Want to know the three types of stories you need to tell online to turn strangers into superfans? In this episode I tell you about the types of stories you need to use in your content creation and give some examples of the stories I tell, and why I tell them.
We’ll be covering:
✨ The 3 types of stories
✨ How to tell these stories in an interesting way
✨ How I make sure I’m covering all the stories with my content
Prefer to read? Here’s the Podcast Trasncript:
The three types of stories you need to tell to turn strangers into superfans.
The role of content creation in a business context is to turn a stranger into a raving fan, to turn a browser into a buyer, and turn a passive viewer into an active member of your audience.
To do this, our content needs to meet our audience at every stage of their relationship with us and actively encourage them to progress to the next stage of the journey, whatever that looks like for you and your audience.
Key lesson: To do this, we need to make sure we are telling the right story, at the right time and for the right reason.
These stories fall into 3 categories.
- Brand Culture Stories
- Brand Connection Stories
- Brand Conversion Stories
This does of course loop nicely into the timeless marketing theory of building ‘know, like, trust’ but I find thinking about it in terms of these stories can make it a little easier to understand.
Brand Culture Stories
The definition of the word culture according to Google is the ideas, customs, and social behaviour of a particular people or society.
Establishing these things for our Brand is exactly what we want to do early on in the relationship with our audience so they can recognise they’re in the right place.
Good Brand Culture Stories can be about your values, the beliefs you have as a brand, the things that make your little corner of the Internet different from others.
Now remember, it’s always better to come up with ways to show these things, rather than just telling people them. What I mean by this, is instead of just sitting listing off what your values are – instead think of a story the demonstrates your values in action.
Example: One of my values is FUN. Whenever and wherever possible, I make a point of ensuring the experience is a joyful one, and endeavour to infuse playfulness throughout my brand.
Action question: What is the culture I want to create with my Brand and how can I infuse this into my content, communication and stories?
Brand Connection Stories
This is a little more obvious, but it’s all about telling stories that facilitate connection.
This can be things like sharing your origin story, sharing boundaried vulnerability and ways in which you can build empathy with your audience.
Just remember, you don’t owe your audience your entire life story. It should never feel like you’re giving something away when you’re sharing.
The wonderful Alice Benham put it beautifully when she said that if you’re ever sharing something vulnerable, make sure it’s a scar and not a wound and I couldn’t have put it better myself.
Action question: What stories can I tell to help facilitate connection with my audience?
Brand Conversion Stories
A lot of the time, these are the stories we shy away from telling but they are vital in taking that relationship a step further. This is customer success or transformation stories, stories where you demonstrate your knowledge and authority and also those stories where you directly ask for the sale at the end.
Action question: What are stories can I tell that will help my audience trust in my ability to help/serve them more? What do they need to believe about me and how can I provide them with opportunities to work/buy from me?
And that’s it!
Brand Culture Stories
Brand Connection Stories
Brand Conversion Stories
I have these as little tags that I use for my content planning to make sure I’m telling all 3 different types of stories, and I personally think one of the first ways you can start getting more intentional with your content creation is by paying attention to this.
When we panic post, or just create content on the fly – we will likely end up defaulting to the type of stories that we are most comfortable with and neglect the others, but all 3 types are vital in helping turn a stranger into a superfan.
Remember, it doesn’t have to be a complicated or elaborate story to be effective! Simple authenticity is way more powerful than any fancy storytelling techniques you might think you need – don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
