Okay, you’ve been told over and over again that youought to tell stories and use storytelling techniques to connect with your audiences. You’ve bought in. You’re a believer! 

Now what? 

What stories can you tell? Where do you even start? 

If you’re looking for inspiration, here are 5 ideasfor stories that you can use right now to get attention, build trust, and win the affections of your customers.

Celebrate Your Customers

Your customers are the people you’re in business toserve, and they’re the reason you have an income. Why not give them some love? 

As often as you can pick a customer and just telltheir story. Show the world how great they are and why someone would want to do business with them. 

Tip: Don’t make it about you. You will be tempted totell a story about how your customer uses your product or service to be successful. There’s a place for that kind of story, but not here. 

Celebrate Your People

There’s another group of people to whom you owe yourlivelihood. Your employees or internal teams. Telling their stories, showing their passion & dedication, and just giving them public attaboys/attagirls will net you all kinds of benefits. 

It will show your customers what a good group youhave. It will build your employer brand and improve your candidate pool for future openings. 

And most importantly, it will create loyalty amongstyour teams. 

Share a Professional Story

As a shrewd veteran of your industry, you no doubthave had many experiences, made mistakes, and enjoyed many, many successes. Those experiences are a goldmine of stories. 

Sharing stories from your professional past,especially when there’s a lesson in it for your audience, is a great way to garner attention from potential customers and collaborators. 

Just think about what you wish you could tell youryounger self, wrap it in an anecdote, and you’re pretty much done! 

Offer Some Advice

In your chosen field, you’ve become something of anexpert, and there are people who would benefit from your expertise. Why not share your knowledge? 

There’s a straightforward way of giving advice, simplysaying “Do this,” and “Don’t do that.” But if you want to make it relatable, wrap it in a story. 

Unlike sharing a professional story, this doesn’t haveto be your story. It can be from an observation, something you’ve seen in the past, or even made up. The idea is to not sound preachy, and make your advice relevant to the audience. 

Tell a Personal Story

Despite what you might think, you’re an interestingperson. People want to get to know you. So show them a bit about who you are. 

Give people glimpses into your personal life withlittle stories about yourself, your kids, your pets, your vacation, your weekend. Whatever you’re comfortable sharing. You can use these personal stories to make a business-related point. Or not. 

You don’t have to do it often – just every now andthen when you have something to share. The idea is to help people get to know you as a person. That will make them more apt to like you and want to work with you. 

Now that you have some ideas for stories to tell, howdo you craft them? Next week, I’ll get into the key elements of simple stories, and how you can structure your content – from short social media posts to articles to videos to long speeches.