Outside In

What’s Your Story? What Are You About?

February 21, 2019

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What’s your story? What about the story of your firm? I’ve been doing a lot of research lately about storytelling and resonance. How do you tell your story in a way that is meaningful? How do you tell your story in a way that others can relate? How do you make yourself sticky in the eyes of a potential client?

What I learned is that I have been doing it all wrong. My personal website, (at the time this post was published) evelynlee.com, tells people a lot about me, but it doesn’t show people who I am. As professional service providers, we are often looking for clients who are also co-collaborators, the showing people who we are and what it is like to work with us is what’s most important. All things being equal (design capabilities, process, fees) those who are great at connecting and finding common ground are always going to win the client over.

So how do you change the dialog? Start by being open to having a conversation. Start with your story – or in the instance of most people’s websites, start with your company’s about page.

Behind the front landing page, the About page is THE MOST visited page on a company’s website. So making sure you are showing people who you are, rather than telling them is extra critical. Also consider incorporating these areas into your about page.

a picture of yourself and your team members, the trend these days is order alphabetically or some other mechanism than top down. Bonus points for including the office pet and giving them an official title.
great copy, on why you are passionate about what you do
quotes either from your people or clients about what it’s like to work with you

So how are you telling your story? Here are 5 examples that do not necessarily hit all the points above, but have great copy on what they do and why they do it.

Eight Hour Day – a design and illustration studio