5 Places you can use Story to Grow your Business (besides public speaking)
This is a blog about public speaking … and yet …
Right now, under the banner of a business called Pivotal Public Speaking, I am teaching small business owners about story – story for speakers? … not altogether …
If you are speaking to grow your business, then story is vital. It gives you credibility. It creates a deep engagement with your audience of potential clients. Most powerfully, though, it allows you to take a potential client into your business with you so that they feel, and hear, just what it is like to work with you, just what exactly it is that you do for them.
That is “if you are speaking …”
The stories that you choose and tell, about your business, though, can then be used and re-used elsewhere with exactly the same power.
1. You can use them on the “About” page of your website/blog/web presence. They give that same level of engagement, credibility and awareness, that will have your web visitors clicking through to find out more.
2. You can use them on your sales pages. Let your prospective buyers know that you understand their pain and problems. Let them see your product in action. This is word of mouth marketing – online!
3. You can use them in conversations. You connect at a networking event. What more natural and yet powerful way of deepening that connection is there, than story? People arrive at your product display. Conversation, and story, will give them the human face of your business, your product, your service. And people do tend to buy people first. We know that, though often instictively.
4. You can use your story/stories in your social media marketing. On the surface this means sharing stories about your business – regularly. Facebook loves stories. Distill them down for twitter into tiny conversational pieces. Give them “corporate” style, if you need to, for LinkedIn. Under the surface, though, your brand story drives all that you do in social media. Confine all that you do, say and share to that defined specific story and you establish a strong brand presence.
5. Finally, you can use your stories when you are teaching. Many speaking engagements revolve around teaching about something in your business. Many businesses revolve around teaching something. Here the power of story is perfect for you because it creates engagement, it helps overcome objections to new ideas and it is a vital tool in the integration of brain function so necessary to successful learning.
So in “teaching” story, I am excited to be giving people far more than just a speaking tool, though it is certainly that.
If you are interested in learning more about story, either simply as a speaking tool, or as a tool to grow your business, why don’t you join me?
You will learn
How to use stories for different outcomes.
How to draw an audience into your world or your business using story.
4 of the basic types of business story and where to find the ones in your business/life that will be more effective when you speak.
Story structure – the elements and processes of story and how to apply them and which ones work best in different situations.
How to integrate story into your speaking – how it fits into the structure of your presentation, how to use your voice, stage and stage presence to greatest effect and how to remember it.
Integrated into the program is a thread of how you use story to propel your personal growth, the growth of your business and your vision for the future/blockquote>
This is small group workshop format. In all of my workshops I find people learn much from each other, as they are learning from me, and I intend to maintain that.
