How to Build a Brand Your Audience Will Love

 

The value of a strong brand is the ability to amplify your brand message across exponentially more people than you could have possibly reached on your own.

 

Also, keep in mind that “building a brand is one key to future-proofing your business,” says Corey Blake, founder and CEO of Round Table Companies. “When we do so authentically and creatively, we become visible to our tribe in ways that touch their hearts and souls.” And when we do that well, they are the ones who help to grow our businesses well into the future.

 

Corey, who has spent more than a decade guiding CEOs and founders to build storytelling ecosystems around their brands, emphasizes the importance of building a brand in order to reach the right followers. “They become our ambassadors, our referral networks, and our mouthpieces,” he says. “They hold us to our word, and they stick by our sides when we falter.”

 

Here is the Round Table roadmap for building a brand your audience will love:

 

3 key steps for telling your brand’s story:

The first thing to keep in mind is that every founder is an artist, using their brand to paint a picture of the world they wish to see.
 

1. Tell the story behind your founder's deep and profound “why” — the reason your business means so much to them, what it stands for in the world, and how the universe has prepared them for the work your company does today. In fact, make content creation and storytelling part of your business strategy, as it can help even established businesses realign their values at any phase in the journey.
2. Tell the stories behind the stakeholders in your ecosystem and how your founder's vision and purpose connect to each stakeholder's own deeply profound and beautiful "why." Along the way, take time to develop the right style and voice to connect with your audience. What kind of tone will strike an emotional chord for them?
3. Once you’ve honed your brand story, make sure to share and distribute your stories across all social media platforms. Take the content of those stories and explore them across mediums to share them far and wide.

 

 

3 tips to building a brand your audience will love:

 

“Building a brand people love is no different than searching for love in a life partner,” says Corey. “If we share — and are loved in return — for who we are authentically, then we stand a chance at a life-long relationship.” If, instead, we try to become a version of ourselves that we believe is lovable, that relationship is likely to flicker and fade. Here are steps to building an authentic brand:
 

1) Rather than projecting an image of a brand worth loving, focus on expressing what is real and true and vulnerable about your brand so that those who are most aligned are offered an opportunity to fall head over heels.

2) Once that expression of your brand is in place, focus on nurturing your brand's relationship with those who are intuitively drawn to you.

3) Look inward at your brand and learn to love the shadow side of what you've built; only in learning to love ourselves more fully do we, in turn, become more lovable.

 

Remember that transactional marketing creates transactional relationships. Meanwhile, transformative marketing generates transformative relationships. If you express your brand in ways that feel true and make you nervous, you're likely heading in the right direction. Keep taking one step at a time.