Storytelling. You know it’s important, but finding fresh, compelling narratives…well, sometimes, that feels impossible. You tell yourself, “My story is not that interesting; I don’t have a wild ‘rags to riches’ tale.” But impactful storytelling is more than that.
It might seem like powerful storytelling is a closely guarded secret for CEOs, best-selling authors, and inspirational figures on a stage. But it’s within your reach, even if you don’t consider yourself “creative.” Storytelling skills are something that can be gained and refined through practice and knowledge, and that’s why you’re here.
Why Does Storytelling Matter So Much, Anyway?
Before we break down what makes a good story, it’s important to consider why storytelling matters. For as long as people have existed, we’ve told stories to share ideas, entertain each other, warn each other about dangers, and everything in between. Some stories told today come from stories our ancestors shared over 6,000 years ago.
In today’s modern age, the pressure to tell a good story is even greater. We see it in the TV shows we love, the videos we scroll past on TikTok, and, of course, in the hundreds of ads we encounter daily. Whether you realize it or not, most decision-making involves filtering a situation through similar, often subconsciously recalled narratives. And as you know if you spend any time on social media, there are many competing narratives vying for your attention.
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Why You Can Use Storytelling
As humans, we are hard-wired to seek out and respond to a compelling story. Storytelling skills are a powerful tool in various contexts, both professional and personal.
Build Trust
Honesty and transparency are important for building trust, but these attributes are more effective when packaged into an engaging story. Research shows that trust among staff fosters more engagement, less burnout, and higher productivity.
If your business is entirely online, you probably communicate more with your team through emails, instant messaging apps, and team calls. That makes it difficult to build camaraderie, which impacts how your team views your organization.
This is also true of external messaging. Your speaker bio, “About Us” page, and email marketing funnels need to build trust with anyone who reads them. Weaving narratives into these materials can help you accomplish this goal.
Engage Emotions
As much as we try to rationalize all our choices, many of our decisions boil down to emotional reasoning. If your brand storytelling includes content or personal anecdotes with a strong emotional hook, this will help your audience develop a stronger memory of those ideas. Listening to stories also engages different parts of the brain than data does.
Data and stats have their place, and we will discuss them more in this article. But a graph alone doesn’t always engage people.
Create a Lasting Impact
Because stories appeal to human emotions, well-crafted narratives can profoundly impact listeners and readers. Stories give information context, making facts easier to understand and retain.
Scientific evidence suggests stories can change our behavior because they engage our emotions. This explains why most successful public figures spend a lot of time thinking about, testing, and adapting their storytelling for maximum influence on their audience.
Key Elements of Storytelling
Thousands of books and articles online discuss how to develop good storytelling habits. When communicating big ideas, whether your latest book, business pitch, or personal brand narrative, your storytelling skills are extremely important. Here are some crucial elements of a good story.
Compelling Characters
We say it a lot: everyone has a story to tell. The more you emphasize the elements that make you “you,” the less likely your work will fade into the background noise of the millions of competing stories online.
If your story centers on actual people (like a personal anecdote about how you overcame a significant life challenge to achieve a major goal), think carefully about their personality elements that shine through. If you’re a fiction writer, developing “realistic” characters takes work.
Characters with richly developed inner lives, especially when those inner lives contradict the image the character presents to the world, draw your reader into their narrative. This is one of the reasons the “anti-hero” character type is so successful in popular TV. People, even fictional people, are complicated.
Relatable Conflicts
Compelling narratives, your own stories or otherwise, include conflict, tension, challenges, obstacles, and even heartbreak. These elements add intrigue, create anticipation in your audience (they’ll ask, “How will they get out of this one?.”), and raise the emotional stakes of your tale.
Consider your struggles as you’ve built your career, business, or even social media platform. Have you failed along the way? This can be challenging to confront, especially when everyone else seems wildly successful (which, of course, isn’t entirely true, even if their curated online brands insist it is.).
Immersive Setting
If you’ve written creative content before, you already know all about the importance of “setting.” For example, your speaker one-sheet benefits from thoughtful engagement with location details, even if that detail only involves selecting an image for your bio that subconsciously tells viewers something about your preferred locations and the environment you want to occupy when delivering a talk.
When people read your speaker website or scroll through your Instagram, where do they “imagine” you? Where do they imagine hearing you deliver a talk? What is the “vibe” of that space?
Setting provides a backdrop against which the events of your story unfold. Think about how you can leverage descriptive imagery, sensory language, and cultural elements relevant to your story. If your characters are strongly immersed in the culture of their upbringing, do some research on their vernacular.
Think back to the novels you loved as a teenager. How and where the characters spoke (and what they spoke about) probably had something to do with their geographical and social environments. The more distinct the “voice” of your storytelling, the less likely people will click away from your speaker website for something (or, in this job market, someone) more “interesting.”
Engaging Language
Don’t feel the need to write in a formal, academic style unless you’re an academic, in which case, that’s your brand. Active, descriptive language draws in your audience and persuades them with a good narrative. Good writing doesn’t mean you need to pack every sentence with every impressive vocabulary word you know. You can accomplish a lot with a little.
Avoid passive voice wherever you can. You probably learned all about this in college, but active voice keeps the reader engaged because sentences sound snappier and less complex, just like I’m writing now.
Figurative language is your friend. It isn’t only for poems; well-placed similes and metaphors punch up even short-form content, like your social media captions or speaker bio. You need to hook people right away.
The Art of Storytelling
For those of you more comfortable sharing data than personal experiences, storytelling might feel challenging, especially if you feel nervous on stage. But some kinds of storytelling require people to participate in the story.
This personalization can easily translate into live oral storytelling. Imagine asking your audience to share, via a show of hands, if they’ve ever had a specific relatable experience that feeds into your message’s core narrative. Suddenly, everyone in the room with their hand raised feels more engaged because your story is now their story, even if only for a moment.
Plots don’t need to be in chronological order, and there are many ways to experiment with narrative structure. Emphasize what is unique, unusual, and different about you and how you overcame obstacles to find the solutions you now present to audiences. That is the core narrative of being a thought leader in your industry.
Examples of Compelling Brand Storytelling
Although strong brands across different markets rely on distinct storytelling types to reach their target audiences, here are a couple of brands whose commitment to their story resonates strongly in their industries and within our current media landscape.
TOMS
TOMS is one of my favorite examples. For every pair of shoes purchased, the company, famous for its slip-on shoes, donates a pair to someone in need. TOMS emphasizes the power of collective action, showing that even something small (like a comfortable, new pair of shoes) can significantly impact someone’s life and build stronger communities.
Warby Parker
Most Warby Parker customers know about the brand’s origin story. One of the company’s founders realized how expensive prescription glasses are. He and his team decided to fix that problem sustainably.
Recognizing that eyeglasses are unavailable to everyone — 1 billion people worldwide need glasses and don’t have access to them — Warby Parker established the Buy a Pair, Give a Pair program. While glasses and contacts are different products than shoes, these brands are incredibly effective at telling stories that inspire consumer confidence while making it clear what they’re about.
Nike
From its very first ad campaigns, Nike has sold much more than shoes or athletic gear as a brand. They sell ambition, motivation, endurance, and success. You don’t even need to see one of their ads (though, they’re pretty unforgettable once you see a good one.). Think Michael Jordan in Space Jam or Colin Kaepernick’s iconic “Believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everything” ad from 2018.
This brand storytelling connects with athletes and builds brand awareness and loyalty. You might not ever have Nike’s $4.1 billion marketing budget, but you can learn from them and start reaching for the substance of their storytelling.
How to Find Your Story as a Speaker
Maybe you’ve heard this before: if you’re a speaker, you’re a salesperson…of yourself. But for many speakers, figuring out the “story of you” often feels like the hardest part. To make this feel less scary, start with these questions. The answers will become powerful tools as you communicate who you are and what you’re about to the world.
- What unique experience, education, skillsets, or combination do I bring to the stage? What qualifies me to be here?
- What major failures have taught me valuable lessons that I can communicate to others so they can be more successful?
- If I were speaking to someone in this industry (who wasn’t me), what would they need to hear to feel confident in trusting my vision?
Understand Who Your Story Serves
Whether or not people realize it, storytelling generally aims to provide something beneficial to an audience. Even campfire ghost stories, while designed to scare, also bond communities with shared cultural traditions. Buyers want to understand if current users are satisfied before investing, and 45% of shoppers won’t purchase a product if there are no reviews.
When crafting your speaker story, clearly identify your target audience:
- Whose problem are you trying to solve with your solutions?
- What do you wish you had known about your specific area of expertise earlier in your career or personal life?
- How has engaging with my expertise benefitted other individuals, teams, or companies?
Center Your Authentic Voice
People, even very busy, even skeptical people, want to be moved by a powerful story. Authenticity resonates, and it’s memorable. The less interesting your brand appears, the less likely someone will remember you after a conference, even if you gave a technically perfect presentation. Don’t shy away from including personal details.
Vulnerability makes your story — and, by extension, your brand — feel more approachable, and sharing even negative experiences humanizes your message and creates a sense of relatability.
If your core wound is trauma-based, talking or writing about it might feel impossible right now. Focus instead on the more inspirational parts of your story and message. People respond well to vulnerability, but don’t force it if sharing yours feels more triggering than authentic right now.
Think About Your Why
Everyone’s journey is a little bit different; no two career paths are identical. At the same time, all compelling stories have a central truth that motivates every choice made: Why does this person do this thing? For every “what” of your career story, always have a “why” to guide your audience.
Your “why” answers crucial questions potential clients or even attendees at an industry conference might have because it communicates why this person has spent so much of their life and energy specializing in this skillset instead of doing something else. When people ask you, “Why this job?” have a succinct (yet compelling) narrative ready that explains those decisions, successes, and failures. After all, our greatest successes usually grow from our most significant mistakes.
Include a Call to Action
You told that amazing story about how you saved the day by using your expertise…so, what happens next? People have different attention spans and are surrounded by thousands of messages online. This constant information deluge makes it hard for even the most disciplined mind to recall an otherwise captivating narrative’s details, especially when trying to remain “on” all the time (another expectation in a digitally driven job market).
Direct your reader or audience. Maybe they need to click the “contact us” page to set up a sales call. Maybe they’re feeling empowered to make positive changes in their personal lives or business models. Maybe you hope your talk inspires them to buy your book or download your newest ebook.
Tips for Using Storytelling in Different Platforms
Today, speakers operate in a content-saturated environment. As we discussed earlier, storytelling is not limited to delivering a powerful TED Talk. You should apply it throughout your online content.
Speaker Website
Your website represents your speaker “brand.” Every image, piece of copy, and even where you put your call-to-action buttons, communicates the substance of who you are and what you can accomplish as a thought leader in your niche.
- Keep things simple and don’t make people hunt for important information about how to work with you. Plenty of equally brilliant, engaging figures are online.
- Think about the “story” your menu communicates. Is your information easy to find? Does your website’s color scheme match your on-stage persona? Consistency is crucial, even with website design choices, especially when people are constantly distracted by more entertaining apps and their phones.
- Testimonials make great visual hooks: use imagery that matches your overall speaker brand aesthetic. Think of testimonials as miniature stories that enhance the perceived authenticity of the success you bring to a project or on stage.
Social Media
Gone are the days of crafting witty one-line captions for every Instagram story; now, we have micro-blogging expectations even for short-form content. If your preferred storytelling mode doesn’t translate easily to something easily consumed (and shared) on visual platforms like TikTok or Reels, experiment with text-over-audio apps. That allows you to keep creating even when your energy levels dip or if you suffer from social anxiety, a disorder that 7.1% of adults live within the US.
Blog Content
Regularly updating your blog shows current and potential clients that you’re invested in staying current within your field and understand that an effective marketing strategy involves engaging actively with online trends. Finding things to write about takes time, even for our blog. Consider adding different content types to your website beyond the standard “5 Tips For…” articles.
Illustrate your successes in action (with statistics, if possible). Provide commentary on something currently happening in your niche or industry. Show off your specialized skill set. Include graphics or step-by-step instructions whenever possible.
Email Newsletters
Emails generally have lower engagement than a thoughtfully composed TikTok about to go viral. Consistently showing up in inboxes makes it more likely you’ll remain “top of mind.”
Most successful entrepreneurs use their newsletters strategically by sharing behind-the-scenes information that won’t be shared on social media platforms (at least, not right now…content funnels change.). You could create special promo codes, give early access to event tickets, or provide subscribers with a “sneak peek” into what information attendees will receive from your next big speaking engagement.
Public Speaking
When addressing a live audience, incorporating elements that build rapport and create a personal connection will significantly impact your speech. Stories help make information relatable, help the audience understand how that information impacts their lives, and (if everything goes according to plan) inspire people to engage in a call to action. People have used stories to promote cooperation and influence social behaviors throughout history. If this sounds overwhelming, use what we call “Speaker Brain.” This visualizes your content like this:
- Head: Logic (stats, facts, relevant dates/historical figures or researchers)
- Heart: Emotion (How does this info impact lives? Why is this content matter? Why should anyone listening careabout what I’m saying?)
- Gut: Call to Action (What is the “next step” you want them to do?)
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FAQs About Storytelling
What are the four types of storytelling?
While countless storytelling variations exist (because we humans love a good story.), they generally fall within one of these main categories:
- Linear Storytelling: These narratives unfold in chronological order and follow a typical structure that moves from Point A to Point B.
- Nonlinear Storytelling: These stories use flashbacks, jumps in time, dream sequences, or imagined future moments to disrupt expectations and challenge our perception of how events unfold. One of the reasons the series finale of Lost remains divisive to this day stems from how well the show established nonlinear narratives over several seasons. Viewers expected those unanswered questions to be resolved, but they weren’t, or at least not in a straightforward, easily accessible way.
- Interactive Storytelling: This storytelling depends on some audience participation. In a book, this might involve “choose your own ending” options. If you deliver a talk or speech, you might pause your narrative to poll the audience to personalize your content or test audience recall before your big conclusion.
- Transmedia Storytelling: Think interconnected narratives across multiple platforms and formats. You’re sharing similar core truths and themes but tailoring how you convey them across different content formats and marketing funnels.
What is the meaning of storytelling?
The “meaning of storytelling” depends on your area of expertise. On a practical level, we tell stories to communicate big ideas in a way that resonates with others, using an engaging narrative to transmit values, teach valuable information, or reinforce cultural mores.
Think about what your company does: what “core problem” do you try and solve through your mission statement? While not every team member needs to memorize (or enjoy) the origin story of a company, having a foundational narrative helps those employees think about the “why” behind what that organization offers its clients.
What are the 4 C’s of storytelling?
While several frameworks for analyzing narratives exist, one popular option emphasizes “the 4 C’s”:
- Compelling Characters: Are your listeners invested in your characters’ journeys, even if the character is you?
- Conflict: All captivating narratives include some external obstacle that forces internal reflection, forcing the characters to grow or evolve.
- Context: This describes the details about the world inhabited by your narrative. Setting influences word choice because what a Wall Street tycoon says and does every day looks and sounds very different from someone working in construction. Context informs behavior within your world.
- Conclusion: Stories don’t need happy endings (though those are fun.), but the resolution needs to “make sense” for the events that occurred during your tale and be grounded in believable consequences. Otherwise, the story will feel unfinished.
Is it storytelling or story telling?
This is a question for people passionate about language. As a writer, you already understand this problem well, but AP Style generally spells it as “storytelling.”
Conclusion
Storytelling is in our DNA as a species, and its power to move, influence, and motivate hasn’t faded, despite our fast-paced world where algorithms, automation, and ever-evolving apps compete for our limited attention spans. By understanding how to master storytelling, you can connect with people in much deeper ways and inspire them to keep coming back for more.
