How to Maximize Your Online Brand With Storytelling

Make it all about your failures.

This will be fun (not).

As you can tell, I’m no brand expert. I get confused about what my brand is sometimes.

Is it ghostwriting? Is it content creation? Is it coaching? I don’t know. But after 4+ years of writing with tons of failures and successes, I’ve gotten a better idea of what it looks like. I’ve also gotten better at maximizing my online brand through the power of storytelling.

Here’s how you can do it too.

But first, my friend Arica and I collaborated on this topic! Please check out her post on this subject below!

Build trust and authenticity with personal stories

Be sure to check out her publication Dare to Fail! It’s full of valuable insights and perspectives you don’t want to miss!

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1. Make it All About Your Failures

When you have an online brand, people don’t really care how much of an expert you are.

I know that’s shocking. Stay with me now.

They want to ensure the product or brand you’re selling is good quality. However, they don’t care how much you flex about how successful you are WITHOUT the failures included in that.

Let’s take my ghostwriting career as an example.

Whenever I had a Zoom meeting, I would pull up a document outlining my successes AND failures. Of course, I wanted to wow people with my accomplishments, but underneath it all were many failures, depression, and being an inconsistent writer.

I sucked at getting freelance writing clients—forget ghostwriting clients. I cold-called 25+ local businesses per day in college. No one wanted my services. And that’s not all.

• I started a digital marketing business that never got off the ground

• I resold shoes on eBay which amounted to a net loss

• I did pay surveys for pennies but made no money because I had zero discipline to finish them

I got my ghostwriting service off the ground because I wasn’t afraid to showcase these failures—especially the writing ones. Heck, check my About Page here and I made sure to include my failures as well.

People want to see your highlights and your lowlights. It makes the journey more captivating.

It’s boring to showcase your expertise. We’re all human. Make sure you present yourself as someone you can relate to when you write your story.

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2. Add Tons of Social Proof

This makes the “expertise” part of storytelling for branding insignificant.

Why tell when you can show? I also did this with my ghostwriting service. I never really told anyone what I’ve accomplished through writing. I had another document that had screenshots of crazy milestones I’ve set in my writing career (e.g. 700+ email subscribers, top-writer status on Medium, published over 800+ articles, the big publications I’ve written for, etc).

I always say that a picture can tell me a lot more than words can. Don’t use a lot of words for this part. It’s self-explanatory.

The more social proof you add, the more legitimate you make yourself look. But when adding lots of social proof, some people feel themselves too often and forget to showcase their failures, which makes the social proof a bit disingenuous and condescending.

Make sure there’s a balance between success and failure whenever you write a story to build your online brand.

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3. Post Your Story EVERYWHERE

This is super crucial.

The invention of online bios has made us lazy with this. It’s super hard to tell your story with a 150-character limit.

Have you ever had that feeling when you see a viral post from someone, but you have no idea who they are? So you check their bio and you STILL don’t know who they are?

That’s why it’s so important to have your story in as many places as possible. For example, I could pin two blog posts to the top of my page when I wrote on Medium. One of those blog posts was an “About Me” post and the other one was a story showcasing how I wrote on Medium every single day for a year straight.

You never want anyone in your audience to feel as though they don’t know who you are and what you’re about.

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4. Offer Something Free At The End

I have a confession to make.

My writing career on Twitter (X) was a lie. I didn’t get those followers or email subscribers through genuine interaction. I used a growth hacker.

But he taught me his secret sauce to get me those email subscribers—free offers—and tons of them. He would make TWO free offers every week and put them at the end of each thread he wrote.

It works for all creators too (not just growthhackers lol). I would put a 90-day writing habit guide at the end of all of my blog posts when I wrote on Medium. It allowed me to build a genuine email list of 600 people before I gave my soul to the growth-hacking devil.

Plus, it’s the perfect cherry on top after you tell your story.

It’s something tangible the reader can latch on to see if you’re worth their money or not.

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Final Thought

To maximize your online brand with storytelling:

• Make it all about your failures

• Add tons of social proof

• Post your story EVERYWHERE

• Offer something free at the end

Never be afraid to get as vulnerable as possible.

I love it when people show their scars. They do it all of the time and it STILL never gets old.

Once you have the social proof and the free offer, the product/brand sells itself.

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