• FutureLearn logo
New

Brand Personality: How to Tell Your Story with Authenticity and Relevance

Learn how to hone in on your individuality to build a brand personality that’s genuine and connects with your target audience.

A woman has short grey hair and glasses and is sat in an office holding a tablet device.

Brand Personality: How to Tell Your Story with Authenticity and Relevance

  • 3 weeks

  • 4 hours per week

  • Digital certificate when eligible

  • Open level

Find out more about how to join this course

  • Duration

    3 weeks
  • Weekly study

    4 hours
  • 100% online

    How it works
  • Unlimited subscription

    $244.99 for a whole yearLearn more

Understand how human behaviour impacts your personal brand

This three-week course will help you make sure your authenticity shines through in your brand. You’ll learn to harness what makes you uniquely you, and how this can make your personal brand more genuine and relevant.

You’ll start by exploring how we as humans think and act. This will help you explore the influence of behaviour and emotions on how we react to and engage with brand messaging.

Delve into consumer behaviour

You’ll explore the link between human and consumer behaviour before understanding how brands tap into emotions to influence their customers.

With this knowledge, you’ll learn how to apply these same techniques to your branding for effective results.

Discover the fundamentals of successful brand communication

You’ll investigate how people think and why this matters in how you present your message and brand accordingly.

This will help you explore the use of tone in successful brand communication and the key concepts of the Transactional Analysis model.

Explore the importance of storytelling in personal branding

Finally, you’ll learn how to make use of the concept of storytelling in personal branding. You’ll explore the seven classifications of stories and how they are used by brands and individuals to appeal to audiences. You’ll get a better understanding of which stories resonate with you and how you can use plot arcs to connect with your audience and get your message across.

You’ll get the chance to apply this to your personal brand, making use of the aspects of yourself that can be conveyed more emotionally in order to make meaningful connections with your audience.

By the end of this course, you’ll feel more comfortable presenting your individuality as well as developing an awareness of how others perceive you.

Syllabus

  • Week 1

    Human behaviour, consumerism and psychology

    • A young girl filming herself for a vlog, holding shopping bags and smiling.

      Welcome to Week 1

      Welcome to Brand Personality: How to Tell Your Story with Authenticity and Relevance. In these steps, we think about stories, and how telling your own story with different styles and tones can amplify your personality and brand.

    • Watercolour drawing of head showing logical and creative thinking

      Human behaviour

      These steps will explore how we think, feel and what we do. We will also reflect on how understanding biological and psychological signals in others can influence how we develop our personal branding.

    • The hand of a woman writing on a sticky note on a wall.

      Emotional vs rational approach

      In these steps, we discuss how you can create stories to support your personal brand. We look at how we craft our stories, and the impact we create through using rational facts or pure emotion.

    • A woman smiling holding colourful shopping bags in the air.

      Consumer behaviour

      How can we bring consumer thinking into our personal brand? These steps will explore how we can use emotional hooks to get people to choose us over others and buy into what we do.

    • Team meeting in colourful, modern office space

      Wrapping up Week 1

      In these steps, we summarise what we’ve covered this week, and prepare for our deeper study of psychoanalysis and branding in the coming weeks.

  • Week 2

    Communications and psychoanalysis

    • Multi-coloured pile of emoji tokens

      Welcome to Week 2

      Welcome to Week 2! In these steps, we set up our learning for the week. We begin thinking about psychoanalysis and behavioural psychology and discuss the different tones we can use to communicate our message.

    • Serious conversation between younger and older man

      Tone

      In this activity, we’ll practice perfecting your tone so that you can react and respond to your audience in a variety of styles. This will give your personal brand authenticity, relevance, flexibility and responsiveness.

    • Older man against colourful background

      Presenting individuality

      In these steps, we look at how we can bring our own attributes or skills into our personal branding, by describing them using different explanations and conversational styles and crafting a unique personal story.

    • Graffiti of two arms holding red speech bubbles on a blue wall.

      How people think and why it matters

      In these steps, we explore how communications function like transactions, offering value for both parties involved. We'll also see how our different perspectives, experiences and perceptions will impact this two-way process.

    • A number of paper airplanes pointing in one direction, with one airplane heading in different direction

      Wrapping up Week 2

      In these steps, we review the key learnings from this week, and preview our work next week on telling richer brand stories with more sophistication.

  • Week 3

    Cultural trends and storytelling

    • Multi-ethnic people in meeting

      Welcome to Week 3

      Welcome to the final week of this course. These steps open up our exploration by looking at storytelling and how this can be of value to learners looking to build their personal brand.

    • The hands of two people sat a desk, one is writing on a notepad.

      Types of branding stories

      In this activity, we explore the seven basic story plots, and discuss why understanding these plots can help you structure the way that you share who you are, and what it is that you do.

    • Young man vlogging

      Using stories

      We now look at how you can determine which story is right for you. Which story type will fit with who you really are, and with your audience?

    • Pink haired female vlogger, talking about shoes to a camera.

      Making stories relevant

      How do you ensure that when people find you, they know what your line of work is? In these steps, we explore how you can ensure that your activities and communications are relevant to your professional purpose.

    • Professor Jonathan Wilson does a 'rock-on' pose in a suit.

      Wrapping up this course

      We now wrap up the course, with a look back at the main topics and what we’ve learned. You will also have the opportunity to complete a short test to check your understanding.

When would you like to start?

Start straight away and join a global classroom of learners. If the course hasn’t started yet you’ll see the future date listed below.

  • Available now

Learning on this course

On every step of the course you can meet other learners, share your ideas and join in with active discussions in the comments.

What will you achieve?

By the end of the course, you‘ll be able to...

  • Summarise the building blocks as to how humans think and feel
  • Justify whether to use emotional or rational approach depending on the context
  • Investigate the connection between human behaviour and consumer behaviour
  • Summarise the role of tone in successful brand communication
  • Develop the tools to be able to present individuality more effectively
  • Investigating theories around how people think in order to present yourself your message or your brand accordingly
  • Describe different types of stories and how they might be used in branding (seven basic plots)
  • Experiment with using stories in personal branding
  • Identify and incorporate appropriate trends to increase a story's relevance

Who is the course for?

This course is designed for those interested in building their personal brand.

Whether you’re a student, an established business professional, a social media influencer, or an entrepreneur, this course will provide useful insights into successful branding.

Please note, this is course two of three. The other courses in this series are:

  1. Brand Identity: How Branding Works and Building Your Personal Brand
  2. Brand Purpose: Marketing Yourself and Building Meaningful Connections

Who will you learn with?

Prof Jonathan A.J. Wilson

I’m an award-winning practitioner and academic with two doctorates, and over 200 pieces of published work. I’ve travelled to 40 countries and worked on branding everything - from countries to people

Who developed the course?

FutureLearn logo

FutureLearn

FutureLearn is a leading social learning platform and has been providing high quality online courses for learners around the world over the last ten years.

Ways to learn

Buy this course

Subscribe & save

Limited access

Choose the best way to learn for you!

$54/one-off payment

$244.99 for a whole year

Automatically renews

Free

Fulfill your current learning needDevelop skills to further your careerSample the course materials
Access to this courseticktick

Access expires 26 Feb 2025

Access to 1,000+ coursescrosstickcross
Learn at your own paceticktickcross
Discuss your learning in commentstickticktick
Tests to check your learningticktickcross
Certificate when you're eligiblePrinted and digitalDigital onlycross
Continue & Upgrade

Cancel for free anytime

Ways to learn

Choose the best way to learn for you!

Subscribe & save

$244.99 for a whole year

Automatically renews

Develop skills to further your career

  • Access to this course
  • Access to 1,000+ courses
  • Learn at your own pace
  • Discuss your learning in comments
  • Tests to boost your learning
  • Digital certificate when you're eligible

Cancel for free anytime

Buy this course

$54/one-off payment

Fulfill your current learning need

  • Access to this course
  • Learn at your own pace
  • Discuss your learning in comments
  • Tests to boost your learning
  • Printed and digital certificate when you’re eligible

Limited access

Free

Sample the course materials

  • Access expires 26 Feb 2025

Find out more about certificates, Unlimited or buying a course (Upgrades)

Sale price available until 3 March 2025 at 23:59 (UTC). T&Cs apply.

Find out more about certificates, Unlimited or buying a course (Upgrades)

Sale price available until 3 March 2025 at 23:59 (UTC). T&Cs apply.

Learning on FutureLearn

Your learning, your rules

  • Courses are split into weeks, activities, and steps to help you keep track of your learning
  • Learn through a mix of bite-sized videos, long- and short-form articles, audio, and practical activities
  • Stay motivated by using the Progress page to keep track of your step completion and assessment scores

Join a global classroom

  • Experience the power of social learning, and get inspired by an international network of learners
  • Share ideas with your peers and course educators on every step of the course
  • Join the conversation by reading, @ing, liking, bookmarking, and replying to comments from others

Map your progress

  • As you work through the course, use notifications and the Progress page to guide your learning
  • Whenever you’re ready, mark each step as complete, you’re in control
  • Complete 90% of course steps and all of the assessments to earn your certificate

Want to know more about learning on FutureLearn? Using FutureLearn

Do you know someone who'd love this course? Tell them about it...