Brand Storytelling Certificate Course
Control Your Narrative Before AI and the Algorithm Do It for You
June 16, 23 & 30 1-3 p.m. ET
Two consecutive modules, office hours and peer sharing
If you don’t shape your brand story, someone else will.
With distracted audiences navigating fragmented, fast-moving channels at every turn, brand storytelling is more challenging than ever. This course shows how to break through by building a strong brand narrative that leverages AI and activating external stakeholders while amplifying employee voices.
In this three-week, hands-on certificate experience, you’ll actively build and refine your own narrative with guidance from comms professors and guest speakers from leading brands.
Not only will you leave with a Brand Storytelling Certificate, you’ll walk away with a fresh storytelling strategy you can apply immediately across internal and external channels and translate across different media. This course will ensure you’re growing stakeholder engagement and connecting your storytelling with your organization’s KPIs.
You’ll Get Access To:
- Expert Insight: Learn from communications practitioners, university professors and brand thought leaders.
- Live Coaching: Refine your messaging, campaigns or content for expert feedback.
- Practical Frameworks: Apply approaches used by leading brands that are designed for AI, social velocity and fragmented audiences.
- Immediate Application: Walk away with messaging you can use right away.
- Impact Measurement: Track performance to strengthen your narrative and elevate company reputation.
CURRICULUM
Skills You’ll Learn:
- Create unified brand narratives that work across owned, earned, social, AI results and internal channels.
- Incorporate AI into your workflow without losing voice, accuracy or authority.
- Create consistent messaging that remains intact even after algorithms, creators and third parties engage with your content.
- Perfect your brand pitch to media and influencers, and activate your employees as ambassadors who amplify across their own networks.
- Predict, detect and address risks before they escalate.
- Measure influence, reach and sentiment for high-impact results.
When owned and earned strategy operate separately, stories fracture. When they reinforce each other, your brand’s credibility amplifies. This session focuses on building effective brand storytelling that aligns what you publish, how it’s interpreted, amplified, and measured for impact. You’ll also get a behind-the-scenes look from brand experts, including case studies detailing brand initiative that shined and those that didn’t so you can leverage their successes and avoid the pitfalls.
You will learn how to translate stories that originate from your channels into successful media coverage, AI-driven discovery and creator commentary by employees and beyond.
You’ll learn:
- Narrative Systems: Connect websites, newsletters, social media, executive communications and media outreach into one cohesive story.
- Owned Meets Earned: Align brand journalism, thought leadership and media strategy so coverage reinforces your core narrative.
- Editorial Foundations: Build narrative pillars that guide mixternal content across written, video, podcast and live formats.
- Pitching with Precision: Craft news media and analyst outreach that highlights expertise and earns attention.
- AI-Assisted Workflows: Use tools such as ChatGPT, Claude and Copilot to refine messaging and accelerate production.
- AEO and GEO Expertise: Structure content for visibility in AI search and answer engines.
- Credibility Signals: Focus on influence indicators that reflect trust, authority and reach.
Practical Application Exercise:
Bring one piece of your content to share in our peer-to-peer breakouts. You’ll discuss how to achieve maximum impact across channels while harnessing AI best practices.
Brand narratives evolve as they move across social platforms, internal networks and external audiences. This session shows you how to build stories while adapting to how different audiences interpret, share and amplify them.
In this session, case studies will illustrate how to activate both external and internal voices during high-pressure moments while maintaining clarity, credibility and control across fast-moving platforms.
You’ll learn how to:
- Design for Social: Structure narratives for LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube, newsletters and livestreams.
- Activate Employees: Equip teams to share engaging stories that enhance company credibility across internal and external channels.
- Prepare Leaders: Get executives ready for social visibility, interviews and real-time commentary.
- Collaborate with Creators: Identify partners who extend reach while reinforcing authority.
- Build Narrative Endurance: Ensure your story stays intact when quoted, clipped or debated.
- Listen for Insights: Track conversation and sentiment shifts across platforms.
- Use AI for Insight: Analyze discourse, summarize sentiment and inform messaging in real time.
Practical Application Exercise:
Get live feedback in our peer-to-peer breakouts on your narrative plan for an upcoming initiative, helping you become launch-ready faster.
This is where it all comes together. Bring your ideas or something you’re working on into the session and refine it with real-time feedback from our experts. You’ll pressure-test your approach among comms peers who understand the complexity of shaping narratives in today’s fast-moving environment. You’ll leave with clearer, more confident messaging you can apply immediately, and a few new comms colleagues ready to offer support.
You’ll engage in:
- Live Feedback: Strengthen your narrative, content and amplification plans with live coaching.
- Proven Approaches: Learn how organizations successfully guided narratives across channels under pressure.
- Peer Insight: Learn how others are applying these strategies across industries and channels.
- Open Q&A: Pressure-test ideas, solve challenges and leave with a plan you can execute right away.
BONUS MATERIALS
- Brand Reputation in the Age of AI
- Social Media Analytics Checklist
- PR and Comms Content Planning Calendar
- LinkedIn Tactical Content Marketing Plan
Skills You’ll Develop:
- Narrative Systems: Create storytelling systems that unify owned and earned channels into one cohesive narrative.
- Platform-Adaptive Storytelling: Shape a core message that carries across media and content platforms.
- AI-Assisted Narrative Development: Use tools such as ChatGPT, Claude and Copilot to generate ideas, refine tone and accelerate high-quality storytelling.
- AEO and GEO Readiness: Structure content for visibility in AI search and answer engines across ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews.
- Influence Mapping & Monitoring: Identify journalists, creators, and internal voices shaping your narrative, and track narrative shifts across platforms.
- Employee & Executive Voice: Equip leaders and teams to communicate clearly and consistently.
- Risk Detection and Response: Spot early signs of misinformation and reputational threats, and develop messaging that reinforces brand credibility.
Secure your seat today for this exclusive Brand Storytelling Certificate Course from Ragan and PR Daily—and take control of your narrative before others shape it for you.
| Early Bird | Regular Rate | |
|---|---|---|
| Certificate Course Registration | $1,499 | $1,699 |
| Ragan Insider | $1,399 | $1,599 |
| Nonprofit/Gov/Edu | $1,349 | $1,549 |
Group pricing for 3 or more is available when going through the registration process!
If you can’t attend one or more of the modules live, you will receive the on-demand versions to complete the course.
WHO ATTENDS
Communications and marketing professionals from these organizations have earned certificates:
WONDERING IF YOU SHOULD ATTEND?
Here’s what past attendees say about the Brand Storytelling Certificate Course!
Ragan Communications knows what keeps communicators up at night. Its workshops, topics and speakers get right to the heart of what we need to elevate our work.
Ragan continues to provide top-notch, professional content that is beneficial to a wide range of employees, senior leaders and executives.
For communications professionals seeking tangible, actionable takeaways, Ragan events are the gold standard.
This has truly been one of the best virtual courses I've ever taken. Thanks to my IC peers for the lively chat discussions and LinkedIn connections, to our instructors each session for such insightful and engaging content, and to the Ragan team!
