Your Story is Your Brand

Your story is your brand. But which brand do you build and which story do you tell -organisation or people? Organisations want to build organisation brands, yet people prefer to read people stories.

This is one of the greatest paradoxes of branding. It has no simple solutions and the answer varies from situation to situation. One point is common viz to align personal brand with organisation brand, to align people story with organization story and to find the delicate balance. A balance where organisation brand benefits due to the CEO or entrepreneur brand and vice versa.

Organisational stories need to be interwoven with people stories to make them more effective and catchy to read. 


Twitter and Personal BrandingSocial media is slightly biased towards people branding, because people want to converse and build relationships with people and not faceless organizations. Social media platforms are also social networking platforms after all. 

While Twitter has a bias towards personal branding, LinkedIn has a bias towards organisation or employer branding. LinkedIn has no celebrity pages unlike Facebook. One of the main features of Twitter is, your followers come to know of who you know and who you talk to, which is useful from personal branding point of view.

Aligning Personal Brand with Organisation Brand
Another view is that organisation brand is a like a house and each personal/ employee brand is like a brick. This is especially true for knowledge based organisations of today. A company may get business because of personal brand of its salespeople or domain experts/ consultants. In fact organisations in USA are training their salespeople on personal branding.

Personal Branding for SMEs
Storytelling is the most powerful branding tool, be it organizations, startups, products or people. Earlier branding was done only through mass media which was expensive and out of reach of SMEs and professionals. Social media is a game changer in that sense. Digital storytelling has a variety of formats ranging from text to visual, from PPT to podcast besides video of course.

Personal Branding for Startup Founders
Startups can also grow faster using the personal brands of their founders. Building organisation brands is a long and more complex journey. If the startup has a one year old brand and Founder has a 25 year old (personal) brand, it goes without saying who has more credibility.

What is your take? Which story do we tell and why?

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Brief Profile

Dr Amit Nagpal, PhD is a Business Storyteller, Speaker and Digital Storytelling Coach. He is one of the pioneers of digital storytelling in India. After working for more than two decades in academics, and corporates (including publishing, television and digital marketing), he realised teaching is meditation and storytelling is his Nirvana.

He is also Chief Inspirational Storyteller at AL Services. AL Services has co-created stories of some of the most inspiring people in India and abroad. He tweets at @DrAmitInspires.