Use Writing to Discover Your Brand and Business

Whether you tag yourself “writer” or not, writing can feed the ideas you’re obsessed with and the questions you’re living and that your brand and business is delivering on.

Writing can inform your brand’s integrity. And if you’re in transition – in life, business, brand – oh, yeah. Writing is an ally there, too.

Someone asked me recently about the work I do and how I help to  build brands and the brand stories they’re based on. The answer. I do build a brand the same way I build a life: An idea consumes me. I write, research, dive deep, create, test. Through that process, I unfold a brand and business.

Devotion > Writing > Business & Brand. They inform each other.

Last month’s masterclass on shaping content for impact and influence, gathered an impressive group representing numerous fields. People in business leadership, political consultants, coaches, community leaders, musician-performers, artists, healers.

What they had in common: the desire to rise above the online content glut and make the most of their writing efforts for their business, brand, or endeavor. A key point we discussed is that thought leaders and conversation leaders do at least three things:

• They shape signature ideas and points of view.
• They spread those ideas.
• They earn, emotionally and / or financially, from those ideas.

But to shape or spread an idea requires ongoing focus, fussing, and testing. The most viable & compact medium to do that is writing. We broke out into small video groups online, and tested ideas out on each other and held real conversations.

You draft to discover your ideas. You craft to design experiences for others. (Click to Tweet if this resonates with you. So appreciated!)

You draft to discover what the heck your business is really about now or could be.

You draft to discover what your core values really are and why, and why, and why.

You draft to discover the stories you’ve been living that have brought you to this Story that you and your brand are really living!

That’s why we require many of our branding clients to write. Not essays. Not poetry. Not for critique or MFA workshops (been there, taught that). Unless that’s what they’re into. Some of our branding clients are corporate consultants, NPO founders, lawyers, and business owners who might have no interest in writing a book or being tagged “writer.”

Writing helps connect dots and uncover new insights. It’s from rough writing, curated conversations, research, and other means that we ferret out the stories that will inform the brand Story.

Writing regularly also helps people who are in brand transition. Lots of clients and prospects we’ve been holding needs assessment calls with are in brand transition. Brand transitions are often identity transitions, personally and professionally. Sometimes the brand transition is an opportunity to show up online with greater presence and integrity like never before.

Our ArtMark™ branding methodology, I realize, is like a branding/rebranding incubator for these clients.

Writing can help you see how your ideas are growing and help you envision how you want your brand to grow with integrity.

That’s what we’re seeing in The Writing Den, our community incubator for action-oriented content creators, thought leaders, & bloggers. It’s where more of our community is testing how writing nudges them to show up with their signature ideas and make a difference. Our next Office Hours is tomorrow.

Last September I recorded a 15-day business artist writing experiment for the Tracking Wonder Community to play with. Here’s my hypothesis: If you test this out for 15 mornings in a row, you’re going to spend more time and deliberate action on what matters. Test it out, and report back with how it went.