“Storytelling will topple other marketing silos, emerging as the ultimate audience-reaching tactic. Existing marketing silos will fall apart as content, data and technology emerge as the only way for brands to reach consumers through storytelling.”
~Michael Brenner – prediction in blog post: 2015 marketing trends and predictions
His prediction was on target. Storytelling makes your sales letters, websites, blogs and social media posts more entertaining and gives your credibility a huge boost. We all know what that leads to – increase sales!! Do you tell a good story. It is a gift for some entrepreneurs but for others not so much. If you want to increase your credibility by using storytelling, take a look at the elements of a great story and the skills you need to spin it.
Every story should start with a lesson.
Your lesson must be crystal clear to you BEFORE you write the first word. It could be a moral lesson such as, ‘Don’t mislead your customers’ or it could be a technical one such as ‘What happens when you don’t promote your blog posts.’ Your story’s lesson doesn’t have to be clear to the reader in the beginning, because they need a reason to stay until the very end. You never put two lessons in one story or start writing before you are clear on the lesson.
Your characters need to be relatable.
If your target audience is entrepreneurs with online businesses, will they relate more to a story about an airline pilot, or the lessons learned by an entrepreneur on the way to a six figure business. Obviously, they would be more interested in the latter.
Use the characters your audience relates to as much as possible.
Your reader needs to get a sense of a characters personality and current emotional state in the story. So your goal is to develop this character as fully as possible. Each character in your story should have a need or want. Whether or not they get these need or wants satisfied in the story is not relevant, it’s the desire that creates the tension in the air. Your reader should be asking, “Will they get it?” right up to the end of the story.
There are two main ways to build credibility with storytelling.
The first is to tell true stories and slip credibility points into the story. For example, if you are writing a sales letter, you can sprinkle testimonials from current or formal clients throughout the letter. If your sales letter story is about how to achieve work/life balance, slip in testimonials from clients who used your program and are living the life they formerly only dreamed about. Make it brief and go right back to the primary sales letter story. You would come across as bragging or self centered if you wrote “all the people you’ve helped,” but if you deliver it in the past clients own words as a story it won’t have a negative feel.
Another way to build credibility is to clearly demonstrate your knowledge by giving stellar tips and on-target advice. Use your story to illustrate an educational point and really deliver value to your reader. You won’t gain credibility by talking about yourself, instead you need to demonstrate that you are an expert in your field.
Storytelling is a powerful tool in any entrepreneur’s arsenal. Next time you compose a blog post, sales letter or even just a social media post, tell a story. Watch for the results through reader’s reactions.
