Blog Insights
Building a Brand That Truly Engages Your Audience
Your organization’s brand story is the most valuable way to truly engage people in your mission. In a recent webinar, I explained how to leverage your brand story to promote engagement, reach more people—and most importantly—engage people more deeply to create long-lasting impact.
Our work with mission-driven organizations over the past 20 years has identified that successful audience engagement involves two key points:
- The audience must care deeply about your issue and be invested in helping you solve the problem.
- The audience must know how to invest and believe that they can make an impact.
Once members of your audience are all-in on your mission, they become “brand cheerleaders” who help carry your message and increase your audience. The goal is to engage your audience at a deeper level to develop brand cheerleaders. You have the tool to develop this engagement—the tool is your Brand Story.
What is a brand story?
A brand is an entire experience. It’s how you holistically present yourself to the world. Your brand is a conglomeration of thoughts, experiences, and notions that people hold about your organization. This perception is shaped by how you tell your brand story. Like relationships, brands are built over time and can improve as time goes on. Each day you can make small tweaks to your brand story and start to see increased impact.
Developing your brand story
People want to invest in something bigger than themselves. But they also crave transparency and clarity in order to go all-in. To determine the core of your brand story, ask yourself these questions:
- How are you changing the world?
- Do people know?
- Do people care?
In communicating your brand story, it’s important to not just determine how you view your organization, but also how the audiences you’re engaging view your organization. Put yourself in their shoes and answer the questions they’re asking about your organization and how and when they should be involved. Once you’ve answered these questions, it’s time to develop a brand story that is consistent, compelling and collaborative.
In the webinar, I explore the three Cs of crafting your story:
Go take a listen to the webinar if you want to learn more about the three Cs now. Check back as I will be writing a blog for each of the three Cs soon.
Additional resource: Asking the Right Questions About Your Brand