If you asked

around, you will be told that the greatest form of marketing is word of mouth. I kid you not. Friends, that is the main reason why a personal brand is of extreme importance. An epic personal brand after you have created and built it will grow its own legs and will serve you royally.

Why A Personal Brand is Needed

This is most important especially in this day and age where seemingly there is a saturation of employable people and yet seemingly there are fewer job opportunities. I could agree about the job opportunities but I would never agree about there lacking opportunities altogether. If anything, your personal brand is an avenue for creating opportunities where traditionally they didn’t exist.

Recap

So far, we have seen three different pillars that prop up an epic personal brand. As we have already discussed, all personal brands are unique one from another, but the way in which each is built is the same. Before we can discuss one more core thing that props up your personal brand, let’s do a recap.

1. Know Your Value Add

2. Know Your Audience

3. Know Your Difference

4. Build Your Stories

At the end of the day, an epic personal brand is not what you say it is. On the contrary, it is what your audience says it is. This is the part of personal brand building that we might not have direct control over. A personal brand is basically what perception people have about you in terms of the three things we have already covered: Your value add, your audience, and your difference.

It’s About Connections

People connect to a brand through stories. That’s why Apple as a brand has a cult following. Arsenal as a football club has a cult following too. I have already told here how I became an ardent Arsenal fan and I have been unable to ditch them for years. It was the story of their brand that turned my head and heart.

As much as I have said that you might not have control over this part of your personal brand, I have to tell you that you have everything in your hands to bring out the stories. Stories connected to your personal brands are formed as you are using your brand to serve others.

What You Do Is What Creates the Stories

You will not get those stories the same way you get a logo or the same way you select a color scheme. Frankly, there is no knowing what kind of stories are going to come up as you use your personal brand to serve others. That’s why I said you might not have direct control over this aspect.

Invariably, when your primary audience experiences your personal brand, they will do so because of a connection. Others will do so because of the difference that you are making. When they do experience the full extent of your personal brand, their lives will be changed because you will have sorted out an emotional problem in their lives.

Of Sneezers

Such like people cannot help but “sneeze” or tell their world, and especially those people that they care about. Look at the stories we tell each other. For the most part, they are stories that have meaning, or we have attached premium meaning on. We do not tell and listen to stories that do not compel us.

Here is the thing though, when we feel the connection and the identity with the story being told, we get so attached to the story of someone else’s personal brand as if it was our very own story. So as you are using your personal brand to serve others, the idea should be that you care, you are authentic and you are not doing it to get a quick buck.

Creating The Stories

Your assignment in creating an epic personal brand is to ensure that you create as many inspiring stories either about you or as you interact with your audience, about them and their experience with your brand. You can control both, but the only part that you can fully control is the stories about you:

1. Your reputation:

We are all known in our worlds and in the world for something. What we stand for, what we value and what we champion will form our reputation. In there, we could curate as many stories as possible and tell the world about it. When the world repeats the story of our reputation, our personal brand is strengthened.

Think of Steve Jobs at Apple insisting that the inside of the motherboard of the computer should be as aesthetic as the outside.

2. Your Authenticity:

This has come through in all the articles we have done about a personal brand. To be authentic means that you are doing you. You are not pilfering and plagiarizing someone else’s personal brand. You are also remaining true to who you are regardless of the price you have to pay.

Think of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jnr. Both were fighting for racial equality, but both were extremely authentic in how they approached it. We tell stories about them and we never fail to talk about their authenticity.

3. Your Care:

People do not care how much you know until they know how much you care. A particular US President is said to have cared enough about a member of his kitchen staff that he met at the white house and held a small conversation with. When the president learned about the family, he got involved with them.

Stories about you caring for humanity will spread and cause your personal brand to be voiced abroad. It is up to you to be authentic about what you care though.

4. Your Victories over setbacks

This is where you show that you are as human as anyone else. If anything, people connect better to a personal brand once they realize that you acknowledge that you are flesh and blood. Stories about your victories will always be repeated and cause people to want to associate with you because such stories are not only compelling and inspiring, they are also human.

Some examples of victories

• Think of how you handled a moral failure with candor, openness, accountability and responsibility
• Think of how you handled a setback in life, a crisis that you did not bring to yourself
• Think of how you went against a goliath in your life and defeated them
• Think of how you moved from rags to riches
• Think of how you moved from riches to rags and back to riches again

5. Your Passion:

People will tell stories about your personal brand when they see your passion. We talk of Napoleon, Alexandar the Great, the Apostle Paul, Jesus Christ, and many other historical figures because of what they accomplished through their passion. Show passion and the world will tell your story.

Ultimately, you want a positive vibe to be broadcast abroad by people about you. You want to create as many avenues as possible where people will speak about your personal brand in a raving way so much so that they are your first line of defense whenever you are attacked.

Trying To Control The Narrative

When it comes to interacting with your audience, you can control the narrative in the following ways:

• Your excellence: There are so many people probably trying to do the same thing you are doing. Your excellence has to be a story that is told in order to protect your personal brand. Find the different ways that excellence can come forth.
• Your pleasant surprises: When interfacing with your brand, don’t just be functional. Find a way to add something extra that is a pleasant surprise to your customer. Right there and then, you create a story in their world.
• Your difference: This has already been spoken of at length in the previous article. The more you do this, the more someone identifies with you long enough to tell your story.

Your personal brand will be as good as the stories that other people are telling about it. That’s just about it!