk. We all want to deal with a person who provides the products and services they promise they will, or we expected they would. Manage client’s expectations by being open and transparent in your brand storytelling about what they can expect from you.

Narrow Your MessageYou are better off with a few followers who are actively engaged with your content than a lot of followers who never see you. Engaged followers spread your message and tell others what you do. I am lucky to have a handful of people telling people how wonderful I am at what I do. If they didn’t know what I do, they would tell the wrong story to the right people. Here is an exercise to help you narrow your message: Tell people what you do using only 6 words. Once you have those 6 words you will be able to expand on them when people want or need to know more. Chances are you do more than one thing and will end up with multiple 6 word stories that you can pull off your mental bookshelf when talking to people who need your services, solutions, or products.Use the right words.Many freelancers focus on what things they are ‘experts’ in: The best website design-er, the greatest social media strategist, and the smartest Adwords specialist. These are strong focused personal brands, which are easy to clearly communicate to the marketplace. The problem with them is they are not unique, authentic, or memorable because they are generic and subjective. Just because you say you are the greatest, doesn’t mean people will believe you. It can be difcult for someone looking for a specic skill to nd me or know how to refer me because I do too many things. To solve the problem, I focus on a narrower audience. For example, ‘I help coaches dene and tell their stories to the marketplace to get more speaking gigs.’ The list of all the pieces I create is not as important as why certain people need me.Just like with the 6 word story I have multiple I help statements to use depending on whom I am talking to and my objective at the time. Create a couple sentence struc-tures you can use by swapping out the who and the what.

Be GenuineThe best personal brands are genuine and authentic because intelligent people see right through insincerity and fakery. Brands who are copycats or dishonest may have initial short term success, however, once people feel lied to, they will loudly push back and walk away. “Be genuine. It will make it much easier to manage your personal brand on a daily basis,” William Harris, Facebook ads expert at Elumynt.Humour can help you stand out, however, be careful to use humour appropriately. Sarcasm can be misunderstood, politically incorrect jokes can offend, and cynicism can paint you as negative. I am infamous for using sarcasm and cynicism, which on occa-sion results in offending more than connecting. However, when done right, my humour makes me stand out enough to connect with interesting people on Twitter. My friend Anthony told me that his team refered to me as the ‘anti-Christ’ because my sarcastic, cynicist humour was the opposite of his motivational message on Twitter. I was forever being the devils advocate on his positive thinking and everything works out posts.The best way to tell a story is to show it, rather than tell it because when we tell sto-ries we are wearing the lecturers’ hat and people pull back, get bored, and fall asleep. Show your story by showing your audience how you help others, instead of telling them what you do. When you share examples of your work, you will create a personal brand story of your skills, client testimonials, solutions, and how you spend your day. Tip: Search social media platforms for keywords describing what you do and then en-gage with the content by commenting with your point of view, answer to a question, or tell a story about how you did the exact thing they are posting about - just don’t steal the comment thread by making it about you, refer back to the origninal poster and how you agree with their approach. By engaging with others you will get noticed faster than if you only broadcast a message about you. Ads are broadcasting. Storytelling is community building.

Anthony Gruppo’s Personal Brand UnPeeledA personal brand analysed... When I met Anthony Gruppo, I discovered a man who is unique and has a lot to teach the world about what it means to be a leader. As we went on a ten-month journey to construct a book to share the lessons he learned throughout his career, I got to peel back the layers to know him as a person. In the wake of publishing his latest book, Pushers of the Possible, I decided to nd out if Anthony C. Gruppo Sr’s personal brand matches the man he says he is. Humble BeginningsHe started life in a little backwater town in Pennsylvania, the son of blue-collar workers who gave him and his sister a wonderful life. His loving parents instilled a hard-work ethic into him through example and expectations, which has served him well through-out his career.During our chats, he was quick to give others the credit or remind me, he is far from perfect with many aws to overcome. In an interview with Paul Lucas of Insurance Business Magazine, Anthony described himself as, “a small-town person from a work-ing-class family,” noting, “I am not impressed by myself – I am impressed by humani-ty.” Is this a true statement? I went to the internet to nd out.When I look at his LinkedIn activity, he is always congratulating others on their successes and praising them as talented leaders, regardless of their position within a company. His posts are not - look at how wonderful I am – posts. They are stories about his visits to the many Marsh Commercial’s branches to get to know the people he leads. His posts celebrate other’s talents and give back to the community by engaging with it, both virtually and in the real world. He thanks people for the work they do and for spending time with him. All his posts are similar to this LinkedIn post, “Being with col-leagues in Witham is a great way to end the week. A Talented group asking challeng-

ing informed and thoughtful questions. Well done and thank you for spending time with me.” His posts tell a story about a CEO who stands in the midst of the people he works with and applauds their successes, not his own.When I met Anthony, he was the CEO of Marsh & McLennan NE out of New York and half way through our book project, he was asked to take over the reins in London UK. When he arrived in London to take the helm, a young woman at Marsh Commercial, Jody Oxford, asked if she could shadow him for two days and write about the expe-rience. She noted that, “There is no ego, nor selsh motivation – at the core of every decision is the individual’s affected and the effect on our business. How will it affect them? What can I do to make it easier? Can I do it differently to create less impact?” Her article describes him as a man who cares and is committed to helping the people he leads by being open to their opinions, ideas, and suggestions. It also tells the sto-ry about how he works harder than most, “He was ready to recharge and refocus, but having undertaken ve town halls in less than 48 hours, and travelling over 300 miles, it was intense. Still, Anthony was able to give his all to every meeting, every call, every query without hesitation or lack of focus.” He does not stop working, he gets up early works through his routine, goes to the ofce and works all day, then in the evening, he goes to events to make connections for the good of the company. He never stops. He would call me at a late hour, in NY or London, and I could hear the fatigue in his voice, however, he still moved forward to do what he needed to do to get the book done. Considering his responsibilities, restructuring a large organization, visiting all 63 branch-es, writing a book, and being there for his friends and family, I do not think he sleeps. While working on the project, I noticed he stays focused on what he needs to do at the time. He responded to messages and texts from me after his work day, when he had a moment to answer my questions. If he was with his family, he would get back to me afterwards, to focus on his family time. When we talked, he focused on the project with purpose, rarely straying from the task at hand, and only took a call if it was urgent.My experience was similar to Jody Oxford’s and with the story Anthony was telling on LinkedIn as he travelled around the UK meeting each team member.

Motivational LeaderAnthony tweets motivational and deep thoughts, which are insightful, and his follow-ers engage with regularly. When I read his Tweets, I learn even in his struggles and disappointments, he nds the inspirational lessons to share with the world. However, does he actually keep a positive attitude no matter what?I never heard him complain, even when the workload of writing the book added hours to his weekly responsibilities, which are already beyond most people’s weekly demands. He might have complained to a trusted friend, but not to me and not online. He en-sured I felt secure in my role in the project, even when I made mistakes. He never point-ed a nger, blamed me, or made me feel I was not good enough to continue with the project. He did what needed to be done and kept moving forward with me in tow. When I look at his social media posts, they are always upbeat, always positive, always motivational. There is never a time of doubt, pain, or a pessimistic outlook. He does not post about negative or controversial topics. He chooses to focus only on positive and insightful messages.I searched the internet to see what others said about his positive outlook and found many people agree, he is inspirational, motivational, and upbeat. Nikoleta Facey posted after her experience at Bristol life luncheon where Anthony was the keynote speaker, “It was an insight into his unique leadership and stimulating thoughts on how we should challenge ourselves delivered with great energy and en-thusiasm.” Tom Webster mentioned, “Anthony Gruppo talked about Marsh Commercial and his approach to leadership, really inspirational stuff.” Jody Oxford, in her article, wrote, “Motivation is one of Anthony’s greatest strengths. He has the ability to bring out the best in people and help them to believe in them-selves.” Chris Lay, CEO of Marsh UK & Ireland, said in a press release picked up by many insurance publications, “With his strong track record of delivering value to clients in

our fast-growing US-based MMA business, I am excited to welcome Anthony to lead our UK commercial and consumer team. His experience and dynamism will help us strengthen and enhance our offering throughout the Jelf network,” (Jelf is now Marsh Commercial). The story I found online about Anthony describes him as a motivational, inspirational, and energetic leader, which was in line with my impression from working with him.ProfessionalAnthony’s personal brand is 100% professional. Except for one special piece of con-tent when his granddaughter was a co-host for an episode of his podcast, the Roots of Leadership, there is not one post about his family or personal friendships. There is very little about his personal life online, in fact, I couldn’t nd anything. All of his posts are about work, leadership, and motivation.While working on his book, I learned he has been married for over three decades, he has two adult children, and three granddaughters. Beyond this, he kept his private life, private, and remained professional at all times. The stories he shared were about his career, servant leadership, his philosophy about becoming better, and to keep push-ing ourselves to do greater things.Even his digital image is professional, I could only nd one casual photo of him online. All his posted photos are work-related with him posed, dressed to the nines in a suit with shined shoes, and a smile. His comments are well thought out and all his content is business-related, be it a blog post, his podcast, a tweet, or a Linkedin post. His per-sonal brand is well crafted and he does not stray from it. This does not mean there isn’t personality, the man exudes personality. He has a pos-itive energy, a light-heartedness, and a composed image. The man I got to know dur-ing the project and the one I see online are very similar.

Servant LeadershipAs a CEO and leader, he has a lot of people looking to him for direction, advice, and help. It’s part of the job, however, Anthony goes beyond most CEOs. He seeks out those he can assist. As he told Paul Lucas of Insurance Business Magazine, “I don’t manage from a spreadsheet in London, looking at nancials and making a decision. I sit with people doing a job. That’s when you nd out about organisational procedures. I want us to be more functional – when you listen to people and you x that, then they really want to help you too. Now there is a groundswell of people across the country offering ideas – after one town hall I had 92 ideas submitted to me.” He listens and trusts that those in the organization who are doing the work know more about what is keeping them from being productive than he does. He respects everyone who works with him, and their support of him online supports this story about him. His dedication to being a servant leader is not lip service, as Jody Oxford discov-ered when she shadowed him and wrote about it on LinkedIn, “He isn’t afraid to push boundaries and challenge methodology and importantly, gives credit to those that deserve it. He is not here to solve every problem but to empower others to seek solu-tions and enhance their own personal development.” This behaviour is exemplied on both LinkedIn and Twitter in his posts and his engagement on others. Like a true servant leader, his ego does not come before those whom he serves.He is cognisant of how everything he does reects on his personal brand and is care-ful with the choices he makes personally and professionally, to ensure he protects the image he has crafted. Unlike most, who have a purposefully crafted brand, there is no disconnect between his behaviour and the story he tells about himself. He truly wants to do better every day and works hard to improve himself and support those around him. Being a CEO is a tougher job than I imagined. Decisions are not made lightly, carelessly, or without a heavy heart wishing there was a different way. It isn’t easy being him, even though he makes it look effortless at times. I know the difcult decisions he is required to make weigh heavy on him because he cares and has a heightened sense of responsibility to those whom he leads.

From the other side of the world, I watched him, and others, tell his story and discov-ered an extremely capable man. Surprisingly, in his book, he admits he has condence cracks and will turn to those whom he trusts to bandage him up and help him get back into the game. It is hard for me to believe a man so accomplished, intelligent, and self-assured has condence cracks. It is easy to assume he has all the answers to life because of his condence, his experience, and his values. He constantly asks others for their opinions and listens to their thoughts to gather the data he needs to make decisions. He does not speak without knowing all the facts and looks at problems from different points of view to nd the best course of action. He can be an effective leader because he believes in others to help him succeed and does not believe he is a one-man show. I am fortunate he believed in me and my ability to help him with his book, Pushers of the Possible. As happy as I am to see the book on my shelf, with my logo on the spine, I was sad when the project was over. He made a big impression on me, helped me to believe in myself, and gave my business a new direction. The APeeling series would not exist if it was not for him, because I came up with the idea of the APeeling magazine to promote our project and give back to him by pro-moting his personal brand to the marketplace. Now, I am able to provide MarketAPeel clients with a product to get their stories in front of global and hyper-local audiences. I have shared and republished this story many times since I rst wrote it and the story still has valuable lessons to teach others about how to construct a personal brand that is consistent, relatable, and easy for others to repeat when they talk about you. It is his belief in me as a writer and publisher, which gave me the condence to take a step towards my Possible.

Prince Harry Went from Hero to VictimPrince Harry Montbatten-Winsor cast himself as the victim in his story, which elicits sympathy, pity, and anger in audiences resulting in consternation, judgement, and conict. By setting him and the Duchess of Sussex against Their Highnesses, Prince William and Princess Catherine, his father, His Majesty the King, Queen Camilla, and the bureaucracy that runs the day to day, Prince Harry damaged his personal brand. Before he published his book, Spare, he was a hero who overcame a tragic loss felt by millions of people and now, he’s just a whiny rich kid who got the smaller bedroom.The Brand Story the People LovedUp until his marriage, the story the public knew was of two brothers who had over-come the tragic loss of their mother to be a close and supportive team representing Britain on the global stage. That is the story the people loved and now, he has shown them a reality they didn’t want to know about. People want Diana’s sons to be friends, not enemies.Why the British Media Turned on HimThe British media has turned on Harry because he cast the Firm and the Press as vil-lains in his story thinking he had more sway over the British people than the Media.* This is a gamble as most British people are struggling right now and this rich kid is whining because his brother got more and physically pushed him, one time in his life. The people can’t relate. They have bigger problems. They have real pain from horric traumas. They have their own family dramas to deal with. AND... the British taxpayer pays the Royal family’s wages so they feel they have the right to demand more from them as International representatives of the British way of life.

On one side of the pond you have a culture with deep historic ties to the institution of Monarchy and what it represents. There is more to it than a crown on the head of the eldest member of a generation. To many people in England an attack against the Monarchy is unpatriotic and an attack on the home team. The UK media make a lot of money reporting on the comings and goings of Britain’s famous family and they aren’t always loyal, but attack their golden goose and they will stand up for them. On the other side of the pond, the American media and people see this family conict as something to get behind because Meagan is their dog in this race who is standing up to the big bad British Monarchy whom they rebelled against a few centuries ago. Their ght against the Monarchy is apart of their patriotic origin story. Taking pot shots at the King is patriotic. From the news, tweets, and other commentator platforms - I can tell there is little understanding of who the Monarchy is and it’s job description. The Monarchy is a BrandThe Monarchy is a brand - a brand that is millennia old - a brand whose contemporary job is to represent the British people on the Global Stage. They are raised to put their own needs aside for the good of the crown, the people, and the country. It is the op-posite of what celebrity represents in America. There is the possibility that Prince Harry no longer cares what the British people think about him and only cares about establishing his new brand in America. I choose not to believe this option because he still is a Prince of Britain and it’s Commonwealth. Cast Himself as a Victim Not a HeroFirst let me say, this may be the result he wanted. I don’t know what his objectives are. If he wanted to upset the British media, the British people, and his family...He met his objective. All the victim language and putting himself up as the little abused boy who everyone marginalized is a tough story for someone in his position to successfully pull off.

Most people have experienced real hardship and see him as spoiled. This can result in anger and dismissive comments on social media platforms when they see him playing the victim card over something they consider no big deal, especially considering the trauma they’ve faced in their own lives. What a victim character looks like in a story. The victim in the story is focused on themselves and their circumstances. They see only problems and create new ones by reacting to every perceived slight. They do not take responsibility for their lot in life or accept the consequences of their actions. Victims blame others and avoid making decisions because they are looking for a hero to save them. It’s not their fault, it is everyone else’s fault they are victims. In stories, the victim is an emotional character who gets in the hero’s way because they feel pain, jealousy, fear, helplessness, or other negative emotions which results in an us vs them conict. What they don’t have holds more importance than what they do have. They are unable to be grateful or appreciative of what they have or what others do to help them. They don’t even see the help and support they receive because they are too blinded by their poor lot in life. Victims in stories are usually the minor characters for heroes to save and nd justice for. Think of the victims in the books, shows and movies you watch - How do they sound, what do they say, and how do they act? The teenage girl who goes into the haunted house everyone told her not to go into. The murdered man whose death needs to be investigated. The jealous wife who makes decisions that hinder her husband’s ability to succeed. The angry guy who robs the bank and gets caught. The common thread in victim characters are their own pain, negative feelings, and focus on what they lack. These are the characters who don’t grow. Who stay static because they serve a purpose in the story - To make the hero look good by saving them or nding justice for them.

A victim can be a hero in the story. Something bad happens to a character. They are attacked, assaulted, lose something, get hurt, are damaged somehow yet, they behave like a hero to move the story for-ward. They pull themselves out of the darkness, nd the stregth to heal, and help others who were victimised when life gave them a one - two punch. A hero changes the story through self reection, action, and the choices they make. They don’t let what happened to them dene them, they move the story forward de-spite what they lost. The war hero who lost his legs and runs a marathon. The entrepreneur who lost their fortune and then made a new one. The woman whose husband leaves her with noth-ing but debts, nds strength in her struggle to provide for her kids. Heroes act like he-roes, ghting for a better tomorrow, they keep trying and help others in the process. They talk about tomorrow not yesterday. They feel the pain of loss and failure but they get back up, gure out what they did wrong, and try again.Think of the heroes in the books, shows, and movies you love. How do they show up?Harry the SpareI get it - Harry felt like second banana in his family and wished he could have protect-ed his mother from the media and Camilla. Since he grew up in it - it was normal, until he was told that it wasn’t and he deserved more.He lived in a world where everyone’s worth was determined by their birth. He knew his place in the pecking order and then comes along this American who listens to all his past hurts and validates his pain. She asks questions and points out how unfair it is for him to be considered less as the spare, to be below his brother in the pecking order. She tells him they are more popular, more loved, and more valuable, so they should be equal and get more for being them. She has personal brand building skills to craft her own truth to share with the world. As an American, she doesn’t know the rules and traditions of Monarchy and he fails to

guide her and teach her the traditions that regulate his world. She doesn’t understand the Firm’s brand and the formality of tradition that rules their existence, which quickly shatters her dream of what it was going to be to be like to marry a Prince. Her personal feelings, needs, and identity must be pushed aside for the sake of the serv-ing the Monarchy, who in turn serves the people of Britain at the expense of their own desires. This is the opposite value system from the country she was raised in. A place where celebrity is about the individual’s ability to make money from their brand image. This misalignment of society values leads im to casting her as the victim of the media, giving him the chance to play the hero who protects her, like he wishes his dad had protected his mum. Soon, together they begin to list out all the wrongs done to them, all the ways they are given less than the Cambridges. How unfair, old fashioned it all is. They try to get a millennia old establishment to change for them and...It Backres. They are OUT with only one way to make money - a Sensationalist Tell All for Americans to buy.There is a lot of hurt and it is understandable that he’d want his family to understand his side and validate his feelings. He may want them to prove to him that they love him by admitting they mistreated him, ask him to come home, and give him the place he thinks he deserves. The Firm, his dad, and his brother won’t listen because they all have their own entitle-ment issues that conict with those of the Sussexes. Until both sides choose to under-stand the other side - this story will end like that of the former King Edward VIII and his American divorcee wife. Many families share this story and those who see themselves as victimized by their sib-lings will identify with Harry. His story will resonate and reafrm their own victimhood. Victims focus on hurts and in the process cause more problems and division. As long as Harry casts himself as the victim of his family - they will continue to grow further and further apart.

Could Harry have been the hero? Yes. But not by vilifying others, pointing ngers, and playing the blame game. He allowed himself to become the victim of the American storytelling industry where if it bleeds it leads sensationalism determines the value of the story. He has allowed himself to be paraded in front of a country who doesn’t understand Monarchy, whose origin story is based on the villainy of the institution of his very existence, and in the process, he has cast himself in the role of victim, not hero. If Harry wants to be the Hero, he needs to accept his family for who they are, under-stand their strengths and weaknesses. He must choose to love them in spite of their behaviour and nd a way to be apart of their lives without allowing them to damage his. Heroes strive to solve problems. They look to save the day by defeating the villain and saving the victim. He wants to be a hero and protect his wife from the villainous media. He did start down the Hero road when he acknowledged that the institution no longer served him and his family. He made the difcult decision to move away and remove himself from a situation he saw as dangerous to the mental health of his family... but then... he changed the story and cast himself as the victim of the family’s villainy. He had no choice but to tell the world his side of the story.Since publishing his book, he has backtracked to clairfy that it is the press he sees as the villain and that his family are still victims of the institutions they represent and the press. His brand story shows why it is important to understand what you want to be known for and casting yourself in the right role. In this book you will learn about the different roles and when a brand can be cast as a hero and when a brand needs to be cast as the narrator, guide, sage, or tool.

What to Know Before You Create ContentYour brand story funnel needs to lead people to the “Buy” section of the funnel, which is usually on your website. When your audience gets to this point in your funnel the goal is conversions. You want visitors to take the next step and open their wallets. The best way to increase your conversion rate is to ensure the people who are landing on your website are the right people. First you need to gure out who they are. If you already have customers, choose 3-5 of your favourites to help you dene your ideal customer. This isn’t always the most protable clients, it can be the ones you like to spend time with or the ones who listen and do what you suggest. Now, Google them to nd their digital footprint and learn more about how they be-have online. Do they mostly hang out on one social media platform over the others, do they post about similar activities or topics? Are they even online? The workbook will guide you through the process of your ideal customer’s characterisation. Once you understand what your top customers have in common, you can create content to speak to them and others like them. Know Your Audience As a novelist, I create characters out of thin air and put them into different situations to tell a story. The more I know about the character, the more believable I can make their reactions. The more believable their reactions, the better the story.This also works with understanding whom you want as customers because the more you know your customer, the better you can tell them stories to motivate them to take action and move closer to your business’ buy button. The more exact your storytelling, the fewer troublesome customers will walk through your door. When you understand who you want to work with, you can tell stories they are interested in, and ll up your schedule with people you enjoy working with. The

hardest part is taking the rst step to narrow your story to repel certain people while you appeal to others. Fear of missing out on an opportunity will keep you telling the right story to the wrong people and confusing the right people with the wrong story. As you work through the questions in the workbook, a clearer picture of your ideal customer comes into focus, you will have more time and more money. I look forward to hearing about your journey, share it in the BrandAPeel community. Understand your business, product, and serviceTo determine your ideal market, you will need to completely understand your prod-uct, service, and business. I know you think you understand it, however, what I mean is you are able to explain it to everyone, even the ones who may not be paying close enough attention to your story. In your journal write the answers to these three questions: • What does your business do? • What problems does your product or service solve? • Why should a person buy your product or service?Try to come up with a three part story for each product, service, and problem you solve so that you will have them stored on your mental book shelf for future use. By writing your story down you are focusing on what you want people to know and craft-ing a logical story they can easily follow. Practice makes perfect. Record yourself telling these stories and then edit them using either audio or video editing software will help you improve your storytelling technique. As I edited my BrandAPeel podcast episodes, I learned what parts to keep in and what parts to leave out. The more I practiced, the more polished my storytelling became. Reach out to someone you trust to listen to your stories and give you feedback. We can’t always see the forest for the trees or how our storytelling lands with others.

Characterization MethodCertain characters are based on archtypes, which help the audience to understand what to expect from them and the story. When you put the wrong archtype into a story it los-es the audience because it doesn’t meet their expectations. It’s like casting Steve Martin or Will Farrell in the role of Superman and letting them tap into their comedic talents as they ght Lex Luthor. It doesn’t ring true to what you expect from Superman. Archetypes provide writers with a guide to characterisation and development. Most archetypes are static, never changing, and the story is about the action rather than the hero’s journey. Jack Sparrow is the same swashbuckling savvy pirate in each movie of the franchise. He doesn’t change, he doesn’t learn, and he continues to go follow his broken compass to what he wants most. What other characters can you think of who follow an archtype and never grow or change?Most big brands are static archetypes because audiences expect them to produce the same result year, after year, after year. They become known for something and be-come the go to brand for their customers. Imagine if Nike created a reality show where the contestants had to decorate cakes. Immediately you’d think, “What does that have to do with running shoes?” Why are they suddenly trying to appeal to people who like to decorate and eat cake? Even if the cakes had to be decorated as Air Jordon’s, it still wouldn’t sit right because it is way outside of what we expect from the Nike brand story. Let’s take a look at the Nike Brand Story:The over all Nike story is - Use Nike products to move your body. The seasonal stories are about the current product lineThe episode stories are about one item, a collection, or an resultAll the episodes work together to tell the story of the season, which comes together to tell the big story of what you as a consumer can expect from Nike.Nike doesn’t change - but it’s customer’s do.

As new generations enter the workforce, society’s ideals change, and new trends start to materialise, Nike changes how they tell their ideal audience’s story to them. No that is not a typo. One fascet of brand storytelling is casting your ideal audience as the hero and telling their story to them. If it sounds complicated, it’s because it is complicated. The best brand storytellers know the audience so well, they can tell a story about that audience using their prod-ucts or services to solve their own problem, need, or desire. It’s also called advertising and not everyone gets it right, but Nike does because they show their audience how using their products will help them to “Just do it!” In personal brand storytelling audiences nd you because they like your storyIn business brand storytelling you nd audiences and tell their story to themYou tell the audience their story and how your business can solve their problem by telling them a story that gets them to re-experience the problem and see the solution - your solution - to their problem. The indices (details) of the story enable people to interpret the meaning of the story by relating their experiences with the story being told. Indices are the details people can relate to. This is why knowing which details to include in the story is important to ensure you are attracting the right audience and connecting with them. Let’s say I was writing for a company and they wanted their audience to be lled with 30 something single mothers, I’d add details specic to their situation and experi-ences to ensure they related with the story and other people didn’t. I’d add sounds of kids playing, or maybe whining for ice cream, set up the sprinkler in the back yard. Probably something about so much to do around the house even though it’s hot and they are tired. Probably wishing there was someone else who could mow the lawn as they sat drinking a cold beverage. Now, I have more indices to qualify the audience and I want to go out and tell stories about that experience because my client sells lawn care services.

Knowing the audience is important because the more focused the audience, the more common threads you can identify, the more details you can add to enhance the story and you can draw the individuals deeper into the story.Who is the HERO of a Business Story? Every story has a hero, but every hero does not belong in your brand story. When you are creating one piece of content for social media, a blog, or email you don’t have a lot of time to gain the attention of your audience and you aren’t creat-ing a re-make of Tolstoy’s War and Peace with one piece of content. As you create content, your brand story will become an epic told through sound bites, but for now, focus on the sound bite.When you tell your story, sometimes you are the hero in the story and sometimes you are the supporting character. In some stories, you’ll even be the antagonist or villain. Your brand’s story is no different. It is made up of lots of different stories, which tie together to weave a tapestry of its life, so it is important you know which type of story you want to tell and which type of hero you want your brand to be, otherwise the tap-estry will be a mess of different colours, shapes, textures, and materials.

You have to determine who will ll the role of hero. This is where traditional storytelling, personal brand storytelling diverge from business brand storytelling. And I’ll explain what I mean. When writing a novel, I either write in the rst person or the third person depending on the experience I want the reader to have with the characters.When I write in the rst person, I’m putting the audience in the role of voyeur. It’s like they are on stage with the hero watching the story unfold without any extra details beyond what the hero can see or know. The hero and the storyteller are one and the same. The storyteller only knows what the hero knows about the story and the audi-ence experiences the story through the hero’s point of view.This is where Personal Brand Storytelling happens because the person is both the hero and the storyteller. The audience’s role is to watch the story unfold.When I write in the third person, I am putting a storyteller between the audience and the hero enabling me to tell the audience things the hero doesn’t know. I’ve removed the audience from the stage and put them back into the seats to watch scenes unfold with different character groupings on the stage. In the third person I have three separate people in each role: hero, storyteller, and audi-ence. Oftentimes, this is the point of view people use when telling a business brand story. To make a bigger business brand impact, you need to see the audience differently.When it comes to business brand storytelling the hero of the story and the audience are one and the same. There is nothing between the audience and the hero because the audience is the hero. The storyteller guides the hero, who is also the individual in the audience, through their own story. This is the only place writing a story in the sec-ond person works. So, you want to use YOU language.

In traditional storytelling and personal brand storytelling the audience is passive, meaning they watch the story unfold and don’t affect the narrative or the hero’s jour-ney. They may engage with the story with a like, a comment, or applause but this ac-tion does not change the story. The story exists regardless if they are watching or not.In business brand storytelling the audience is active. They are the one with the prob-lem that needs to be overcome and they transform as they journey through the story.In fact, the audience knows more about the story than the storyteller. The audience adds details from their own experiences, which the storyteller does not know. They determine the hero’s transformational journey, direction, and without the audience, there is no story. They are an active member of the narrative. They click to go one way or the other through the digital world and steer their custom-er journey from awareness of a problem to advocacy of the solution. It is the job of the brand storyteller to ensure the brand is considered as the preferred solution when it comes time for the audience member to make a decision.Good Storytellers know their audience. In 2022, when we had a reprise in Covid restrictions, I was scrolling through event brite and saw tickets to a comedy show and I thought, “Hey why not get out, be around people, and laugh at something other than my Covid hairdo.” I bought the ticket, put the event on my empty calendar and when the Friday came, I jumped in a taxi and went for a ride.There I was sitting at the bar, drinking and expensive glass of cheap wine, in this tiny dive of a club looking forward to having something to laugh about.The comedians come out do their set and … They were all 30 something, unmarried, with no kids, some played for the other team, others drank lots and had fun with the odd recreational drug. Now, I’m a 50-years-old, divorced, single, empty nester, with 2 grown children at University. I’m a social drinker and though I can smell the BC bud in the air, I rarely partake.

Do you think I found the comedian’s jokes funny? Nope. I couldn’t relate to what they were talking about. Their stories fell at, and their punch lines didn’t land --with me -- just me --, because I was probably the oldest in the room by a couple decades. The comedians were getting plenty of laughs because 99.9 % of the people in the room, were their right audience and they got the jokes.I’m the one who hadn’t done the research.When it comes to knowing your audience to determine the story you will tell and how you will tell it, there is a difference between personal brand and business brand story telling.Personal Brand StorytellingIf you are on the personal brand stage, the right audience will nd you because they relate to your story. Like the comedians up on the stage, people who enjoyed their type of comedy made a point to be there that night because they knew they’d like the comedy. They even brought friends. The comedians were telling a personal brand story about their lives and how they saw the world.In traditional storytelling and personal brand storytelling the audience is passive, mean-ing they watch the story unfold and don’t affect the narrative or the hero’s journey.The story exists regardless, if they are watching or not. At the comedy club, I was an observer of the stories that were being told, not an active participant. Whether I found them funny or not was irrelevant to the storyteller. Brand StorytellingWhen it comes to business brand storytelling you have to research the audience, know what they need, and then go nd out where they hang out.

They determine the hero’s transformational journey and without them there is no story.If I was a business who knew that single 30 - somethings needed my product and I went to the comedy club to get on stage and tell a story that related to them but didn’t have much to do with who I am– I’d have to do research to nd out what they think is funny and craft stories to engage and entertain them.The details I put int the stories enable the audience to dene the meaning of the story by relating it to their experiences. In my comedy club story, the comedians details of being 30, single, gay, party animals, are not things my experiences or details match up with – there is a disconnect. So, I’d need to craft a story they could relate to and offer my product or service as an option they can choose to get the result they want. This is why knowing which details to include in the story is important to ensure you are at-tracting the right audience and connecting with them. Let’s step back and dene your ideal audience before we gure out how you are go-ing to tell them their story using your solution, product, or service. I will get you there, further on in the book, for now let’s explore the characterisation of your audience. Casting your ideal audienceThink about when you’ve watched your favourite movie and the characters felt real, you could relate to them, you understood them and saw yourself as being friends with them. They were awed. They made mistakes, learned, and grew as the story pro-gressed. These well-rounded everyday characters are created through a process of asking questions, creating back stories, and drawing from people in the real world. This is the kind of process you want to engage in when you dene your ideal audience.The workbook will help you to build out your ideal audience’s characterisation so you can fully understand who they are, what motivates them, and why they will choose you over someone else.

Show Don’t Tell a Brand Story A live band was playing at a wedding reception. After their rst break, the lead singer came back up on stage and addressed the guests, “Hey everyone, we have a 15-year-old kid here who has asked if he could play with us. I want everyone to give him a chance, he’s only been playing a couple of years so, be kind it’s hard to learn an instrument so be patient with him and offer up your support. It takes a lot of courage for him to get up in front of all of you.” The boy walked up on stage, borrowed the lead singer’s guitar and started to jam with the band. As they played, the drummer’s mouth began to hang open in disbelief and the bass guitarist kept shaking his head while looking at the kid. After they nished jamming, the lead singer came back onto the stage and bellowed into the mic, “Now that is talent. Wow. You can play with us any time.” That is how my son showed our family that he was a rock star at 15, instead of telling them.Showing is about allowing people to experience it for themselves. In three different studies - (Adaval & Wyer, 1998; McKee, 2003; Wells, 1988). – re-searchers discovered that when people are lectured at they tend to get tired, shut down, and want to go to sleep. Basically, tune out. Whereas, when told a story, the audience is moved to action. They may not move physically in the moment, but their minds are engaged, ideas start coming at them left and right, and they are motivated to do something, even if it is to lean in to hear what is being said.Think about how I showed you the story of my son playing the guitar. How is it differ-ent than me telling you he played the guitar at my brother’s wedding reception and blew everyone away?

Not all stories are created equal. Many storytellers take the tell part of storytelling literally and tell the audience a story and their story quickly reverts into a lecture disguised as a story. There are a number of reasons why this happens:• Haven’t learned how to craft an engaging story• Don’t trust the audience to put 1 and 1 together to get 2• Thinks the audience needs a bunch of details and back story• Wants everyone to know how smart they think they are.Crafting a story in marketing Content marketing is about creating content to tell a story with the right key words so people who are looking for a solution to their problem will be able to nd your business. When you craft a story that puts the audience or reader in the middle of the problem they are having, you will naturally use keywords the potential customer will use in their search.For example, if I wanted people who want to know how to tell a story in their marketing, I would write about how frustrated you are because you are not getting the results you want from social media. You work hard to create content but people are not coming to your website to buy your product or service. You ask yourself, “How can I get trafc to my website?” or maybe you are getting trafc but they just won’t convert. “Why won’t they convert?

Elicit Emotion when Telling Your Brand StoryBrand storytelling works because it elicits emotions to draw the audience in by being relatable. Creating the right copy to touch the hearts and minds of the reader is an art. Copywriting, Emotions, and Brand Storytelling: The rst thing to take into consideration is the image and values of the brand because the customers need to identify with the brand to feel trust. The next variable to ad-dress is the objective and goals of the project. If a brand wants a quick reaction to encourage a short-term purchase, then fear of missing out or appealing to one’s ego as an early adopter might work. If a brand wants to build a long-term, trusting relationship with its audience, then the copy needs to speak to the values, opinions, and ideals of the reader to show how they and the brand are aligned. Connect by Resinating with the Audience The funniest comedians are the ones who tell funny stories about something you relate to. If a comedian is telling stories about the messiness of being a parent and you’ve nev-er had kids, his story is not going to resinate with you and the joke will fall at. Brand storytelling is no different. You want to tell stories about your business which your audience will relate to because you are solving their problem, issue, or frustration. Write stories about ctional customers experiencing a problem and how you were able to come in and x it for them. Finish the story up with a happy result and call to action. When the customer can see themselves in the story, they will know your com-pany is the right choice for them.

Emotions to Target in your Brand Storytelling There are lots of different emotions you can try to elicit in your brand story, however some emotions work better than others at creating a lasting impact or short term ac-tion. For example, advertisers have used the emotions, fear and love, since the begin-ning of advertising to sell goods and services. Think about how your reader may expe-rience a fear of missing out or fall in love with the idea of what your product or service can do for them. In today’s world, we are all looking for connection and community because we want to feel accepted, liked, and a sense of belonging. Think about the emotions your brand story naturally brings out of people and tell stories to pluck on the heart strings to in-spire your audience to act. The most important emotional incidents to explore in your brand storytelling is their moment of greatest fear. It is perhaps the most important emotional trigger, because our limitations, failures, frustrations and disappointments can be traced back to a fun-damental fear and a moment of our greatest embarrassment. Ouch. I know. But don’t ignore that moment of deepest shame. The moment of most profound guilt. The lessons you learned in that moment dened you and your brand. These are the stories your audience will resonate with because they’ve been there or are in that place. There is a rule - You must tell the story from a place of success not a place of shame, failure, fear, or guilt though you are telling a story about those emotions. If the story you are telling only contains the problem, the cause of the problem, and the result of the problem, you are telling the wrong story. Only tell brand stories about the solution. The problem is the conict you were facing and the story is about how you beat your adversary, the problem, to arrive at a positive resolution.

Brand stories can touch your audience on an emotional level where they will resonate with them. It’s easier for personal brands to tell emotional stories based on events in their lives. Business brand stories can still elicit emotional connections by sharing personal sto-ries, but those personal stories are stories about how the business solved customer problems. Watch commercials big corporations have created to tell an emotional story to sell products to learn how to structure brand stories. Click the videos below to discover commercials you want to watch.

Brand Stories Inspire EmpathyEmpathy in brand stories inspire connection, whereas sympathy, can result in villainy.I was talking with my young adult son about the homeless in Vancouver and what the city needs to be doing about it. At one point he says to me, “Let me understand this. My empathetic mother who understands what others go through and cries when they share their stories, doesn’t empathise with the homeless? This is what I’m hearing right now.” This felt like a punch in the gut. My response was defensive because I do care about their situation. “Mom, you’re sympathetic but you have no empathy for them.” What was the difference and why were my solutions to the homeless situation reect-ing a lack of empathy? I wanted to know and in the process of researching the dif-ference between Empathy and Sympathy, I discovered how we tell our stories deter-mines if people feel sympathy or empathy. Sympathy is not EmpathyAs my son pointed out it is important to understand the difference between sympathy and empathy to know how to elicit the right reaction in your brand storytelling. Sympathy is feeling of pity or sorrow for other people who are experiencing a nega-tive event in their lives. You don’t have to understand their pain to feel bad for them and wish they weren’t going through it. When you sympathise you don’t fully under-stand what they are going through and do not feel their pain or joy deep in your soul. Empathy is an UnderstandingEmpathy is more than sympathy because you understand how another person feels and why they feel that way. When you empathise with someone else, you feel what they feel and understand what they are going through. You are able to connect be-cause you have a shared experience, even if it was different events with similarities.

How to tell the Difference between Sympathy and EmpathyPeople mistake empathy for sympathy because they don’t understand the distinction between the two. John is a manager and believes he needs to be seen as a caring individual. During a meeting he received a text from someone who experienced a loss and John stopped the meeting because he needed a moment to compose himself. He was feeling upset about this text. When the participants of the meeting suggest-ed cutting the meeting short, he said, “I can call him after the meeting. I just need to process this news. I’m feeling empathy right now.”John was sympathetic to the text and concerned about how the news was making him feel in the moment. If he’d had an empathic response, his response would have been about what the other person needed from him at that moment, not what he was feel-ing himself. John wanted the people in the meeting to see him as empathetic, but he wasn’t – he was sympathetic. Sympathy comes from our logical or rational intelligence and empathy comes from our emotional intelligence and experiences. We placate other’s emotions with statements like, “When one door closes, another one opens,” or “You’re better off without him.” When we use these canned positive thinking statements, we are trying to get the other person to feel better so we can stop having an uncomfortable conversation. We want to slap a band-aid on it and move on.

That is sympathy – you feel bad for them but you really don’t want to sit with their pain. Empathy sits with them in pain until they have fully processed it. • Sympathy often involves a lot of judgement. • Empathy has none. • Sympathy involves understanding from your own perspective. • Empathy involves putting yourself in the other person’s shoes to understand • Sympathy’s favourite expression is “Poor you• Empathy’s favourite expression is “Tell me how it feels.” • Sympathy focuses on the surface meaning of statements • Empathy is sensitive to non-verbal cues. Empathy isn’t always about negative situations. Empathy can be understanding posi-tive and joyful experiences of others. It is the understanding of what other people are going through and how it makes them feel - both positive and negative.Empathy and Storytelling When we tell stories we create a space for people to become more empathetic because they start to understand the other side of the issue. People need to have empathy to place themselves within the story, put themselves in the shoes of the main character. Without it, they are disconnected from the story and the plight of the characters.To connect your brand story with your audience, you need to create opportunities for them to feel empathy and identify with the person you are talking about. To do this, you need to understand who your audience is and lead them using a brand story digi-tal funnel to guide them deeper into the story. This isn’t easy and takes a bit of trial and error. Take Ella, she posts on her social media proles, writes keyword rich blog posts, has a decent following, lots of engagement, but she isn’t getting any new clients or sales.

Her posts are created to elicit an emotional response Posts with the strongest engagement were about her pets and kids. Her personal sto-ries connected with her audience, but they didn’t tell them what she did or why they would want to go deeper into her story to connect with her professionally. Her best post was a story about losing her brother to suicide. Many of the likes and comments on Emma’s post was from people who were sympathetic to her losing her brother. Sympathy does not lead to understanding or guiding people deeper into your story because, they are more concerned with how they feel than understanding what you went through. They hit like or write a comment of condolance and then move on because the story is making them feel uncomfortable by triggering their own fears. It’s like we are superstitious, as long as we hit like or say something then the same thing won’t happen to us.Sympathy does not foster connection – empathy does.Emma’s post about the loss of her brother did have empathetic responses from those who had experienced a similar loss. Some shared how they’d lost loved ones to sui-cide, some identied with Emma’s strength in time of loss because they’d lost some-one in different ways, and others understood what it feels like to be on the edge of suicide. Empathetic responses triggered people to share their stories, which created conversations and connection through the sharing of stories.“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” - Maya Angelo

Emma is a Realtor®As a Realtor®, having a strong personal brand story is an important part of her brand storytelling strategy because being able to connect with individuals will improve her level of success. Her brand storytelling strategy is a balance between personal brand stories and busi-ness brand stories to ensure she connects with people by sharing stories they can relate to, while showing them that she is a Realtor® whom they can trust. To be effective, she needs to understand whom she wants as clients and then under-stand what matters to them in their day to day lives. Once she understands her favour-ite clients, she can connect with them before they ever think of buying or selling real estate while at the same time letting them know that she is a Realtor®. By telling her personal brand stories. and business brand stories - she is able to craft stories people empathize with and show them what she does.When a Vulnerability Story Goes WrongIn the summer of 2022, Braden Wallake, CEO of, HyperSocial posted a photo of him crying on LinkedIn and shared his story about how laying off 2 employees made him upset. His post went viral for all the wrong reasons. He meant to tell a story about how leaders don’t take laying off others lightly and they feel sadness too…. The result was instant vilication by his audiance, and the post went viral as people made fun of his vulnerability and tears. Most people did not empathise with him, nor did they felt any sympathy because of how he told his story. When writing a vulnerable story - how you write it matters

Here is his post: “This will be the most vulnerable thing I’ll ever share.I’ve gone back and forth whether to post this or not.We just had to layoff a few of our employees.I’ve seen a lot of layoffs over the last few weeks on LinkedIn.Most of those are due to the economy, or whatever other reason.Ours? My fault.I made a decision in February and stuck with that decision for far too long.Now, I know my team will say that “we made that decision together”, but I lead us into it.And because of those failings, I had to do today, the toughest thing I’ve ever had to do.We’ve always been a people rst business. And we always will be.Days like today, I wish I was a business owner that was only money driven and didn’t care about who he hurt along the way.But I’m not.So, I just want people to see, that not every CEO out there is cold-hearted and doesn’t care when he/she have to lay people off.I’m sure there are hundreds and thousands of others like me. The ones you don’t see talked about. Because they didn’t lay off 50 or 500 or 5000 employees.They laid off 1 or 2 or 3.1 or 2 or 3 that would still be here if better decisions had been made.I know it isn’t professional to tell my employees that I love them.But from the bottom of my heart, I hope they know how much I do.Every single one. Every single story. Every single thing that makes them smile and every single thing that makes them cry.Their families. Their friends. Their hobbies.I’ve always hire people based on who they are as people. People with great hearts, and great souls. And I can’t think of a lower moment than this.”

When I read this post, I see a story about a leader who made a decision that resulted in having to let two people go and he is taking responsibility for it. So, why did it get vilied? Some people were probably triggered due to their own lay offs. Most people are not leaders and cannot identify with someone who must make these hard decisions, so they cannot empathise with him. A lot of them were jumping on the viral trend to get their own brands in front of people, thinking that’s the way to build a brand and get followers. I think the main reason is because his story structure cast him as a victim disguised as a hero and this screams, “Please feel sorry for me,” even if that isn’t the purpose or objective. How could Braden Wallake structured his story to garner sympathy and empathy instead of being vilied? First, he needed to take the emotional out of the story by waiting until the worst of the emotions had passed. Then once written, not post it, wait a couple of days and then go and edit it to ensure he was not using emotional woe is me language in the story. Second, he should have told a story of empathy for his employees not how he felt about letting them go. He needed to use the pronoun ‘I’ less and ‘them’ more. Third, his self-importance or ego – Calling himself a CEO sounds pretentious and he offers himself up as a foil against CEOs of larger companies. By setting himself up as a CEO instead of a small business owner, the public easily transferred their anger at the heartless CEOs of large organisations to him. Fourth, the photo of him crying was a blatant cry for sympathy, but he didn’t experience uncertain loss caused by someone else in power. He was the person who held the pow-er. It also goes against society’s belief that leaders, especially male leaders, shouldn’t cry. We want strong leaders whom we can trust to lead us through the tough times. Even in today’s Woke world of men being in touch with their feelings, we want strong leaders..

Fifth, he needed to recast himself in a non-villain role. He had to make a tough choice for the sake of his company and those who still work for him, it was a tough decision and not one he took lightly, but – THIS IS VITAL – he is not the victim of circumstance in this story. He is the one with the power over others. His failure to get clients result-ed in him having to let others go… The employees are the victims. He is the villain There is no doubt that those who make the hard decision to let others go, experience negative emotions because they know they have negatively affected the lives of many people, but they are not the vic-tim of circumstance.Sixth, he needed to understand his audience. Most people are not CEOs of compa-nies and can easily identify with those who were let go because they either have been let go in the past and know how it feels or they fear being let go and can sympathise. Every story can grow and those who created satire posts about, Braden Wallake, have shown themselves as being cruel and unsympathetic individuals who jump on trends and only care about getting follows and likes. So, in the end, those who pushed the post into the sphere of viral – became villains in the process by making fun of Braden.Every day, business owners solve problems and struggle to overcome obstacles, which they can tap, to be more vulnerable and show their ability to help customers get what they want in life. When telling a vulnerability story, do not leave yourself open by be-ing a victim, you must be seen as the answer either as the hero of your own story or the solution the hero of thestory needs.

How to Tell a Brand Story to Elicit Empathy1. State your vulnerability:Fear is in the pit of my stomach, and I feel isolated.2. Explain the why of your vulnerability:I am alone and scared I won’t be able to pay my bills3. What will you do to solve the problem creating your vulnerability:To x this problem, I created a programs to help people tell their stories to the right audience, build their digital footprint, and their marketing funnel.4. Add a pothole that others can identify with:But what if they don’t show up? What if they do and they don’t want to buy? 5. Establish the Stakes, something others are fearful of too:If I don’t succeed, will I have to buy a tent to live in? 6. Describe what you can do to help others if you succeed:If I do succeed, I will be able to help others know their purpose, craft their stories, heal from trauma, and connect with others. 7. Catharsis – Realisation – What do you need to do to succeed? I must embrace hope and keep doing the tasks to move towards my goals because to give into fear results in failure. I have to trust the process and not give up too soon. 8. Next step – What are you going to do or what is your Call to Action?I’m off to advertise the webinar so people who need my help will nd me

We all have fears others can relate to In this story, I am being vulnerable by admitting that I am scared and have a nancial crunch. But I’m not looking for sympathy, I have a plan, though I have doubts it will work. If it doesn’t, there are unwanted consequences. However, if I succeed then there is a shining light where others will benet from my success. If I want to succeed, I can’t give into my fears and must take action instead, so here’s what I am going to do… I don’t use victim language. There is no victimisation. I’m the hero who has a decision to make and I hope that things will work out so I can help others succeed. The helping others is important because the success isn’t about me – it’s about what I can do to help others succeed.If I fail – I’ll be living in a tentIf I succeed – I’ll be able to help others Success isn’t about me… it’s about a solution for others, even though the conse-quence of failure is about me. I’m letting people know what I do and that I have the same fears and doubts they do, so I understand and can help them.If you want people to have empathy, your story must have details others can relate to. So, think about which details others will have experienced and include them instead of details that only apply to you. Telling an emotionally charged story, be it negative or positive emotions, can create opportunities for our audiences to become empathetic to our brand and thereby cre-ating stronger connections with them. However, if done wrong, it can have negative affects as people who have their own selsh agendas corrupt your story for their own gains. To ensure this doesn’t happen, you need to write the story when you aren’t emotional and structure the story to the benet of others with you as either the hero, (personal brand stories) or as guide, (business brand stories).

In my conversation with my son, I admitted that my opinion of the homeless situation comes from a place of misunderstanding and sympathy. To gain empathy, I need to understand why they are there and what they want for their own lives instead of com-ing at the problem from an “I know better” approach to x it based on what I’d want if I was in their shoes. The only way I will truly understand is to end up living in a tent along side them on East Hastings Street, or I could listen to the stories of those who are homeless. That is why stories are so important, they give us what we need to bet-ter understand what others go through and feel.

How to Write a Brand StoryHere’s what you do to attract customers by telling a brand story You grab a pot of coffee, sit down at your computer, and write.Telling a story doesn’t take a lot of time. Now editing, revising, and polishing a story – That takes time, a whole lotta time. I love what Hemmingway said about the rst draft, - “It’s shit!” When you sit down to write your brand story, don’t sweat it because your keyboard has a delete button. Let the words ow on the screen and then edit.The good news about brand storytelling is, you don’t have to submit 60 000 – 90 000 words to an editor. You only need 280 characters for a Tweet, 20-50 words for a social media post, and 1500 – 2000 words for a blog post. Which do you think is harder to write, a Tweet or a novel? Not which takes the longest, which is the hardest. Hemmingway’s style of writing is perfect for social media and online content consum-ers because he used as few words as possible. His famous short story is 6 words: Baby shoes for sale, never worn. It’s brilliant because he doesn’t tell you the story, he lets you experience it. Know Your Brand Story Before You Write Brainstorm a list of questions using the 5 Ws and How. You know, the who, what, where, when, why and how of a story. Once you have written out all the questions, answer them using as few words as possible, while still showing off the personality and voice of the brand. If you don’t know your brand’s personality, we need to go back to the drawing board to determine tone, voice, and image of your brand before you start telling brand stories.

Here are a few questions to get you started: • Who was your brand’s last customer?• What problem did they have?• Why did they have this problem?• When did they choose your solution? (what was the sales process)• Why did they choose your company?• Where did you solve their problem?• How did you solve their problem?• What happened when you solved the problem?When I write a novel, I ask questions about the situation, the environment, and how my characters will react. As I answer questions, a story materialises. How to Structure Your Brand Story Think back to your high school English class, how many parts are there to a story? If you answered 3, you get an A. Every story has a beginning a middle and an end, but not every beginning is the rst thing that happened. A story can start by describing what happened in the middle of the story or even at the end before going back and lling in the gaps. Storytellers use exible timelines to bring audiences into the story faster to hook them.

Let’s make this interesting...I challenge you to start your brand story with the solution and without giving away the whole story in the rst sentence. Since I want you to succeed in your brand storytelling adventure, I’ll give you a story structure where you only need to ll in the details to match how you help people. Joe shook my hand with a smile on his lips and relief in his eyes. “I thought I <ll in the quote with his worst fear.>” he said. It could have been a disaster if <describe the worst-case scenario> and for a while there, I wondered if we were going to <insert result>. It was <time> on a <day> when Joe walked in to our <place of business> looking for a <solution> and he needed it by <urgent deadline> or else he was going to have to move into the doghouse permanently because his wife had been hounding him to get it done for weeks.Don’t worry if this scenerio has never happened - Fill in the parts between the <>. The take away is to know the worst case scenerio and the best case scenerio for your client. You need to have stories pre-written and sitting on your mind’s bookshelf because, our society needs to be entertained to pay attention. The more entertaining the story, the more our emotions are triggered, the better we will remember the story when we nd ourselves in the same situation. Remember, the idea is to show – not tell – your audience why you are the best choice to solve their problem. Like Hemmingway did with his 6-word story.A Brand Story is a Journey not a SprintOften times we think a person needs to know everything about what we do so we bury them in a diatribe about us the minute they ask, “What do you do?” The result is, they walk away confused and unsure about what it is that you do. This happens when a brand is more concerned about the result they want and less about the people they are talking to.

Good storytellers know who their audience is and what they need to know before they even write one word. With practice and insight, the process becomes more about intuition and less about analysing. One way for you to determine what your audience, customer, or employee needs to know is to switch places with them. What would you need to know to make the decision?Figure out what the climax of your story will be. The moment you solved the problem and changed a negative into a positive. This part goes at the end of the 2nd part of your story, the middle. Once you have the climax you can work back to tell the story between the beginning and the climax and you’ll be able to stay on point.Write out the story you want to tell. Go over it and remove anything that is not support-ing the path to the climax, you aren’t writing a murder mystery, red herrings are not nec-essary. As you go over each sentence, you will gure out what you need to keep in, and what you don’t, to help someone choose your business to solve their problem. When it comes time to give the pitch, presentation, or answer, don’t worry if you for-get something or don’t recite it word for word. The point is not to memorise a script, the point is for you to learn which details matter to your audience and which ones can be left until another conversation. It will take practice to get it polished. I am forever going over my blog posts, stories, and interviews to try to improve upon how I tell stories to the marketplace. I’ll add a paragraph one week, then remove it the next, all in an effort to tell a better story.

Nesting Doll Story StructureYou are still in business, you are still alive and kicking, so your brand story is far from nished. It has no ending to wrap up in a nice little bow. Brand stories are like a TV series where the is one long arching story. In “The Mentalist” TV show, the main character, Patrick, was trying to catch the man who killed his family, known as Red John. This larger story took 6 seasons to come to an end and each season had it’s own faux Red John story arc. Not every episode dealt with the real or fake Red John, but he was always mentioned and interferring with the character’s ability to move on from the death of his family. Every episode had a beginning, a middle, and an end.Each season had it’s own story with a beginning, middle, and end.The show had a larger 6 season story with a beginning, middle, and end. This Russian Matryoshka Nesting Doll approach to creating smaller stories to make up a larger story is what keeps our attention from one season to the next. We want to know what will happen to the characters we’ve come to love or hate because the larger story hasn’t ended - yet. Once it does, we lose interest as “The Mentalist” dis-covered when season 7 didn’t hold the audience’s interest. Your brand story will have multiple layers and stories to weave together and link to. The workbook will help you map out how to build out your story over time and different platforms. End Each Story with an ASK.Share the outcome of the shorter story and then ask your audience to continue on to the next chapter of your brand story with a call to action. Whether that is asking for their business, to give you their email address, or clicking to read another blog post. Don’t leave your audience hanging too long before providing them with the anticipation of the next episode.

Tell Brand Stories on Social MediaI rst started hearing about Facebook, LinkedIN, Twitter in the mid ‘00s and from there quickly started connecting on other emerging social media proles of the time, some of which are no longer in existence.Social Media changed the way we connect with each other and how we tell and con-sume stories. Experts in telling stories in sound bites and trailers became hot com-modities as we moved into the digital realm of storytelling on social media. The stories were no longer written by the professionals, they evolved with each com-ment, like, and share. This method of storytelling has rapidly fractured brand stories and confused the marketplace about what unknown, small business, service-based businesses are about. In the game of getting eyeballs and followers, the stories became not about the brand, but about whatever would get the audience to hit “like.” Leading brands to evolve into celebrities and the arise of inuencer marketing. Inuencers are pros at looking good, entertaining people, inspiring them, and moti-vating them. They tell a story about themselves over multi posts with pleasing aesthet-ics and short prose. To get to the level of an inuencer, one must spend hours on social media engaging with other inuencers who are like them in the hopes of sharing their audience and nding new followers. Those who gamed the system by hacking their way to big fol-lowings, soon found that the platforms turned against them and their numbers no longer mattered. Those who understood how social media worked, focused on their niche, and engaged with their audiences succeeded. Inuencer marketing works for big global brands whose customers would buy what their favourite inuencers would showcase. It doesn’t work so well for local businesses because the inuencer’s audiences are global. Many small businesses wasted money on inuencer marketing thinking the audience lived where the inuencer did. They did not know to ask how many of your followers live in the area. It didn’t take long for small businesses to realize that giving away a free product for a sele with an inuenc-er did not result in increased sales and they began to push back.

One of my clients was spending thousands of dollars a month to sponsor a local pod-caster who interviewed “B” actors / actresses. One day, he called excited because the podcaster’s tweet about the brand got 40 000 impressions. When I asked him how many were local, he didn’t have an answer because the podcaster hadn’t done the math. I then showed him how I had gotten him 120 000 impressions on Twitter over the same time period and I knew that 34% were local eyeballs. Why was the geographical location of the audience so important? The client was an automotive dealership and their clients didn’t travel from outside their geographical region. This is why analyzining your data is so important. If you are going to hire an inuencer, you need to understand their audience so ask for a break-down and if they can’t give you one, nd another inuencer. Being an Inuencer is a BusinessInuencers know how to brand themselves and how to tell their brand stories to gar-ner a following and convert that following into dollars. It isn’t cheap or easy to tell a brand story and grow to the sphere of inuencer. It takes a team of talented content creators working endlessly to tell the story of your brand’s life and actively go out into social media to nd new followers and entice them to commit to being a part of your brand’s audience. Those who understands the audiences on each platform will be successful at building a following, however, that doesn’t mean those followers will convert into customers that takes a deeper type of storytelling most inuencers ignore in their race to the most follower’s championships. If you want to succeed on social media by building a following and then converting them into customers, you need a full brand storytelling funnel strategy. And it starts by understanding each platform and the audiences you will nd there.

Lower Attention Spans on Digital PlatformsWe tend to skim. I doubt most people who open this book will read these words be-cause let’s face it, there is lots of content waiting for your attention. You are here to see what there is, consume it as fast as possible, and then move on. That will give you a quick understanding of Brand Storytelling, but if you don’t do the work to develop your brand story, digital footprint, and marketing funnel, you won’t get very far.In 2018, the average human has an 8 second attention span and millions of options of content. This makes it really hard for marketers and content creators to even get a single message across to viewers before they swipe on down, left, or right. Everything is faster and shallower.We need to get to the point of our story and move on to something else because our audiences feels they may be missing out on something important. The fear of missing out drives us to increase the amount we put on our plates and drive through life at lightning speed. The best storytellers stop us in our tracks and hold our attention by entertaining us, informing us, and creating fear of missing out on something vital if we don’t focus. We are Drowning in Crappy ContentHow often have you spent time swiping through your social media feed and can’t re-member what you saw or where the time went? Social media has become the mod-ern-day version of channel surng. Why did you spend time switching from one channel to the other? The answer will be the same as to why you continue to waste time swiping through crappy content. Your bored and you want someone else to entertain you.When you create something ‘extra’ that will stop someone scrolling, you become the brand that is entertaining the viewer. They get more involved with your story and will en-gage with a like, a comment, or if you are really lucky, by sharing it with their audiences.

Thing is, unless you have an unlimited budget to create amazing content, you will need to create a lot of mediocre content in between to consistently stay in front of your audience. Keep the cash for the important stories about your brand. It can cost thousands to make a cool professional 30 second video. A professional commercial about your brand will sit on the internet for years and rack up viewers over time because they are unique, fun, and entertaining. You can reshare and add it to an email blast years later because it is still relevant to what you are talking about.The biggest mistake we all make is thinking content always has to be new and not reposted again. Make 10 pieces of content to tell a story and then schedule them to post at different times and days for a month. No one will notice because they will think it’s the original post from before showing up in their feed again, or more likely, the didn’t see it the rst or second time you posted it. Go through your posting history and make a list of the best performing posts and then schedule them to post again over 60 - 90 days. Did anyone notice?

Types of Content to Create Text OnlyThe odd text only piece of content in a feed can stand out because it is different. To get someone to stop and pay attention you’ll need to have one hell of a rst sentence, so spend your time getting that rst sentence as concise and interesting as possible to create curiosity. Then tell the story. Example of a text only story:I saw my son drive a huge hook into his hand instead of the bait before being dragged overboard into the depths of the ocean, when he called to say he’d gotten a job on a commercial shing boat. The scary scene from the movie “The Perfect Storm” looped through my mind for days after he’d called.Then... he called me again full of anxiety, he was changing his mind about going, giv-ing me the chance to keep him safely on solid ground... But I didn’t. I put my own irrational fears aside and asked him why he wanted to go in the rst place. Over the course of twenty minutes, we talked about all the wonderful things he would see along BC’s wild coastline. We found solutions to every possible problem he could think of and when I hung up, he was leaving the safety of the shore for the deep, dark waters of the Pacic Ocean. Don’t let your fears hold you back or those you love.

The rst sentence was created to elicit curiosity through the horror of a mother’s fears, something most mothers can relate to. From there, the story unfolds keeping the reader engaged with some twists and turns until in the end we overcome our fears and anxiety so the young man can have an adventure.I am proud to say my son worked hard and signed on the next year. My daughter and her boyfriend followed his lead and found a boat who took them on for a season. As long as I don’t think too much about the movie ‘Perfect Storm,’ and avoid watching the reality TV show ‘Deadliest Catch’... I’m blissfully at peace with their decision. Image PostsSharing photos of our lives and giving our audiences a peak behind the curtain at the Wizard of our own Oz Show, we give our audiences a chance to relate to the human element of our brand. The candid image stops people from scrolling because it is dif-ferent from the stock images and advertising content they see in their feeds. People want to engage with authentic people and be a part of something real. Ask employees to wear your brand colours and shoot them interacting with your product in front of a neutral colour background you want to weave throughout all your photos. Video PostsYou can do the same thing as above with video and have your employees tell people why they like working at your business or which product they recommend and why.By having them wear brand coloured clothes and all in front of the same background, your Instagram will naturally weave the whole story together aesthically.You’ll want to weave these employee videos together with text graphics and product photos, all using a colour pallet.

Here is Six Degrees Productions’ handy guide to making better videos.• DO #1: Know why you’re making the video• DO #2: Understand your Specic audience• DO #3: Tell a story• DON’T #1: Make long videos!• DON’T #2: Don’t DIY unless you know what you are doing• DON’T #3: Forget where your video will be playedInfographic PostsInfographics are just that – Graphics that visually tell you a story about information. They are perfect if you need a visual to understand a concept or story. The biggest is-sue with Infographics though are the size of the font. If people can’t read it, why both-er putting it there. You must be able to have the font readable, especially on a small mobile device screen. Break the infographic up into pieces and share those pieces on social media as a carousel of photos. Ensure the piece you post creates curiosity and clearly shows the person that there is more to the infographic than what you see on the rst image. Make a video out of the pieces and visually show the story of the infographic in mo-tion. There are lots of ways to use a graphic storytelling tool. Gif PostsGifs are images that move or short pieces of video that loop. Gifs are popular to express emotion in a conversation on a post. Use them to show your product or a person’s emotional response to your product.For example, if I wanted to add a Gif to the story about my son going out onto the ocean, I could use a gif like this one. To show the emotion of the story and use motion to stop someone from scrolling past.

How to Succeed on Social MediaPut aside an hour a day to engage with other people’s posts. Engage by making a comment or asking a question to start a conversation. The more often you write com-ments the faster you get noticed by those in your target market. If you want to grow on social media, you need to comment on posts and reach out to people through direct messaging and email. It isn’t easy getting people’s attention.Here are some ideas to help you nd the right content to comment on.On Twitter:Use Twitter’s list feature to create feeds of interesting people. Check the list consist-ently to engage with your ideal audience criteria. The more you engage the more people will follow you.Other Social Media Platforms: Join groups where your ideal audience would be. Think about what other services, products, industries, and topics appeal to your audience. Find your favourite custom-ers proles and see if you can nd out which groups they joined and join them. If the group is run by your direct competitor, do you best not to upset them by hijacking their comment feeds or posting about your products and programs. Think of groups as passive networking groups where you tap someone on the shoul-der every once in a while to say, “That is interesting.” Create a spreadsheet with links to proles of people you want in your newsfeed. Go through the list once a week to nd content to engage with and start adding these people into your newsfeed.

Make a list of hashtags your favourite customers post about and search them daily for engaging content and to nd other people to connect with. Use the search bar to nd posts using your keywords to nd people who are talking about what you do. You will discover what your competitors are posting about and be able to connect with potential clients.To improve your newsfeed, engage with people you want and block the spammy posters you don’t want to see. If you do this regularly, your newsfeed will become more valuable.Have a processIt will be hard and at times you will want to quit because you think it isn’t working, but if you have a process you follow daily, you will grow your following, make connections, and nd people you want as customers. In the customer journey workbook, you will nd worksheets to help you create a social media process and how to measure it to meet your objectives. My LinkedIn Process

Tools to help you with Social MediaTo save you time, use a social automation tool like, zoho social, to schedule your posts and ensure your content calendar is full. - I’ve used Hubspot, Loomly, Buzzsumo, and currently use zoho social because it is part of Zoho One’s 40 apps that work together to manage everything a small business needs measured for one small rate.10 To Dos for Social Media Success1. Lead with objectives2. Build your expert authority3. Start a conversation4. Show appreciation5. Stand out6. Have a clear goal7. Dominate on one platform8. Create a calendar9. Be visual10. Delegate what you canSocial Media Prole Avatars and BannersSocial Media Prole Avatar:Your prole avatar will be dependent on the goal of your prole. If your prole is a corporate brand, then a logo is the best option for the avatar. Otherwise, toconnect with people use a headshot, casual for personal and professional for LinkedIN.When using an image of yourself, smile and be approachable. Think about the people you see and would like to connect with, what is it about their image that makes you think - “Yeah, I want to know that person.” Put your best face forward!!!Your avatar will signal to people the tone of your prole. Professional, casual, friendly, business, investor, or trolling.

Social Media Prole Banner:The dimensions of a banner are different for every site. Choose an image that represents something about yourself and change it up regularly. If it’s a personal prole feel free to create a banner using a family photo. If its profes-sional use an image from your industry. If it is for business show your services or prod-ucts in the banner images. Create a graphic with a quote, tag line, or one word that you want to be known for. You can use a program like Canva if you don’t have access to Adobe Creative Suite. Showing up consistently is important to keep your organic reach as wide as possible. When you don’t post regularly, your organic reach will be impacted. As a busy busi-ness owner, creating content can be a waste of time, so you need to have a strategy. If you are low on posting ideas, check out what others are posting and which posts you engage with. The MarketAPeel book, Stand Out Online will give you ideas. Social Media Posting Tips: • Have an objective • Use applicable hashtags• Be authentically you• Mix up the objectives• Do not sell in all your posts • Hook them with the rst sentence• Write using as few words as possible• Ask a question to encourage comments• Use a call to action for sales posts• Mix up your posts with images, graphics, videosSocial media is not my favourite channel but it is necessary to be seen and nd people to invite into your marketing funnel.

How to Get Noticed on Social MediaGive people reasons to follow your story You need to show them your story and give them something interesting to engage with, which in the noise of social media can be time consuming and difcult. Here are some ideas: Share special offers, behind-the-scenes glimpses, and entertaining facts. Post regularly and engage with other people’s content so they will come over and check out your content.Tip: Don’t bother commenting on posts with lots of comments and lots of likes. Your comments will get lost and chances are, the person has someone else monitoring the prole, so you aren’t really engaging with them.Find posts by people who have a few comments on them and a few likes so you know they have an engaged audience, which they engage with, and they will respond to your message. You want engaged followers, not just followers. Create multimedia content Post photos, graphics, and video to engage your audience in different ways. Don’t be boring, change it up and continually test new ideas. However, make sure you are con-sistent in your posting, and you stay within your brand messaging guidelines. Don’t have brand messaging guidelines, well – You my friend, need to go back to the begin-ning of dening your brand and create one. Tip: People need some repetition to get a message through their skulls and deep into their minds. Repeat your message using the same layout and message with different images or different media styles. Cycle three messages through for a month and then switch it up and start telling a different part of the story with a new objective and goal.To get someone to stop and pay attention, you’ll need to have one hell of a rst sentence, so spend your time getting that rst sentence as con-cise and interesting as possible to create curiosity. Then tell the story.

Create Unlimited Content for Brand Storytelling on Social MediaWhen you create a piece of content for a social media post, it’s not a one and done thing. Repurpose your content to make your brand storytelling efforts easier and pro-vide some brand recognition with repetition. Repetition is an important part of our learning process and our buying journey. So repost your old content. It’s ok - in fact - I encourage it. A Story about a Piece of Content As a content creator, I spend all day every day creating content. By writing brand sto-ries, creating copy, designing graphics, branding images, producing video, and re-cording podcasts. If I had to come up with a new idea for each platform or media, I’d run out of ideas after awhile and I’d need twice the amount of time in my day, or may-be ten times. This week I created content about my journey into the deep information overload known as SEO. The journey is not over, but it has already opened a surprising door. It all started with getting frustrated with the amount of trafc my magazines were get-ting using social media as the main channel to obtain trafc. With Social Media plat-forms restricting any post with a link, it reduces the amount of organic reach I am able to obtain. The solution, improve the SEO of my website. Since I was neck deep in SEO information, I decided to write about the journey for my weekly column at RAYL.News. The editor loved the piece and told everyone about it, which was a great ego boost, especially because one of the partners is a formerly worked in a leadership role at AOL and owned Global Digital Newspapers.I was inspired to add another 3000 words to the article and post it on my APeeled blog, to improve the SEO for the keywords Brand Storytelling. Thing was, I also owed RAYL.Market an ebook, so I added another 10,000 words and some infographics to the document and created a 40 page ebook with a workbook component called, What You Need to Know about SEO for Small Businesses. Now I have a backlink from RAYL.News to my website. I have a 5000 word blog post about SEO for Brand Story-

telling and a 15,000 word ebook to sell in RAYL.Market’s estore and here in my estore, BookAPeel. You will also be able to read it after this section on Social Media. That’s right, I also brought my SEO journey into this book to help you improve your website. That is a lot of content for one topic. I can now break it up into sound bites to share on social media and in Facebook market to drive trafc to the blog and then to pur-chase the full ebook plus workbook.The article I wrote for RAYL.News got me an invitation to a zoom meeting with busi-ness owners for a presentation by a former VP of Go Daddy. It was an amazing meet-ing where the RAYL.News guys introduced me and gave me a chance to tell everyone what I do and get to know everyone in the room. Before we signed off, the former VP was on my website and talking about exploring the idea of sending some work my way. You never know where a piece of content will land you. My content has landed my clients in interesting places over the last few years, one was even asked to run for a political party in a Federal election, something he’d never considered doing before. Seeing the results of my hard work lls me with pride and gives me condence to step up and tell more of my own brand story. How to use Quotes to Tell a Brand StoryQuotes make good ller for content calendars to ll the gaps between telling your brand story and the story of your customers. Look for quotes that are statements for what you do and how you help people. As a storyteller and content creator, quotes about why brand storytelling is important ts perfectly with my brand story message.If you are a professional and your story is around your personal brand, nd quotes that reect your values, the problem you solve, and lessons you learned. For example, a Realtor® can create quote content focusing on the words, home, design, and family. They can then use their brand colours and images of people hanging out at home to create graphics for their posts.

Start with your Brand Story Keywords to Find Quotes. Make a list of words to search on Google. There are plenty of sites lled with quotes you can use to create content. Choose the ones that resonate with you and are en-hance your personal brand story. Quotes Generate Emotional Responses to your Brand Story The quotes that come from well-known names will add to the credibility of your story and resonate with your audience because they recognize the name, which builds feel-ings of trust for your brand story.When you use quotes to enhance your brand’s story, members of your audience will identify with certain quotes, which creates feelings of connection for your brand.

Brand Story Images for Quotes An image tells a story. Find images that portray your brand story or it’s keywords. Look for simple images with minimal detail or noise. The best images will have negative space for you to place words on without getting in the way of the image’s story. You can use the same image for different quotes at different times in the year.You can also use your brand colours as the background with the words in either black or white, whichever stands out against your brand colours. This type of quote is par-ticularly good on Instagram for anchoring the eye and standing out in a feed. Tell the Bigger Brand Story the Quote Reects When you write the copy for your post, tell a story about why the quote speaks to your brand or a brand story exemplifying what the quote says.For example:Quote “People are looking for a connection.” —John Michael MorganCopy:Ever feel like you connected with a person you just met because the conversation was so interesting? Think about those moments, I bet stories were told.I could then go on to tell a story about how I felt connected to a person I met because they told me a story that resonated with me.

The Brand Story is in the Numbers“People think in stories, not statistics, and marketers need to be master storytellers.” —Arianna HufngtonI love stats. I’m a data geek, which is funny because I suck at math. The numbers tell a story about how people behave, how they make choices, and what they want out of life. When you tell a story that is backed up by stats, it lends credibili-ty to your opinion and shows you did your research. When you are analyzing the data of your last social media campaign or the trafc on your website, gure out the story and create a post around how people are engaging with your message. We all want to follow success!Every Business has a Purpose to it’s Story“Every business has a story to tell.” —Jay Baer, Renowned Keynote Speaker, Author, Marketing ExpertTo determine your business’ story beyond its products and services determine its purpose. The purpose of all business is to make money, but I want to challenge you to think beyond the capitalism of our world and start diving deeper into the reason YOU decided to be a business owner instead of an employee. Once you’ve got your purpose, the reason your business exists, tell that story. When you tell the story use tone, voice, and pacing to resonate with your audience.If your purpose is exciting, action packed, cool - Tell the story using an energized tone, an upbeat voice, and face paced timing of short sentences. If you purpose is serious be serious. Ensure you are using the right images, location, and media to tell the story to educate the audience about the topic using details.

Social Media is a Reection of SocietySocial Media is a reection of the shallows of society. It is lled with incomplete sto-ries, misunderstandings, and insecurities. It is the pavement of good intentions and placating advice. It is messy. It is kind. It is cruel. It is supportive. It is ugly. It is beauti-ful. Social Media is a reection of life as we want it to be, not life itself.Life is more complex. People are deeper than the Mariana Trench. They have stories that are so intricately woven, they create an image you would weep to see. If we took the time to truly listen to people when they are being their most honest selves, we would nd the connection we crave. - But there is another post waiting...Social Media is about People not Tech Since we communicate on social media with technology and don’t actually see the person we are talking to it can be hard to remember that there is someone on the other side of the screen. This can be seen when people make cruel hurtful comments on a stranger’s posts. Comments they would never make to someone’s face in the real world for fear they’d get beat up or slapped down hard.How we tell our stories can also focus too much on the tech and too little on the peo-ple. When we try hacking the algorithms, we end up making a bunch of noise and never connect with anyone because we are using bots, data, software, and other peo-ple to do our connecting.I make money creating posts for people and making them look good - However, I should be seen as the advertising part of the strategy not the whole strategy. You still need to show up, post about your life, engage with your connections, and build an authentic community. If social media becomes a bunch of hired hands inauthentically engaging with each other, where is the connection or community in that? Worse, with AI taking over, we could lose all sense of connection because we are com-municating with a computer and not a person.

Take a moment to study your social media proles, what do they say about your values and goals? Is it authentic or is it a facade? Social Media Marketing Image We know ads and marketing messages are tailored to take advantage of people’s insecurities by promising to make you prettier, richer, happier. Seth Godin said it best when he called Marketers liars, we are in a way. We tell the best stories and spin the worst into appearing better. We manipulate stats to t our objectives and we strategically make our topics t what we believe society wants.Too often we portray an image we think people want to see and then when we show up being our authentic selves, there is a disconnect between what the client was expecting and who showed up. These types of disconnects foster distrust, which can be difcult for some people to overcome when building a more authentic connection in the real world.I read one Realtor® review that said, “He wasn’t as much as an a**hole as I thought he was going to be.” In this case, the client was pleasantly surprised that the person was not the image they were portraying on social media. I bet this Realtor lost a lot of po-tential business because he was trying hard to be what he thought the luxury market wanted and not who he was a person.Be you. If you don’t wear suits everyday, don’t have all your images of you wearing suits. If you have a trucker’s way of talking don’t try to come across online as a Harvard educated professor. Be you. People who like the image they see on social media, will choose to connect with you.

Get the Right Marketing HelpSocial media is a difcult world to navigate and a business needs a Marketing Manager who understands how to analyze the data and create engaging content to guide. The rules keep changing as the industry tries to manage the large amount of content being posted to it. - Keeping up is a full time job and the information is fraught with untested ideas and repeated half truths of self educated digital marketers trying to be inuencers in a murky industry.Yes, what you post, how you post, and when you post matters. You need someone who understands how to test, measure, and analyze data. Someone who can tell a story in soundbites and make it look good in the process. You need someone who understands human nature and how to tap into it to get an emotional reaction.Even with the right help - You still need to show up. Don’t hire someone and then ghost them. Invite them to events, send them an email, as to meet over zoom, engage with the content. When you have a strategy it becomes an automatic habit. Engagement is the Currency of Social Media The hard part is creating content people want to engage with. Unless you are in a LinkedIn pod and obligated to like whatever crap people post, getting engagement is difcult.In 2020 I was commenting on posts for 2-3 hours a day and getting lots of engagement and meeting wonderful people, who do what I used to do - Social Media Marketing. When I started to focus more on digital magazine publishing, I didn’t have 2-3 hours. What happened? I was still posting but LinkedIn but not engaging, the result was LinkedIn stopped showing my posts to people. My impressions went down from almost 2 000 to under 100. Engaging by commenting is that important to getting reach.Is 2-3 hours a good use of your time?

You can’t just comment and be done. If all you do is comment and move on without asking to meet off LinkedIn, you will have a connection, but you won’t have connection. Those you talk with on a regular basis will become your connections and they will support you while you support them. The minute you stop meeting with them on a regular basis to go off and nd new peo-ple, they will forget about you because you won’t be top of mind.By analysing the reactions people have with your content, you can learn what kind of content you need to be producing. Programs like Hootsuite, Sprout Social, Buzz so-cial, and Zoho social have reports to help you assess what is working and what fell at.A Couple Problems There is the content you like to make and then the content people like to engage with, which usually has a dog or cat involved. You can’t create popular content that doesn’t t within the parameters of your brand, so what do you do?The best thing you can do is create the best content you can. Content that reects your brand, reputation, and image. Then engage with other people’s posts to get noticed, add connections, foster real connection, and build a community. Your activity as an engager will do more than any post you put out there, but not all engagement is created equal.Comments and replying to others comments and their replies to you, will do more for your brand reach than simply hitting the like button, any monkey can hit like.The next step is to contact your connections and really connect with them one on one, because until you do that, they are a connection not someone you are connected with. Do you buy or do business with a connection or someone you are connected with? Someone you have built a trusting relationship with and is connected with people you are connected with.

Don’t confuse lots of connections on social media with real connection. There is a big dif-ference between followers and community - which do you want to foster on social media?The other problem is the lurkers who don’t engage with any content, making it hard-er to know what is good content and what is bad content. Even if they love what you create, you’ll never know.What you’ll discover is most people didn’t even see your post because the social me-dia platform didn’t show it do anyone. Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and the rest all have their own algorithms, which they keep messing with and unless you have hours to test what works today - you’ll feel lost in all the noise.Keep posting. Post for the lurkers. Post because you enjoy it. Post because you want to. Don’t post if its a chore and drains you of energy. For you, there are other ways to connect. If you don’t enjoy engaging on social media - don’t do it. Think about how you like to connect with the market to get clients. What has worked for you in the past - do that and stay focused on that path instead of getting sucked into promises of social media marketers who want you to hire them or business coach-es who struggles with their own social media marketing.Do what works for you. Do it over and over and over again.

Choose Your KeywordsWhats draws an audience to you?Think back to the rst chapter, where you were discovering your values and why they are an important part of telling a brand story to the marketplace. If you haven’t been single in the last 15 years, you may nd this next part a bit odd. For those of us who have tried crafting that perfect online dating prole, you will be used to this process. Create a prole explaining your values, beliefs, goals, and workstyle choices. This will help you to get clear about what you want to communicate to the marketplace about why they want to choose you. Then add to the prole who you are looking for as a customer. List out their values, symptoms of their pain, and personality traits. Unlike dating, where chemistry and hormones get in the way of making an ideal match, you are about to take a rational and systematic approach to nd ideal customers. How to Choose Keywords to Create ContentWhen you are telling your brand story to attract your ideal audience, you need to use the right words to get your message to show up on newsfeeds and Google searches. If you continue to use these keywords consistently, your audience will know you are the person to go to when they are looking for information on that keyword. Makes sense right. But how do you know which words your ideal audience uses when they are searching for your solution, product, or service? Better yet, which keywords are they using before they even know when they have that problem? In this section, you will explore keywords to ensure you are using the right keywords when creating content for both social media and websites.

The tools to useThere are plenty of digital tools to help you nd the best keywords to write about, some have free options so you won’t need to invest any money. SEMRush, Moz, and Ubersuggest are comprehensive SEO programs to help web designers and SEO spe-cialists to research keywords and backlinks to improve a website’s organic trafc. Google Search Console provides data to help you understand the keywords your site shows up for, which clicks you receive, and where your site is showing up throughout the Internet. Google Trends helps you understand how keyword searches are used throughout the world to nd those keywords that are gaining popularity and the ones that are losing traction. Google Analytics helps you know where visitors show up on your website and what actions they take once they get there. With so many tools to collect endless data, by the time you are done doing the re-search you may be more confused, overwhelmed, and disillusioned.This is why it is vital you understand the keywords you want to use to tell your brand story to the marketplace. When you understand your personal brand or business brand message you can keep your branding focused on the keywords on all your mar-keting channels. This way no matter where your audience nds you, they will know what your brand story is about. And... You won’t end up going down rabbit holes.

To help you create a process, I’ll share how I use the keyword “brand storytelling:”The objective of MarketAPeel: To create market appeal. MarketAPeel’s Brand tag line: Peeling the layers to get to the core of your brand storyWhat MarketAPeel does : Creates communities od ideal audiences using digital publishing, funnel development, and community buildingPlatforms MarketAPeel utilizes: Website, digital books, blog, podcast, social media, press, guest writing on 3rd party sites, email.Products: Interactive, multimedia, digital book publishing, virtual symposiums, enewsletters, discussion groups, workshops, coachingPrograms: CreateAPeel: Help people create appeal BrandAPeel: Help brands create appeal From this information can you decipher the keywords I need to write about to help drive the right trafc to the MarketAPeel website? Next Step - Do the exercise for your brand to help you clarify your brand story and start your keyword research. I can write about brand storytelling, personal branding, and digital magazines as much as I want, however, if people aren’t using these keywords to nd a solution to their problem, they will not know I can help them. In other words, your brand story is more about what others are searching for than the story you want to tell. When I research the keywords Brand Storytelling and Digital Magazines, both do not have much in the way of trafc. Other words, like digital marketing, have higher numbers of peo-ple searching for information. It is important to understand what people want when they search “Digital Marketing,” before I create content using the keyword digital marketing.

I Got Smarter about Content Creation with SEOWhen I started MarketAPeel, I promoted my services through social media and by net-working in the real world. Both avenues brought me clients to create content for and a small following of people who liked what I had to say. When I began to focus my busi-ness on digital publishing, I wasn’t getting the trafc I needed to be successful. So, I decided to focus on earning Google organic trafc.Search engine optimisation is a tough nut to crack because there are 200 factors in Google’s algorithm, which it keeps secret, and you are constantly competing with other websites, many of which have teams of hundreds of people. How was I, one person, going to be able to rank for keywords? The answer is niche, focus, and persistence. “Search engines like Google, Bing, and Safari provide free value to you. When your ideal audience is searching for a need related to your service, product, or business, you should show up,” said Tamika Carlton, SEO Expert and Founder of Tamika Carlton Collective, a digital marketing agency. Having worked with startups, coach-es, e-commerce brands, nonprots, and political clients, Tamika has delivered results, resulting in an inux of ideal clients and quality leads.“The world is shifting. We need more small businesses to be impactful. Far too often, those with the most to invest have been able to take over the market, even though what they represent is trash. I’m about giving more visibility, reach, and revenue to those delivering a service or product that will enhance the world.”There was a time when you could get noticed on social media and you could build a community but then the market began to get crowded and the platforms wanted to prot off of every little thing they could. When I look at the trafc coming to my site, it is the trafc from Google organic search that stays the longest and reads the most pages. That is the trafc I want because the other trafc is like junk food - looks really good until you eat it and then feel the af-fects of it on your body. Big trafc numbers are a Vanity metric.

Learning about SEO to Rank for Brand StorytellingTo know what to write about, you need to know which words people are typing into the search engines and that takes research. I started studying SEO back in 2005 by taking the Moz courses and following Rand Fishkin. Over the years, I’d dip a toe back into the SEO waters to learn how Google changed the rules to improve searchers ex-periences and to penalise those who tried to game the system. With every major up-date two things consistently remained of top importance – Keywords and Backlinks. Sitting here in my bubble overlooking downtown Vancouver, I couldn’t even start to guess which words people were typing to nd people who created content to tell brand stories, let alone if anyone was searching. Which words would bring me the trafc I needed to obtain clients who wanted their own digital magazines and readers for those magazines? The Answer is Keyword Research.Back in 2005, Moz.com was the only game in town when it came to understanding SEO and which keywords mattered to people. Now there are lots of different sites pro-viding limited research results for zero dollars and in-depth results for a monthly SaaS fee. Each system has its own strengths, ranking systems, and features. Here are some of my favourite SEO & Keyword research sites with free tools:• Moz.com• Semrush.com• Uber Suggest• Wordstream• Ahrefs.comLike most small business owners, I do a lot of different things and to create enough content to rank for each service I provide will take years. So, the rst thing I did was choose two things I wanted to be known for and gain trafc: “Brand Storytelling” and “Custom Digital Magazines.” In writing about these two keywords, I’d naturally incor-porate other keywords about how I tell brand stories by publishing digital magazines.

Even with focusing on these two main services, would I be able to rank on the rst page when my competitors were trying to do the same thing, many of whom had scores of employees, contractors, and freelancers helping them out? I wouldn’t be able to if I continued to ignore SEO. I’d already wasted years by ignoring its importance in favour of social media, which was noisy and eeting. The value of a post lasts seconds and the amount of content one needs to get noticed, organically or paid, is increasing exponentially. SEO is dif-ferent because each blog post, each page, adds a brick in the road to my site from Google’s Freeway of knowledge seekers.Free SEO Tools for Research and ResultsTo measure results and gain ideas on topics to write about, I use various free versions developed by the above companies. Moz developed Domain Authority which I go to to check how I’m doing each month. This is the only Moz tool I use as the other ones are very limited and the subscription is expensive. The Moz Domain Authority Ranking is provided on other SEO research tools like Ubersuggest. SEM Rush provides me with deep insights into my trafc and keyword ideas to help me decide what to write next about Brand Storytelling. Here is a list of some of their free tools to help DIY people like me. – They give you 3-10 free searches a day. Ubersuggest is SEO Expert Neil Patel’s SEO research tool, which gives you 3 free searches a day. The monthly fee is affordable for a small business to subscribe for the time they are working on improving their site’s ranking. ahref provides those of us with one site free access to its SEO backlink tools to run reports and check for backlinks. The free version does not enable deep keyword research.

How I Improved my Site’s SEO for Brand StorytellingFirst, I created more keyword rich content to increase the value of both pages, show-case what I do, and create internal links for people to go deeper into my site. Web-pages with lots of information on a specic keyword phrase, like Brand Storytelling, are called content pillars. They have 5000 – 10,000 words about the keyword phrase, with multimedia features, and links to other pages on the site. When I’d nished the two content pillar pages AND redesigned linked pages, a week had gone by and I still needed to do some-thing about my Domain Authority Ranking. What is Domain Authority and Why Does it Matter?Domain Authority is an SEO ranking created by Moz.com to analyse sites based on re-search into Google’s algorithms and ranking systems. Of the 200 things Google deems important, the most important variables are: Keyword rich Content and Backlinks. With the new content pillar pages, the regular blog posts, and digital magazines, I had quality keyword rich content. The next step was to get those valuable backlinks.To start. I registered for HARO - Help a Reporter Out, which provided me with op-portunities to send reporters a quote for articles published on high quality websites. When you receive an email with questions for crowdsourced articles, you can send a 2-3 sentence quote with your website address to receive a backlink to improve your site’s SEO Domain Authority Ranking. The more I improve my Domain Authority, the better it is for your Domain Authority. Together we can obtain more organic trafc than if we sat in our silos alone typing content onto our computers“Google only loves you when everyone else loves you rst.”– Wendy Piersall

A Review of SEMRush SEM Rush has many more tools to help you know everything within the digital realm for your website and brand. It also has tools to help you analyse your PPC efforts to ensure you are getting the most out of your Search Engine Ad Spend. It also has tools to analyse your efforts on social media sites, both organically and paid. Their program is more than a small business needs on a regular basis, which is why the 3-10 free searches a day are valuable for solopreneurs and small business owners, it keeps us from getting too overwhelmed by all the data at once. It’s easier to focus on three things each day and cycle through to ensure everything is working on our sites. I did a quick search and grabbed a review that at rst blush, seemed to be a good review. It provided 5 stars and in large bold font with exclamation points told readers that SEMRush is “#1 Best Platform For SEO & Beyond 2022!”This review is a good example of how reviews can help you understand what people are looking for, the words they use, and the problems they experience. Kyle O is a digital marketing specialist and Here is what he wrote about SEMRush:What do you like best?SEM Rush has been a part of my digital marketing toolbox for at least six or seven years. The amazing thing to me is that during that time, many other platforms that base what they do on data aggregation have fallen entirely or at least stumbled signif-icantly but not SEM RUSH. Other than Moz, who are good in their own right, no one can even compete with SEM RUSH.What do you dislike?I sometimes get confused about how to search and see the impact for keywords on a local basis because I think you have to form a project to check that out. It would be nice if it were easy to see local trafc for any keyword without having to set it up like that, but

that is about my only complaint, and there are so many pluses that it is not a big deal.Recommendations to others considering the product:In the end, I will not need to talk anyone into using SEM RUSH. They are in a class of their own, and there is no substituteWhat problems are you solving with the product? What benets have you realized?This platform provides me with all I need to provide my clients with a comprehensive sta-tus report for their SEO. SEM RUSH also helps me create a comprehensive plan to show clients what is required to change things in the right direction for their website trafc. This platform informs me how much more trafc would come from such changes.A review of the review... When reading reviews on products like SEO research software, read what the person writes to discover if the program will work in the way you need it to. This review tells us that he is a longterm leader who loves the program. He then tells us that it doesn’t make local search reporting clear. Though he thinks it can sell itself, people who have never used it wouldn’t know this and in the end, he provides insight into whom the program is for - SEO professionals with clients. Is SEMRush for you? If you are a professional SEO specialist, chances are you are al-ready using it. If you are a small business owner or solopreneur trying to improve your website on your own, use the free tools and take advantage of the 2 weeks trial to get as much information as you possibly can about the keywords you have chosen.Why SEO Research Software is Vital to useThanks to these tools I felt I had a good understanding of backlinks and where to go to nd out how I could get a backlink on a quality site. It also gave me the ability to check the Domain Authority of a site before adding my site to ensure I was protect-ing my Domain Authority Ranking. After all, if I suddenly was blacklisted or nding

my ranking slipping because of being listed on high spam, low ranked, sites, it would be devastating. I’m putting in hours of work in research, writing, publishing, linking, applying, searching, and more. The last thing I want to do is blow it up with a bomb because I blindly added my website to whichever site I could nd.This is why it is so important to be careful about whom you hire to get you backlinks. The guy may be cheap, but does he know what he’s doing? Ask questions before you hire to make sure they are putting you on reputable sites and not just on their own spam sites. I have a client who has a number of new platforms with low Domain Authority due to the newness of the domains and the lack of content. One of their platforms is an online directory with a domain authority of 3 and they are getting signicant sign ups from previously unknown businesses. The only reason I can uncover is a paid for back-links SEO company found the site and are systematically adding all their clients to this low ranked site. This is a sign of a person who doesn’t know what they are doing. Another example of SEO paid for backlinks is the sudden amount of spam my personal page’s forum received, driving up the short term domain authority, which of course fell once the spam rate of the site began to rise. I didn’t have time to manage the site and in the end I froze the forum ans deleted all the posts.Finding Backlinks to Support my Brand Story There are literally millions of websites to obtain a backlink from without them having to nd your content rst. There are lots of types of links, however it’s important to know about citations and backlinks.A citation is when a site publishes your name, address, and phone number. They can have a link to your website or not, the important piece is your 411 info. Citations help Google determine your Local SEO, which is valuable to businesses with local custom-ers. Backlinks, which are the most valuable links occur when a site links back to yours using a hyperlink reference code.

How do you get Backlinks? The easiest way is to nd lists of directories to register your company with and ll out the proles with the hyperlink to your website. Any site which provides users with a prole is another way to get backlinks. This is where crowdsourced articles can come in handy. It’s important to note, not all backlinks are created equal. The domain authority of the site linking back to your website will affect your site’s domain authority. Too many low-quality links and you’ll have a hard time getting your domain authority up, which is why you must be careful about whom you hire to get you backlinks. One day soon after I started, the SEO tools suddenly found 4 000 backlinks, up from 42 and though my unique domains linking back doubled from 20 to 42 with higher quality sites, my domain authority went down. Unless you want to drive yourself nuts, I wouldn’t recommend trying to gure out all the backlinks and why rankings change. If you go looking at every backlink you nd, many sites don’t show anything, let alone your website link. This problem is beyond me and I’ll leave it up to the experts.Guest Blogging about Brand StorytellingThe more common method is guest blogging, which can be time consuming in search-ing for a site which will accept your article and then writing the article. Most high quality sites that accept articles want you to pitch them rst and their criteria can be restrictive. Where to nd the opportunity to submit a blog post to a high-ranking site. Finding lower ranking sites willing to add a link to your website by publishing something you wrote is relatively easier because they need content. The big boys have staff and pay professionals for content. If they do accept articles, they may charge a hefty fee or will only accept professional quality articles written about a specic unique topic.

I spent a day pitching to some higher-ranking sites and I received one message back from a social media mega site asking if I had any real social media experience to draw from in examples about what was coming down the pipeline in way of trends and new techniques. I pitched her back another idea about people leaving the larger social media plat-forms for smaller niche platforms, like Mighty Networks, where it was easier for them to nd their tribe, customers, and network connections. I didn’t hear back. It takes a lot of research to know what they want to publish and what each site is looking for in the way of content. I don’t like wasting time. I like when my efforts yield productive results and guest blog-ging was feeling like sending out resumes saying, “Please like me.” There are literally thousands of people like you trying to get noticed in the pitch pile, or what publishers call the slush pile. If you can’t hook them with the subject line – your pitch is deleted without ever being opened.That said... You never know what will happen if you try. The subject line is important, and you need to hook them with the title right away. It has to say what the pitch is about, use keywords, and elicit curiosity. It doesn’t hurt if it’s something they already publish about and in line with their editorial philosophy. Just be prepared for lots of crickets… Rejection letters are so last century.

SEO 101 What to Know On my journey down the SEO rabbit hole, I was led to an article on QuickSprout about How Google Ranks a site. Here are some important things to know when you are creating your website or pulling your hair out trying to get seen by the Googles of the world. 1. Keyword domains get top marks 2. Domains that switch hands lots or get dropped, adversely affect your efforts3. Keywords in the title tag4. The frequency of keyword use5. Content length – the longer the better for Google6. Image Optimisation – use those alt tags7. Contact us with your 411 info is a plus8. Consistent updating of your site 9. YouTube gets top billing10. Older domains are more valuable11. The reputation of the page referring your page matters12. Embedded links are more valuable than footer and sidebar ones13. Tweets are a good thing – the more the better to Google14. Facebook sharing will do more than any like For SEO do NOT do …1. Cloaking 2. Paid Links3. Autogenerated AI Content – At least until Google creates its own AI.If you want to dive deeper into each of these items, visit Quicksprout to discover what matters to Google.

There is MORE SEO to Know.You know how once you start researching something you suddenly get ads about that topic on all the platforms you visit. Since I am actively trying to improve my site’s SEO ranking, I click and sign up for emails to get the PDF download and I’m introduced to Anchor Text Ratios by SEOJet. Anchor Text Ratios? You mean I must understand the different types of anchor texts and which pages should have which type or risk ruining my reputation with Google? Man, Google is a nicky thing, glad I’m not dating him, or am I? Trying to get his attention and support is about as much fun as dating when you’re an overweight woman over 45 living the life of an urban hermit.

Different Types of Anchor Texts:SEOJet was nice enough to create a list of 12 – I’ve shortened it. For a deeper under-standing of each type and how Anchor Text Ratio works – List of the different types of Anchor TextBrand –MarketAPeelGeneric -- “click here” WebsiteName.com – MarketAPeel.agencyFull URL – https://www.marketapeel.agency/Keyword – Brand StorytellingBrand plus keyword – For Brand Storytelling advice consider MarketAPeel Keyword plus – Brand Storytelling elicits an emotional reaction in audiences. Page Title – “SEO for Brand Storytelling” by Shannon PeelPartial Keyword – Storytelling structure has three parts.Empty Anchor – This is an image linked to your site without alt text as anchor text Home URL – MarketAPeel.Agency to read SEO for Brand Storytelling (this page)URL with no HTTP – marketapeel.agency/blog/Seo-brand-storytelling These anchor text types are grouped into three main types:Blended Anchors -- Reference to a key phrase but by itselfExact Match Anchors -- Only the key phrase. Natural Anchors No reference to any key phraseWhen building your backlinks there is an ideal mix you should have to get the best results possible. The biggest take away is not to have 100% exact match anchors backlinks, which would be impossible to get anyway. To learn more about the magic backlink type formula, visit SEOJet.

Brand Social SignalsOnce one starts down the rabbit hole the work never ends… Next, I came across brand social signals while reading a PDF from the Hoth about back linking for SEO success. The experts are of different opinions when it comes to social media and Google’s ranking algorithm. It all comes down to their own research results. Google doesn’t let anyone into the analytic formula vault. Companies do A/B testing re-search to try to determine what is in the math and what isn’t, which results in some con-fusing advice. Does social media matter to Google’s ranking? Quicksprout discovered it did, see their infographic for details, others say believe Google ignores social media. Social media needs to be in your trafc ow strategy anyway, so assume it matters. The key to success for SEO on social sites is the share button. If you can get people to share your blog post, you’ll get bonus Google points. As with everything social media the question becomes, HOW??? Here are some ideas that Quicksprout listed – to dive deeper into each item visit their post about getting more social shares. 1. Make your site’s social share buttons prominent 2. Ask readers to share with a call to action on each blog post3. Tag inuencers in your posts if relevant to them, like you quoted them4. Use Triberr a tribes of bloggers 5. Pay for ads and ask people to share with their followers6. Use Facebook’s Sponsored Stories7. Create a strong brand people follow8. Leverage your family and friends9. Bribe Your followers10. Create social share worthy contentTo quote the conclusion to their article, “When you start winning that game, a number of things will happen: you’ll get more trafc, more attention and higher rankings in the search engines, which will be a nice reward for all of your hard work.” - Quicksprout

What I noticed about Social Sharing, Backlinks and SEO I have noticed many of my backlinks are due to my Tweets being picked up by auto-mated feeds people have generated. Which is cool because it’s expanding the reach of my tweet and getting me a decent DA ranked backlink. I haven’t seen the same type of results with Facebook or LinkedIn, however unlike Twitter, those two platforms don’t show posts with external links to many followers. It’s also why most of the trafc I get from social sites, comes from Twitter. If you are going to put some effort into social sharing to get some backlinks or Google social points, put your efforts into Twitter. How to improve SEO with Infographics and Images Ever do an image search on Google? Make sure your images are showing up when people use image search by naming the image using keywords and create an infographic or two to visually show your brand story. The Hoth says, “The best infographics include data on a certain topic or simple and applicable ways to solve a problem.” Show how you solve a problem.Don’t steal. The Hoth says, “If you have original data to put in your infographic, then no need to worry about external links. Otherwise, you can just borrow stats from other websites and cite your sources at the bottom of the infographic.” After all, the person who created the stat deserves to get Google’s attention and the last thing you need is a letter from a lawyer asking you to remove something from your website because you stole it from someone else. Content creating doesn’t pay well to begin with, the least you can do is respect the work others do by linking to it. I created this infographic to show how MarketAPeel’s Custom interactive multimedia digital magazines help professionals and businesses to clearly tell their brands story throughout the marketing and sales funnel. I’d love your feedback and if there is any-thing you nd confusing or doesn’t make sense.

You made your infographic now what does the Hoth recommend? Sending out an email to those bloggers, writers, and freelancers asking them if they’d like to use it for an article. Not sure how to nd these professional writers and content creators, here are some ideas:1. Make a note of who wrote the article you just read – check out their site prole2. Do a search on Linkedin for Journalist, Freelancer, Blogger, Writer, Contributor3. Search hashtags on Twitter to nd people tweeting about the same thing4. Visit the prole pages of journalists in traditional newsOnce you have a name you can use good old Google to nd out more about them. Their social media proles, email addresses, websites, publications they’ve written for, the topics they write about, and how to contact them. Create an excel sheet of this data to use when you want to pitch them the results of an A/B test you did or an info-graphic you created based on research you found. (Just remember to cite where you got the data)Reviews to tell Your Brand Story and Improve SEOOnline reviews are a gold mine to help you understand what others think and say about you and your brand. Those who wrote reviews about your business or products, have given you more than some stars, they’ve given you the reason why they buy from you. With this knowledge you can redene your brand storytelling to create content highlighting those reasons and attract customers who will choose you for those same reasons. Need reviews from people, you need to ask and give them a 3 part structure to follow: 1. Why did you choose my brand?2. What problem did we solve or how did you use our product?3. What was the end result, did it meet your needs and if so, how. These 3 questions will ensure they tell a story about your brand, which you can share.Marketing experts consistently tell people, “Know their target market,” this is nothing

new and there are no short cuts if you want to increase your conversion rates and im-prove your websites search engine rankings – You have to do the hard work.When it xomes to SEO review sites offer lots of juice. There are lots of review sites out there and the ones which specialise in your industry will increase exposure for your company by being where Google sends people looking for keywords in your industry and by providing your site with a quality backlink. Reviews are part of your brand story and by asking for them on a regular basis, you will collect quality keyword backlinks and get research to help you know why people choose you and stories about the problems you solved to share with others. When I worked at HomeStars.com I advised home contractors about the value of collecting customer reviews and using the HomeStars platform. The value of SEO was a big part of what I talked about and how the Domain Authority of a directory, like HomeStars, would result in trafc to their website, their email, and their phones. I told them to improve the authority of their page on HomeStars and their own websites When it comes to Google, there were three things they needed to keep in mind. 1. Relevancy2. Recency3. AuthenticityWhen you collect reviews from clients, give them questions so they will tell a story and use those important keywords. Regular review collection will ensure the page is fresh and recent. AND for the love of God, don’t fake reviews. HomeStars put lots of ags in place to stop people from gaming the system with fake reviews and this resulted in real reviews not getting posted because our process was stringent. It made my life frus-trating, but it ensured the authenticity of the site and the reviews for the contractors. In 2007 when I was posting reviews about the kids toys on epinions.com, reviews were written mostly for products. In 2009, when I was at Canpages (a phone book), they added online reviews to their online directory and I wrote about how important online reviews for small businesses was going to be going forward.

When I started at Homestars, I wrote about online reviews and how according to Bright Local’s 2013 Customer Survey - 76% of consumers read reviews on any product or service, before they make their nal buying decision. Today (2023), according to Global Newswire that number is 95%. Reviews are taking over from advertising and marketing as the go to source for trust-worthy information on a product or service. What does that mean for your company? It means that you are not the only person telling your story online to the marketplace.How do you Mitigate the Damage of Bad Reviews?Before the Internet, we said an unhappy customer would tell 10 people about their bad experience with your business. Today, thanks to the Internet, they are telling the world. Make sure you have a large source of ‘good’ reviews online to offset the bad reviews and that you reply to those unhappy reviewers in a professional manner.Bad reviews are not a BAD THING – they lend authenticity to the page and the good reviews. Plus, they give you a chance to respond and tell your customer service story using those ever-important keywords. Bad reviews increase the credibility and authenticity of all your reviews because they prove the prole is unedited and real. Hiding bad reviews won’t help anyone’s credi-bility. Everyone knows that things go wrong, that there are some real nit picky people out there, and there are two sides of every story. Bad reviews give you the opportunity to respond with your Customer Service message.If responses to reviews are written in a professional manner, outlining the options the reviewer had, then it can make the company look good. If a company responds by bullying or slamming the reviewer, it’ll only make the reviewer’s point.

Don’t fear reviews. Both good and bad reviews are opportunities for you to tell your story, show your in-tegrity, and inform about your policies. Let’s say you get a horrible review from a client who wasn’t happy with your service. You did everything you could to make them happy, you even gave them the kitchen sink and they still sink you with a bad online review.Has this happened to you? It happens to small businesses all the time because some people are jerks. They want to get everything for free and have you thank them for the opportunity to serve them. These are the people you don’t want to have as clients, they don’t deserve your service. When I worked in the online review industry I had clients who found themselves in this position and would call me looking for help. The good news was that the review site brought them to the table and they could tell their side of the story in a professional manner. It also meant that the business owner could bring all his happy reviews to the table to offset the one bad review. Online reviews are like a scale. Good on one side, bad on the other. As long as you have enough good reviews to offset the bad ones, you’re golden. In fact, your more golden than if all you have are good reviews, because people don’t trust companies with no scars. Reviews and customer comments on social media are part of your story. Draw on them to show the marketplace why they should contact you.Writing reviews on sites, which allow for links in a review or prole, will help you build your reviews and get you noticed by the person or company you just wrote the review for. People are always quick to write bad reviews and complain about something – Wouldn’t it be great if we all rewarded good service and quality products by writing reviews to show our appreciation.

AND the benet for you might just be a backlink to your website. That’s Right. Write a review for someone on the right review site and you can add a link back to your web-site for some SEO juice. SEO is a Long Game ProcessIn the spring of 2022, I worked to get backlinks by providing quotes to various writers and adding my information to several different directories and sites. Then I got busy with customer work and didn’t run any SEO reports and it was a good thing. It wasn’t until the Fall when these links started to show up in the reports. Over time all those backlinks you worked hard to get will show up and you will see the results as you start to rank for more and more keywords. Don’t stop doing the work. This is a long game and consistent persistence will win the day. Be the Tortoise not the Hare. Design a process that will work for you to:Create content around important keywords for your brand storyBuild backlinks to your website to increase your domain authority I committed myself to write a blog post a week from a list of long-tail keywords I found by researching my site’s keywords, trafc, and my competitors. Plus, to earn 2-5 qual-ity backlinks on high-ranking sites. Each week will build on the last and overtime both my keyword ranking, and my domain authority will grow. Focusing on my BrandWhen you are structuring your week, it is vital to set time aside for your marketing efforts to keep your funnel full and your brand story fresh in the both the digital and real worlds. Considering I nd myself recommitting to focusing on my brand and my marketing funnel, I understand how easy it is to be distracted by client work, life, and family. All we can do is try to be better each week.

Is your brand story spread out over the internet resulting in a bunch of fractured sound bites and an audience standing at the edge of a canyon wondering where the road went? Don’t leave your potential client’s hanging, make sure they can nd you and know where to go to get what you have to offer them by mapping out your digital marketing funnel. Too many people put their eggs in one basket expecting people to go from awareness to advocacy in one jump, but that rarely works. If you want your audience to become active advocates of your brand, you need to guide them through the customer journey. Starting with a digital marketing funnel template is a good place to start.Brand Story Funnel Content creators use brand storytelling techniques to guide your audience from awareness to advocacy. When you look at the digital footprint from above you need to be able to see where the client journey moves and how they see the brand story you are trying to tell.Your digital footprint needs to know which parts of the funnel each platform goes into so you know what type of content to create. Platforms can have multiple spots in a funnel. MarketAPeel’s main purpose sits in the middle of the funnel to give thought leaders and brands a place to establish their authority of a topic, gain credibility of a being published on a third party platform, and gain awareness through organic searches. From there their content guides community members to their own platforms to help them make a decision and close the sale. I use a custom funnel to identify the parts of the whole story that need to be lled:• Awareness • Credibility • Authority• Decision• Action• Advocacy

There are different funnels, which you will see below. When creating a funnel for your brand story, make sure you cover all the parts of the customer journey and you know the intent of the action taken by the customer at each step.What is the Digital Marketing FunnelA digital marketing funnel describes the steps that users take to move from being a prospect to a customer. While there are multiple marketing funnels, most include stag-es focused on awareness, consideration, purchase, and retention. Businesses can use any funnel to guide their marketing efforts.It’s often difcult to dene a digital marketing funnel because it can take many differ-ent forms for many different types of businesses. In its simplest form, it has three com-ponents:• A foundation• A oodgate• The actual sales funnelUtilising digital marketing funnels is the key to reaching a wider audience and getting the best conversion rate on your marketing efforts.The anatomy of a digital marketing funnel.As I mentioned in the brand storytelling funnel, there are different types. This one is mainly used for digital content marketing and e-commerce transactional buyers jour-ney, which is much shorter than a relationship building journey and rarely has human to human interaction. • Top of the funnel (TOFU)• Middle of the funnel (MOFU)• Bottom of the funnel (BOFU)This type of funnel is focused on search intent and the keyword you need depending on the intent of the searcher.

If you want to be seen as an expert, thought leader, or provider of choice, you need to go beyond a short cycle transaction and create a deeper funnel to represent your potential customer’s journey. If you have an online store - or you need an online e-commerce site - this type of three steps funnel is a good place to start, but if your audience needs more touch points to move through their customer journey, you will need a more complex funnel - see be-low. Top of funnel (TOFU)This is where your brand story begins and helps customers to recognise they have a problem that needs a solution.Top of the funnel includes social media, publicity, word of mouth, and online search-es. Organic results provide the best onsite results, but are hard to get based on the amount of sites competing for top spot. Making sure your website is optimized for search engines, like Google, you will have a better idea about how to craft the stories you tell on your website.Google Search Statistics (1)• Google’s overall search engine market share is 91.86%.• In 2021, the Google brand was valued at $458 billion.• There are nearly 4 billion users of Google’s products and services.• Google takes over 200 factors into account when delivering search results• Over 50% of Google searches end without a click.• “Coronavirus” was the most searched word in 2020.• Google Search Index contains over 100,000,000 GB.• 96.21% of apps in the Google Play Store are free.• A business spending $1 on ads through Google Search makes $8 on average in prot.• Moving up 1 spot in the Google Search results can improve a site’s CTR by up to 30.8%.

Content marketers focus on creating content to meet the needs of consumers who are making searches using terms that signal the start of the customer journey. You need to entice them to take the next step and bring them to your website where the next digital marketing funnel stage takes shape. While many marketers will tell you that doing so starts with good ad design or witty copy, it actually begins earlier: with targeting the right audience.Informative Search Intent: Platforms where audiences are looking for an answer to a question, information about a topic, or to learn something new. Your client will need to learn how to tell their brand story in a compelling way that draws the audience in and gives the interviewer or platform something unique. Platforms are looking for unique content when they interview people, they don’t want the same story you gave to the last 10 interviewers. Navigational Search Intent:Search platforms and other directories where people will search to nd a specic site, brand, or person. They want to go to a specic place. This is where your client’s Brand SERP needs to bring up their website, their social media proles, videos, and high-rank-ing media by ensuring their brand name is in the title of the interview. When they goog-le their name, you want to see as much credibility of third-party stories as you can get in the rst page. To help, add links to these stories onto your client’s Google Business Page. Create an in the news page on their website and back link to the stories using their name & brand name to let Google know that the story is about them.Transactional Search Intent: Your client’s website or e-commerce platform ts into these searches, by this time in the customer journey – the story is click buy and checkout. If you did your job right, the web design people in this part of the funnel will be happy.

Commercial Investigation Search Intent:Search platforms are answering questions about which brand to go with. They know they have a problem, they are just looking for the best solution. At this stage you are looking to book your client opportunities to quote in crowdsourced articles about which product to buy. They need to tell stories about which problems the product solves and how they solve them. This is where reviews t into the picture. Your client needs to be sending three questions to help them tell the story of the product or ser-vice solving their problem. Questions to help them come up with A beginning, mid-dle, and end to their review story.Consumers of digital content make snap decisions about whether or not they want to consume a piece of content or ignore it. We’ve all become really good at swiping one way or the other in the blink of an eye. If you haven’t read Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink or the Book Click – both dive deeper into how we make split decisions and why somethings click while others don’t. The steps of the digital marketing funnel I map out to build a digital footprint are:• Awareness• Credibility• Interest• Decision• Action• Advocacy In this article, I will explain how to map out the Brand Awareness stage of the custom-er journey and your digital marketing funnel

How to Create a Funnel for Your BusinessWhen diagrammed, a digital marketing funnel shows where the person’s mind is at within their customer journey. Once you understand each stage of your customer’s buying journey you can start creating content that connects with them by telling their story to them to elicit empathy or a connection based on understanding with each person. You will need to draw out your customer’s buying journey and know where they will land on your digital footprint. If you have a big gap between chapters of your brand story, your audience is going to be going along ticketey boo and then ... urrrrch full stop before they do a Thelma and Louise off the edge of the Grand Canyon because they don’t know where to go. The Digital Marketing Funnel Template:How will your audience learn about your product or service? At the top of a sheet of paper write down all the ways people will become aware of you and how they will see you. For example: On LinkedIn through comments and searches. From there where do they start seeing you? For example: On LinkedIn fol-lowers will then see my posts. Put a box around each step. Like this:I use Lucidchart to help me visualise how customers will go through their buyers jour-ney and my digital footprint. This is one of many different owcharts I use to ensure there are no gaps.Map out the Customer JourneyWhen you start mapping out your digital footprint you will need to know two things:• The platforms you are telling your story on• The platforms your audience touches on their journey

Here is an exercise you can do to help you uncover the route potential buyers take to your product or service. Forget everything about your business and become an un-informed consumer looking for a solution to the problem you solve. Rule: You can’t search using words describing your solution, trademark, or company name. You want to see what shows up when people need the help you provide but they don’t know who you are. Are you showing up? Another exercise: Be self-aware of the journey you go through when you have a prob-lem and are making a buying decision, don’t go through the process on auto pilot. As you go through your own buying journey, you will discover those points in the funnel where messages need to inserted and how others are guiding you from awareness to advocacy. I use Lucidchart. to map out the ow of trafc through my large digital footprint. This way, I can identify if there are any large gaps along the path so my potential customer doesn’t end up staring in the abyss of a canyon with no idea how to get to the other side where I want them to be.

Brand Awareness and the Customer JourneyBrand awareness is the rst rung in the marketing funnel and where most people spend the bulk of their money and time. The problem occurs when they expect their audience to go from awareness to action in the course of a few ads or posts. Unless you want to constantly be looking for new customers and paying money to Facebook and Google in order to keep your cash ow going, you need to move away from transaction based marketing and into brand storytelling along the full marketing funnel. Some buyers journey’s will be moments, others could be years depending on the prob-lem, the urgency, and the amount of money they need to spend to get what they want. In the brand awareness tier you have social media, publicity, and searches. The cus-tomer may not have a problem or know they have a problem, but they see your brand in their social media feed as an ad, on a website’s adwords space, in a news article, podcast interview, or a Google search. This is where they are introduced to your com-pany name, image, and products or services. Rarely does a customer see an ad or a brand for the rst time and buy. They used to say it took 5 impressions, then 7, now its just over 11 impressions before they recog-nise your brand and are aware of your existence. They may not remember you off the top of their head, but if shown your logo or image they would recognise it and move to the step in their journey. How can you ensure you get in front of someone enough times to make an impression so they will recognise you in the future and take the next step because they have a problem you solve?

This is where time, patience, and a strategy for brand awareness comes in. Answer the following questions to help you determine if your brand awareness digital footprint is complete.• Make a list of all the places people may come across your brand• Which platforms are you already on? • Which platforms do your favourite customers hang out on?• Which platforms does your competition hang out?• Where are you not? • Do you have to be there? • If so, why?• Do your posts have a similar look and feel to them or a recognisable trait, like your logo?• Is your name, image, and message the same across all the platforms?Google yourself and see where else they might come across your name, business, imageWhenever I Google my name or my company name, I always nd another piece of content where I’ve been quoted, interviewed, or am a contributor. Look at your brand awareness map from above, ll in the missing pieces and make a note about how the person would know to go from one step to the next. For example, if a person saw a post on twitter in their feed because someone engaged with your post, answer the following questions:• What would a person who sees the post think to do? List all the steps the can take to move closer to your brand.• What step do you want them to take? How can you communicate the call to action without sounding spammy or like you are selling them something?For example: Your twitter post could have a call to action, check out my prole for

more - either on the corner of the graphic or in the limited 280 characters. In your pro-le you can pin a post that tells people what you post about and who should consider following you. Go through all the places people can become aware of you and think about how you can subtly move them from awareness to the next step in your brand story’s digital marketing funnel. Commenting, Consistency, and Commitment It takes effort to get your brand story noticed on social media. Posting over and over is not enough. You must take time to strategically engage with others to get noticed and build your following. Then as they see your posts, over time, they will learn who you are, what you do, and why you do it, all of which, builds trust in your brand. Join the MarketAPeel Community to access the 30 min for 30 days challenge and test the theory by measuring what happens when you strategically comment on posts for 30 minutes a day for 30 days. I’ve tested just posting consistently for 6 weeks and doing no engaging on other’s proles, strategic or otherwise, and it does very little for a following or brand aware-ness. It is easy for people to ignore what they see when they are in zombie scroll brain mode. Commenting on other people’s posts shifts gears into engagement brain mode and they will recognise you if they come across you again in the future. This is why viral posts do very little for longterm brand awareness. You may get an up-tick, but unless they follow you, they will forget about you. Don’t go after viral or com-ment on posts with hundreds of engagements because the person is an ‘inuencer,’ Your comment will get lost in the crowd and your brand awareness will not improve. Instead, look for posts with some engagement and make a thoughtful comment about the post itself. For brand awareness, the best content you can create is the teaser - the trailer - the hook. Write the bigger story, the longer version, and tell the part closest to the action or climax of the story. Get them curious and leave them with the promise of nding

out more if they choose to take action and moving to the next stage of your story. Building out your digital footprint to tell your brand story takes time but with each piece, you build on the story until over time when you Google yourself, you dominate. Don’t believe me?Google Shannon Peel and see what happens. The proof is in the pages. Keep going you’ll get there. 6 Steps to Create a Marketing Funnel• Map out the ow of your customer’s buying journey • Create an offer • Create content engage your customers• Design landing pages to bring your customers deeper into your story• Map out your email sequence • Test and ensure all paths lead to the end gameYou can sit here and gure this out on your own, or you can join me and we can work together to ensure your digital marketing funnel is telling the right story to the right audience along the digital footprint. Brand storytelling courses, events, and work-books are designed to help you get your digital footprint built and be known in your marketplace. You want to start by mapping out the customer’s buying journey so you can create content to answer their questions and meet their needs along the way to your buy button. As you create content and build out the digital footprint you will nd multiple ways for people to enter into your funnel and start their journey to your solution for their problem. As your digital footprint grows your brand story becomes fractured and you end up with dead ends and orphan pages, both of which will not help your cus-tomer nd your ‘buy now’ button. Use a program like Lucid Chart or a pen and lots of graph paper to help you keep track of where you post content and where you expect it to lead your audience.

What’s a Brand Storytelling Funnel? This is different than a marketing funnel because you are creating a larger story and then breaking it down with cliff hangers to guide people from brand awareness to brand advocacy. This is a huge undertaking and topic that takes lots of time to build the foundation before you get to a point where it runs itself like an engine. I use Lucidchart to create owcharts so I can visualise how an audience will go through the story and keep track of which details need to go where.There are many different ways people can go through a brand story depending on where they stumble upon it in the bigger digital footprint. Digital funnels are not linear and as much as it would be awesome for someone to go ... 1 ... 2 ... 3 ... Buy ... That isn’t how it works in the real world. Audiences move up and down the funnel. The start down the road and then get side tracked by something else they want to know about or a kid screaming they want to be fed. Then they go along their merry way and boom, they see your brand again and this time enter the funnel from a different location. Until they give you their contact information, they are going to want to dance with your brand for awhile before they step into commit. This is why you have to have multiple story threads and they need to interchange and weave through each other without confusing the audience and causing them to won-der, “So, what is it that this company does?” Create a larger storyboard, pick your core value words, your product keywords, your customer’s problem keywords and map how they all work together to tell the full sto-ry. Once you know what the bigger story is, you can start to break it into sound bites, trailers, chapters, and sections. Lucidchart is one of the tools I use to help me strategise, see the bigger plan, and know how the story will ow from one platform to the next. If you are having to plan out anything that needs to go from a to b, Lucidchart is a good tool to have in your tool box.

Marketing Emails that Sell GuideEmail marketing is an important part of a brand’s marketing strategy to keep leads and customers informed about your brand story and to drive sales. Every digital market-ing funnel needs to have an automation email workow to communicate directly with audiences about what interests them. I have a system, a process, I use which results in a 60-80% open rate. Yes, my open rate for certain campaigns is 60-80% but my click through rate is so low it’s embarrass-ing. I obviously have a problem because although my list likes my emails enough to continue to open them, they are not clicking through to my website for the next chap-ter in my brand story funnel. I think it’s time to nd out how I can improve my email template design and content to increase my click through rate. The Effectiveness of Email MarketingThe rst email was sent by Ray Thomlinson in 1971, before my time, but barely. By the time the rst mass marketing email was sent out in 1978, I was in elementary school oblivious to how email marketing was going to affect my future career. When the ‘Father of Spam’ Gary Thuerk, sent a few hundred marketing emails, it re-sulted in a few complaints and $13 million in sales for DEC machines. It worked in 1978, but does it work 30+ years later? Email marketing has landed me a few clients and I have spent more than my fair share of money due to emails entering my inbox. Due to the ability to penetrate an audience at a low cost, both nancial and time, the amount of emails being sent can be more than a little overwhelming when you open your inbox on a Monday morning. I’ve learned that some emails work and others re-sult in a spike in unsubscribes, which is disheartening and to be avoided.

Marketing Email Benchmarks:I know that my open rate is better than industry standards, according to MailChimp data. However, my click rate is way below the benchmark at less than 1%. To improve my click through results, I reached out and asked people who send email marketing campaigns, for some tips.What to Know about Email Marketing Before You StartDan Barrett, Co-Founder, Pacic Precious Metals told me, “Templates take time to create, and it’s easy to question if they’re worthwhile. It’s far faster to edit a template than it is to create anything from the start. It’s the distinction between copying and pasting text and typing it all over again. It’s easier to erase information than it is to add it, so add too much rather than too little when creating your template.” Brent Hale, Chief Content Strategist, Tech Guided said, “I suggest using industry benchmarks as they are useful for determining where you are in relation to your com-petitors, but it’s more crucial to concentrate on improvement. You shouldn’t be con-cerned about meeting “benchmarks” if you are always increasing your performance.”

Adam Wood, Co-Founder, RevenueGeeks shared, “Experiment - A/B testing is your new best buddy when it comes to increasing click-through rates. This entails sending several groups of subscribers, different variations of your email campaign to collect information about the stuff your readers are most interested in. Although the possibil-ities are limitless, it does not mean your test items should be. I recommend focusing on one or two variables—your most intriguing ideas—and putting them to the test in-itially. This might include things like length, subject lines, content order, graphics, calls to action, and whatever else you want to compare.”Ernests Embutnieks, CEO and Founder, Perfectgift4 added, “With a “spray and pray” method in which you send mass emails with no segmentation, increasing your click-through rate will be a challenge. As a result, I can’t stress enough the signicance of segmenting your emails so that each subscriber receives a personalised message. It’s a little more work, but half of the e-commerce rms believe that personalisation increas-es customer engagement.”I know that when it comes to my email list, the open rate is due to successfully manag-ing and segmenting the list by removing those who don’t want to be there. You can’t have the intended outcome if you’ve got the wrong list. In an email campaign, it is necessary to write catchy slogans or teaser texts to attract the receiver. Therefore, the email campaign must be properly planned and relevant content.The workbook will help you create a strategy.Once we have a strategy, it’s time to choose our tools. I’ve used a variety of programs. I’ve been using Zoho Campaigns for my emails, and I like how I can set up automated workows and start each new subscribed email into an automated process. I like how zoho campaign enables you to visually map out the workow and add specic scores and tags based on behaviour not perception.

MailChimp was my standard go to, however I am not liking their new design platform. Plus, the open rate, no matter what segmentation I use is always only 27-32%, which I nd frustrating. Which Tools to use for Email Marketing Templates?I chose Zoho because it had 40 integrated apps to manage every aspect of my busi-ness for one affordable monthly fee. I was happily surprised to discover how much I liked Zoho Campaign due to the ability to map out the workow and add specic criteria based on the behaviour of the recipients instead of assuming. In the end it enables me to send emails to people based on their interests instead of a general email to everyone. • It is easy to use• I can save templates to use again• It has easy to understand reports• I can segment lists to ensure personalisation• It gets through to the email inboxes better than Mail Chimp did• I can use my own email address to send the emails • It integrates with the CRM, social, and other Zoho apps for automationThe best part is that it saves me money. All 40 apps costs me less than Mail Chimp or other stand alone programs.What others said about the tools they use:Olivia Tan, Co-founder, Cocofax prefers to use “Mailchimp, a popular email marketing equipment that also offers free email templates that you can use for your campaigns. The website has a collection of hundred plus pre-designed templates that you can use to send different sorts of emails.”

Sergey, Chief Operating Ofcer, PurrWeb has been using, “Sendinblue for the last few years in our organisation, and its templates are working best for us. Sendinblue offers a wide range of responsive templates, great for most businesses. It is convenient for us since it does not require specic programming languages or tools.”Jonathan Tian, Co-Founder, Mobitrix, says, “HubSpot Marketplace is the best place or approach to buying templates for your email. Here you’ll get both paid and free HubSpot templates, and these templates will personalise your email and make your content look attractive. “Marilyn Gaskell, Founder of TruePeopleSearch uses, “MailBakery and Litmus. These two responsive email templates are free to use and work nicely with your email content.”Kevin Izevbigie, Founder, S2 Digital says, “Deliverability is everything. Before you send out an email, use Mail Tester to see if the email will go to spam and why. Finally, you should be cleaning your email list every quarter. You can use tools like Millionver-ier.com or the inbuilt cleaning functions of your CRM to remove emails that are fake or deactivated.When it comes to choosing the email marketing software you will use, know what you need from the program before you commit. Don’t buy the one everyone else is using or the biggest brand name in the marketplace. You need a program that suits your email marketing and template design needs. Once you’ve narrowed the list down to 3-5 platforms, test each platform with a small campaign to see which one you like be-fore you buy a subscription.” How do You Design a Marketing Email Template?When creating an email template design or structure, think of how one tells a sto-ry. There is a beginning, a middle, and an end. The beginning is the purpose of the email. The middle provides interest, and you must end with a clear call to action. When I structure a template, I start with a headline and sub-headline to let them know what the email is about. I then ask them three questions to determine if they need to know more about the topic before I give a tip or two, which they can implement right

away to improve their brand storytelling. I then end the story with a one call to action Packing in value with an actionable brand storytelling idea.My emails are text only and don’t have images or videos. I try to keep it short and sweet using as few words as possible, while also packing in the value with an action-able brand storytelling idea. To nd out how to improve the structure, design, and content of my email templates, I asked others what works for them. Nobody likes to read a crowded and disorganised email; it overwhelms recipients and might lead to higher desertion. Instead, design your layout with user experience (UX) in mind, which means leaving empty/white space and strategically placing your textual and graphic information so that it’s structured and easy to consume and navigate.Use plain text emails. This sort of email does not necessitate the use of any visual components - only plain text. It is the most widely used email format. It is best suited to transmit critical information that may otherwise be lost in the distracting aesthet-ics of other forms. It is easy to make. The simple text design is a suitable solution for internal corporate communication. If you must use it for marketing, the key is to use excellent writing, keep it brief, and personalise the email as much as possible.When you personalise an email and adjust it to the receiver, it will appear more atten-tive, professional, and personable. Email personalisation also aids in the humanisation of your brand. This personalisation aids in the development of a relationship between your company and its email readers, as well as in increasing retention rates.Because individuals spend more time on their mobile devices, it seems to reason that they would like to access their emails on them as well. When creating emails, employ themes or design components that are mobile-friendly. The width of your email should easily t inside the margins of a phone; the typefaces should also be visible on a smaller phone screen. You should also consider utilising sufcient line space and prop-erly positioning your CTA button so that your readers may effortlessly click on it with their thumbs. Before sending your emails, be sure to preview them to check how they look on different devices.

Now comes the hard part, doing the work to incorporate these ideas into my email templates to improve the click through rates. There isn’t a one size ts all when it comes to email template design because there are many reasons to send out an email. If you are announcing a new product, you will want to show an image. Where-as, if you are educating your audience about a new study, a photo may distract from the message because it isn’t tied to the story. The key for succeeding when it comes to creating email templates is knowing who you are sending it to, designing for them, and keeping the message simple.