Now more than ever, storytelling is vital, as it allows your clients and customers to become attached to and immersed in your product or service and your story.
When people feel connected to you and your brand, they will be more likely to support you and what you’re offering. With more and more people competing for your customer’s attention, you want to make sure that you’re making a lasting connection — and compelling storytelling is the best way to do that.
Here are 5 Simple Storytelling Tricks to help you do just that.
- Grab attention quickly. Start with the climax, a question, a bold stat or a pain point. Then, you can build the rest of your content that follows to back up or add details to your opening line. We have a short time to grab a reader’s attention, and a solid opening sentence will encourage the reader to read on.
- Make the ‘Why’ the center of attention. First, make sense of the what with a strong why. Then, allow your audience to see what that why might be for themselves.
- Highlight conflicts and needs. A perfect way for you to demonstrate to your audience that you understand their needs is to describe problems or pain points they might be experiencing. When your audience feels heard, it allows them to think that you may be the person to help them solve this problem.
- Use a strong visual. A great visual representation of your content not only helps to draw the reader in but helps them become more involved in what you are about to share. Whether you do this through personalized photos of yourself, infographics or lifestyle images – ensure the image is relevant to the story you are sharing.
- Be unique. When storytelling, try to steer clear of those classic stories that have been told millions of times. Each of us has an authentic voice and perspective and thus a story to tell, so figure out which of your stories and experiences are ones your audiences will relate to the most.
Every single one of us is a storyteller. No matter which industry you work in — whether it’s beauty, coaching, education, wellness — we can all use storytelling skills. We use them to capture an audience, draw them in and create mindful content and stories that inspire customers to think and act differently.
Catherine Nikkel is a content creator, ghostwriter, author and Mindful Media founder. She specializes in helping CEOs, entrepreneurs, and influencers create copy that engages and converts. Her work has appeared in Forbes, Huffington Post, Yahoo!, Authority Magazine, Thrive Global, and more.
