Ep142 Transcript: Three Business Storytelling Tips – Quick Tip Friday

Andrea Vahl: How do you tell a good business story? We remember things way better in stories than we do in marketing speak. In episode 140, I talked to David Otey about incorporating story into technical talks. In today’s quick fix Friday, I’m going to give you three tips on how to build a better business story.

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Andrea Vahl: When it comes to storytelling, there are a ton of resources, tips, ways you can do it out there, but I’m going to give you some of the ways I like to think about storytelling and that have served me to just tell really quick, easy stories that people engage with.

So my number one tip is to know your point and if I can add a sub-tip to that, your story is going to be better if it has just one main point that you’re trying to make. Sometimes I find myself incorporating several different points or going off on little side point tangents, and it makes for a worse story.

So it can be really challenging to think about telling business stories. It’s much easier to tell a story about our vacation. Like, Oh, remember that time I had to bribe the train police in India (that actually happened), but it can be harder to come up with business stories. And when you have a point that you’re trying to make, then you can really kind of decide where can I pull from my life and my experiences to help illustrate that point.

So knowing your point is the first step.

The second step is to keep it really simple. Try not to add too many extraneous details going off. Like I said, down the roads of, just. talking about things that don’t really matter or don’t really help support the point. That will help keep your reader engaged and really drive your point home.

Tip number three is really important. And I think this is something that a lot of people miss and it’s connecting to the emotion. Now this is something I’ve actually learned to do in my comedy writing as well. And I think it makes for a much better story when you can bring that. Emotional feeling into that story and really dig down to how it felt, how you felt some of the things that were going on for you emotionally, you’re going to be able to really grip the reader and keep them reading all the way to the end.

Now I have a ton of resources around stories for businesses.

Some of my favorites are Donald Miller’s Building a Story Brand. He has a bigger program around this as well, but I would definitely start with the book. I have referred to it over and over and there’s lots of amazing nuggets in there.

Another great resource is Park Howell’s Brand Bewitchery. I’ve seen him speak at Social Media Marketing World, and he has a great little, book around what’s your story that helps you, craft your story, gets you into the, Key elements of a story, but definitely get his Brand Bewitchery book and I’ll also provide a link here to his website with other great resources.

And then I’ll give you a couple other resources too, Convince and Convert and Enchanted Marketing. Two of my go to resources for brand copy.

I think in this changing social media algorithm market, we’re having a hard time getting that organic reach, getting engagement. But what I’ve noticed is personal stories, really connecting people and getting that engagement, getting comments and getting people talking. And giving you much more organic reach.

So practice your storytelling techniques. I know I’ve definitely been working on mine as well and get out there and tell your story.

Outro: Hope that was helpful and make sure you grab the free guide top tools for late starters on the website at late starters club. com and let’s turn dreaming into doing.