What’s YOUR story??

I just got back from the outstanding A-HA Social Media Summit put on by Allen and Lani Voivod , in partnership with the New Hampshire Division of Economic Development at Gunstock Mountain Resort, NH. Talk about illuminating!!  While I had “played” with LinkedIn and had actually set up a Twitter account, I never really “got” the understanding of how and why they worked or how to strategically maximize their impact. The speakers and video tips were phenomenal. This summit created such an exciting vision in me for my business marketing.

One of the best takeaway’s from the Summit was a point made by Nancy Clark (Chief Strategist and President of the Glen Group). Tell YOUR story. People need to relate to you and having your story worked into all your media marketing will help them do so. She said that it should be your story, not your history. When I said I didn’t know what my story would be…she asked me a simple question. I’d previously mentioned that I was from Oklahoma and had been in NH for a little over ten years. She simply asked “What brought you here? I explained that I came to NH because, when my daughter told me she was pregnant with my first grandson, I knew that I knew that I didn’t want to be an absentee grandmother. So I closed up my life in Oklahoma and came here. Nancy said “That’s your story!” What ever it is that brought you to this point in life, or business makes up your story. It’s not branding…which is the look, feel, message of your business. This is much more about making people want to do business with you because they identify with or find comradeship in your story.