Spread your content by telling stories

What’s the best way to spread your content? Simply tell your story. Need to overcome writer’s block? Draw on a personal experience and share what you’ve learnt.

Storytelling has been the way people have communicated for millennia. It is how knowledge was passed on from one generation to another well before any written form of language existed.

Stories are great because they are memorable and easy to pass onto the next person. So next time you’re staring at your blog begging for inspiration, recount a personal experience and start writing about it!

Stories get shared

Essays, reports, facts and figures are often difficult to recall and useless out of context yet they become memorable when you tell the whole story. As Steve Jobs demonstrated, ‘1000 songs in your pocket’ is a much better way of saying ‘5GB of memory’. And it’s a much more compelling story to talk about!

Stories are interesting

Since there’s only one you, if you’re sharing your own experiences you’re automatically authentic. People can easily weed out anyone who’s not. Provide your own genuine insight and inject your own personality, and people will find your stories interesting.

Stories evoke trust

If you’re out to dinner with friends or colleagues you usually tell stories and get to know each other better. You find out more about them and your relationship becomes closer. Exactly the same is true on the web!

Stories build relationships

The more stories you share with people, the more they will connect you with their network and the stronger your network will become. For start-ups building these relationships is a powerful way to grow your business.

Stories amplify on social media

Social media is ideal for storytelling. Good stories get shared and linked to and commented on. The cream rises to the top, so you’ll tend to find the best storytellers are the ones with the most devoted following!

Stories drive SEO

Stories are what people gravitate to and since Google exists to serve its users, it will reward great stories.

To quote the best-selling author Guy Kawasaki: 

“My recommendation for SEO is very simple. It’s Write Good Stuff. In my mind, Google is in the business of finding good stuff. It has thousands of the smartest people in the world, spending billions of dollars to find the good stuff. All you have to do is write the good stuff; you don’t need to trick it. Let Google do its job and you do your job.”

My inspiration for this article came from speaking with a client who pointed me to Nancy Duarte’s TED talk on the secrets of great presentations.

It’s true, ideas only spread if they are memorable and easy to pass on and the best way to do this is via storytelling!