In this episode of "Stories That Connect," host Nicole Levell introduces herself and her company, Ellison Marketing, which specializes in branding, digital strategy, and empowering female entrepreneurs. Nicole and her guest, Amanda Foster, discuss the importance of humanizing your brand to build trust and connection with your audience. Amanda shares her journey from working in a traditional interior design firm to starting her own online business, emphasizing the significance of authenticity and relatability in branding. She highlights how showing personal aspects, even if through small, relatable moments like interacting with pets or daily routines, can significantly enhance audience engagement and trust.
Amanda explains that humanizing a brand involves making it more relatable and personable, especially in an era where AI is becoming increasingly prevalent. By sharing genuine stories, personal experiences, and behind-the-scenes glimpses, brands can create a sense of trust and connection with their audience. Nicole and Amanda agree that while it can be challenging to balance professionalism with personal storytelling, doing so effectively can differentiate a brand in a crowded market. They emphasize the importance of showing the human side of a business to build authentic relationships with clients and potential customers.
Transcript:
Nicole Levell:Â Welcome to another episode of Stories That Connect, the influence of brand storytelling. I am your host, Nicole Lavelle, owner of Ellison Marketing, where we specialize in branding, digital strategy, and community building, particularly empowering female entrepreneurs to tell their stories and to grow their own brand.
We have a range of services from one-to-one coaching to online courses. At the end of the day, we help your brand craft compelling narratives that resonate with your audience. Today we have a special guest. We are diving deep into understanding the power of humanizing your brand online, and our special guest is Amanda, A. K. A. Amanda dork. Amanda Foster. She is an online interior design consultant, business mentor, and dope graphic designer. Together, we will talk about humanizing your brand and connecting with your audience on a deeper level. I am so excited to have you. Hi.
Amanda Foster: Thank you so much for having me. I'm ready to dive in.
Nicole Levell: Yes. Yes, guys. I have to tell you Amanda is amazing. We've been emailing back and forth, a lot of communication. She is literally dope, which is why she uses that as part of her brand. So let's dive in. Tell us about yourself. Why are you so dope?
Amanda Foster: I have a lot of experience in my design industry for graphic design where I partnered with a marketing firm. So I learned a lot about marketing and storytelling. And branding and also interiors. I always had the two working side by side, but once I got into my own business, I could actually use my interior design and architecture degree and knowledge with my graphic design and marketing know how.
So that's where I've niched down to help my peers succeed and getting better businesses online.
Nicole Levell: Can you tell me more about your unique story? You mentioned finding things in your industry boring. How did that evolve into what your website looks like and everything?
Amanda Foster: Yeah. So over a decade ago when I was out of college and, working for the right nine to five interior design firm. Doing all the things it just felt so bland and boring and I just felt like I don't know I'm just one of the many cubicle people, you know in this room and I'm working on this technical elevation of a toilet And it's just there's so much more, that I could be doing that's creative.
And a lot of my peers that I was networking with at that time that I was working with, were more of the Studio McGee, Joanna Gaines, taupe, beige, greige, people. Who I love, but the style, it's just not really there for me. I've always been very colorful, very bold, thinking outside the box and very creative.
And so I just felt like there has to be more than what I'm doing with my degree, which again, I was trying to just do all the right things in the right way. And once I broke free of that and I started my own business and learned about e design. I was like in love because e design is online interior design, so I could work from anywhere, with a client somewhere else in the world in a different time zone and, do something a little bit more creative versus my toilet elevation stuff I was doing.
We called ourselves the CAD monkeys in these cubicles. But that was a more creative direction, for my career, even though it was a pay cut. You designers don't make as much as someone who works in a firm with their degree. So I've seen both sides of it. And that's where it's just okay, I'd rather take this pay cut and be able to travel and work, In any country and talk to my client and, through the power of online, right? The way we're even talking, I would be talking to, almost seven, eight years ago, my clients via zoom and zoom wasn't really a powerful thing the way it really, came to be after COVID. So I'm grateful for COVID because that, I, COVID's horrible, don't get me wrong. It really opened a lot of doors with, working remotely, working with other people in different time zones, not being stuck in a cubicle, which I still have, trauma from ah, cubicle no, nine to five.
But this was a great way for me to see, okay, as a business owner, and now an online service provider, I can work with, people who want something more creative, something different, something colorful, something fun. And after I had done that for five years, I niched down to helping my interior design peers do the same because they would always be like, Oh, you're, graphics are so dope, wow.
Your renders are so cool. Oh, your website's so bold and colorful. And I know I'm not everyone's cup of tea, especially all the beige and gray studio McGee people, I get it, but at the end of the day, now that I'm, the storyteller and brand strategist for my peers, it's not necessarily about me. I'm trying to find and hone in on what makes.
them unique? How can we tell their story so they can attract the right clients just the way that I am? Because I'm putting myself out there in a very bold, as you saw on my website and my Instagram, colorful way to attract the right people who are ready to, maybe they don't have my story. And again, Not everybody has the same story and that's, what makes this unique and personal, but for my peers to be brave enough to come to me and see, wow, you really put yourself out there.
That's amazing. I want to do it. I'm not as colorful as you or I don't think my story's very interesting, but that's where I hone in and let me be the judge that let's find an angle, right? Almost like a PR strategist of how we can figure out who you're best to work with, what style you can attract and how you can separate yourself from our ever growing industry, getting bigger and bigger every day.
Nicole Levell: Awesome. I love that. You start off in corporate sometimes and figure out what you like and don't like. I have a similar story. Journalism background, advertising, digital marketing, and then honed in on what I love and created businesses. You really honed in on what you love. Let's help our listeners understand what it means to humanize your brand. How would you explain it?
Amanda Foster: So humanizing a brand means making it more relatable and more personable. I guess it's about showing more of your human side of the business. So your audience feels like there's a genuine connection and you're not just some AI thing, right?
AI is getting very popular. And I think the more popularity AI becomes, then it's More about, okay, is this authentic? Is this real? As is this somebody just hiding behind a logo, especially when people, and I know we, we spoke about this last time are talking in the third person, right? And you really have no sense of is there even a human part of this brand or this business?
So how can we create kind of a story to make this feel more real, more personable, more unique, more authentic. Especially as we get closer into, wow, did AI write this? Wow. Did, is this even, is there a real person behind, the customer service? So I think it's going to be even more important to become more authentic, to show more of this raw, real side of yourself.
And, more than ever, I think.
Nicole Levell: Humanizing your brand means making it relatable. When you're showing up online, people should feel like they know you. It's about building trust. What does it mean to inject yourself into the brand?
Amanda Foster: It's just I talked to my clients a lot about this. So without having the face to face interactions that, a lot of interior designers or what business owners have where they meet face to face, there is a personal human interaction, right? So it's believable. Like you're building trust when you are an online service provider, like probably a lot of the businesses listening in right now, it doesn't matter if you're an interior designer, graphic designer.
Have a little shop or whatever. If you are promoting your business online, let's say you're doing something on your website or in social media, like we don't want to just know the services and the business hours. We want to know a little bit about the face of the brand. And that's what I think.
The bigger kind of fish out there are doing well when they're like, okay, meet the owner or meet the team. And so those are really easy things to do. This one business that I helped a long time ago, they were so shy, they were so camera shy. And so one thing that I told them is okay, why you guys all have pets?
Your office is pet friendly. This could be a really interesting angle to. Show your pets as part of the team. So meet the team. They did a little photo shoot and it was all their pets and it was really cute and it actually got a ton of engagement online. The highest grossing blog that they had, the analytics on their story and the real went viral.
Pets in general are a great way to, to humanize it, even though they're not humans. Per se, but this is a great way to show you again, not this cold, we're talking to third person. We're hiding the people that work there, but this was a great step for them to just show a softer side, a personal side.
And then the last picture that they shared was Each of the girls with the pet, holding the pet, which is fun. So that was like, that was our icebreaker. We're so glad that we did it. Now we're going to start, doing it without the pets or with the pets. And so now they're showing up more on camera, which is really exciting, but that's an easy way for my shy clients, because this has happened with another designer that I worked with.
She started sharing her with her cat, getting her coffee in the morning. I was just like, you, Don't have to be camera shy, do the POV, show your phone, show your cat, show you doing your thing, but if you're afraid to be on camera, just, it's outward, not selfie facing. So she's been doing that for a while, now she's doing the selfie facing.
So there's, baby steps, but a lot of times people think, no one's going to want to see me, doing, My day to day routine. And it's you might not find it interesting, but this is a way for you to build trust with your clients. So there's the whole client, trust factor as online service providers that we really need to embrace because.
We're strangers. They don't know us, and so why should they trust you right off the bat? So you have to do these little baby steps of humanizing your business, humanizing your brand and storytelling, right? Even if it is through just a quick story. I'm getting coffee. I'm running errands. I'm on my way to, meet a client in the showroom.
Those little moments are actually the way that a client builds trust and is Oh my gosh, like I like her and she's real and it's all subconscious, but it's building, that kind of trust.
Nicole Levell: Everything you just said can be summarized as making a connection. You have to make a connection in a natural way, just like meeting people at a party. If you're at a networking event, your goal is to meet people, right? So you have to put yourself out there. Be yourself. These little moments help people see themselves in you. Oh my goodness. She likes the same Starbucks drink. She's a cat lover or dog lover. We have these things in common. Connectivity is key when humanizing your brand. How can I make a connection with my audience?
For me, that part has been a struggle. I have a journalism background and tend to overthink. I'm overly edited and cut down. Friends say I look like a newscaster, but that's not the goal. I don't want to look like I'm on TV when I'm talking about connecting as a brand. I've had to work on being more relaxed. It is hard to get out of that mindset.
Amanda Foster: Because when people see the real you your values, your story, your personality, they start to trust you. And it doesn't have to be only the things that they have in common with you, because believe me, there's a lot I don't have in common with my clients.
But they feel like they know me, they read my website and they hear that brand voice, right? I'm not talking in third person. I'm not trying to pretend that I have this company and I have all these people working under me. They're like, you're just being and I have very teenage lingo that I use.
I say dope and rad and cool, I'm like 37 going on 16, my clients don't necessarily want that for their website. My clients are very They're not super conservative, but they're more conservative in terms of, like, how I am. But it's about, I built trust with them. They know who I am.
They have that feel for the photos, the fun vibes that I give out, the behind the scenes, that I'm hosting. And they're just like, wow, I feel like I know you. I think you're cool. I don't want all of that, but I do trust you to be the person to get out this juicy thing that I'm too scared, to put out there. I don't know. Am I saying it the right way? Am I doing this story the right way? Am I putting myself into my brand the right way? So it's a little confusing. There's a. Definitely a balance you have to do between showing your personal side and being professional and my clients are all professional and maybe I'm too personal, there's a happy medium and just, don't talk about your offers.
Constantly mix it up, show your day to day, like you were saying, show something fun, something you're working on. But also, yeah, now we're going to talk about my offers now, maybe I'm going to put on my blazer, but maybe some of that, I'm not in that perfection mode, which really can, for any business owner get in the way of productivity.
Nicole Levell: Say it again. We're dropping a gem. Yes, it's in the way of productivity. If you got nothing else, we have to...
Amanda Foster: We have to recognize that being overly polished can create a barrier between us and our audience. Authenticity is key. It’s okay to show imperfections. It’s okay to be real. People are drawn to realness. They crave it, especially in a world where everything seems so curated and perfect. They want to see the person behind the brand, not just the polished image.
Nicole Levell: Absolutely. So, Amanda, for those listening who are ready to start humanizing their brand but feel overwhelmed, what are some practical steps they can take?
Amanda Foster: Start small. You don’t have to overhaul your entire online presence overnight. Begin by sharing a bit about yourself on social media. Post a behind-the-scenes photo of your workspace, share a story about why you started your business, or introduce your team. Use your voice in your content. Write as you speak. Don’t be afraid to show your personality. And remember, it’s not about being perfect, it’s about being authentic.
Nicole Levell: That's great advice. Start small, be authentic, and don’t be afraid to show your personality. Thank you so much, Amanda. This has been an insightful conversation. I’m sure our listeners have gained a lot from your expertise.
Amanda Foster: Thank you for having me, Nicole. It’s been a pleasure.
Nicole Levell: Thank you, everyone, for tuning in to this episode of Stories That Connect. Until next time, keep telling your stories and connecting with your audience in meaningful ways.
Key Takeaways:
Be Authentic: Show your true self to build genuine connections with your audience.
Share Your Journey: Don’t be afraid to tell your story, even the messy parts! It makes you relatable.
Engage with Your Audience: Use fun moments and behind-the-scenes content to foster engagement.
Stay Consistent: Regularly show up online, even if it’s just a quick video or a snapshot of your day.
Have Fun: Remember, branding is about connection, so enjoy the process!
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