How Sharing Your Story 10xs Your Audience's Trust

Storytelling is a MUST if you want to build your brand and gain loyal audience, learn the power of storytelling here.

Hi! Welcome to Friday Features. Every Friday, I’m exposing you to various perspectives about writing and storytelling. This will help you develop a more holistic outlook on writing faster, better, and more human!

This weeek we have Ceylan, the editor-in-chief for One Brilliant Arc.

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Have you ever attacked your backspace key because you were scared that showing the real you would ruin your image as a professional?

I have.

It took me months to build the courage to show my face on my company’s social media pages. I have wanted to delete every word I have ever written from existence because I am embarrassed of younger, more naive versions of myself.

I know I’m not alone because I was having a conversation with a Substack friend last week about what they should share on their “About” page. They told me that they do not enjoy sharing their personal story and instead prefer to focus on how their services can help their clients. But you know what? Both are stories! (How to powerhouse your business strategy by focusing on how you impact the story of your clients is another article for another day, but the concept is covered super well by Donald Miller’s book, Building a Storybrand.) Suffice to say: what initially drew me to checking out this new friend’s Substack was his story! Guess what made me believe he could share self-care strategies that actually helped me? His story!

The places where our stories overlap our clients’ is precisely where the most successful business happens. Understanding the power of stories is the key to fostering trust and creating loyal, engaged customers.

Most people separate storytelling from business, because the former is “made up” and the latter is “real life.” But you cannot have a successful business without understanding and utilizing the art of storytelling.

Why Are Stories Powerful?

Storytelling is the language our DNA is wired to speak. Stories have connected us as humans across millennia, civilizations, and cultures. The pattern most good stories follow is not only the most recognizable language to us, but also a timeless way of communicating.

Think about it: have you ever watched an anime in Japanese? Some old, black-and-white foreign film? Can you follow the events of the story and how they make the characters feel even though you cannot understand a word? When an author writes a character's dialogue in a different language than the rest of the book is written in, does the book have to provide an interpretation or has the author presented the character's nature so well that you innately understand how their unfamiliar words impact the storyline? Stories are like a universal translator.

We first learn empathy and connection from stories. When someone shares a story, we put ourselves in the shoes of the main character and imagine what they must be feeling and experiencing. Our perspectives are magically transformed to be aligned with the protagonist’s. Stories offer us the truest and most instant connection we can experience with another human.

Now that we have established that our stories have unparalleled power of connection, how do we bring the art form of storytelling into the equation of business communication to create engaged, loyal customers?

What Stories Have To Do with Customer Loyalty

If you want to earn someone’s trust, they need to first believe that you are a human just like them. When you are vulnerable and share truths about yourself–no matter how unprofessional you fear you will appear–you are really showing your audience that you are trustworthy because you are human, just like them.

An audience will believe that your expertise can solve their problems if they believe that you have the same problems they do, or at least have a basis for understanding their problems. It is easy to think that if we do not keep a prim and proper professional appearance, people will not see us as the expert who has a right to sell them a valuable service. In truth, those glimpses of vulnerability, where we pull back the curtains a bit on the facade of professionalism, gives you the chance to earn people’s trust. People who trust you will become your most loyal customers.

Why Do We Need Authentic Stories in Business?

A unique struggle we have nowadays in the global marketplace is oversaturation. There is so much NOISE in the sheer amount of content that anyone can publish to the World Wide Web that customers are overwhelmed. One brand starts to look like another. Hundreds if not thousands of people offer the same service you do. Company promises of success sound identical. How can you stand out from the mayhem as the obvious choice for decision-fatigued customers? What is the one thing you have that is unique from any other person on the planet?

The answer: your story. No one else has lived the exact same life you have with the exact same blend of experiences and feelings. This identity is where your unique voice develops. No one can replicate you because they have not walked in your shoes.

BUT! There is overlap in experiences. Every human has shared emotional truths as part of their experience on planet earth. Where the emotional truths in your stories overlap is where you are able to uniquely understand someone else in a way that they feel safe trusting you.

People are not going to buy from you because you sound professional. They will buy from you because you can offer them something that no one else can. They will buy from you because you understand their problems and how to solve them in a way no other service does. This connection of trust and loyalty is fostered when you share your story.

But What About Professionalism?

Sharing your personal story requires vulnerability. Not only is being vulnerable scarier than living in a horror movie, but many also fear that being so open will destroy their professional image.

There are many reasons for not wanting to share our stories. Imposter syndrome is one of them. How can we call ourselves legit experts in our fields of business when we do not feel like the professionals we call ourselves? This anxiety is something I’m convinced we will all struggle with for a long time, if not forever. There is always someone else who has their life more together than you, who is more popular and better loved by the masses than you, who can command an audience better than you. But you know what perpetuates the toxic ideal of having to be a “perfect human” in order to earn people’s loyalty? Never lifting your own mask you hide behind.

Authenticity is such a buzzword today because people are sick and tired of judging themselves by the impossible standard set forth by carefully curated social media pages and brand websites. It seems that the #1 rule of social media is that we are not allowed to be human if we want to be acceptable to the public. Real humans struggle at inconvenient times. We feel self-doubt, burnout, and hide skeletons in dark corners, which are never allowed to show their ugly faces unless by way of thoughtfully edited and aesthetic posts in order to appear like you are being authentic with your followers.

By way of example and to show that I walk the walk I talk: when I started advertising myself for editing services and calling myself a “writer” in my online bios, I kept the fact that I have actually been dealing with severe creative burnout for years a guarded secret. What would people think if I claimed authority as a storytelling teacher, yet at the same time could not find the inspiration in myself to tell my own stories anymore? When I started working as an editor and story coach for One Brilliant Arc (OBA) Media, I wondered: would my honesty undermine my authority on the subject? Perhaps the truth turns off certain people. I took a long time to recognize for myself that I am actually the BEST coach for someone else who is struggling with creative burnout because I have learned to pull myself out of it so many times over. Would you rather have a coach who sympathizes with your struggles, or one who offers you pretty answers they have never tested themselves?

Every human has some kind of mess, and you have not seen it only because they are burdening themselves to hide it from the public eye.

A word to the wise: there IS a such thing as tact. It IS possible to overshare and cross the line of what is appropriate and what is not. Your customers do not want you to trauma dump on them–in fact, that would probably chase potential clients away. But if you are sharing your story in order to highlight how you can uniquely understand your customer‘s pain points and solve their problems, then you are definitely on the fast track to building the most loyal customer base the internet has ever seen!

The Bottom Line

We are tired and overwhelmed by the sheer amount of brands and services to choose from in our modern global marketplace. We tried the fake world for a while and now everyone is sick of it because we realized how draining it is to our spirits. Give your customers something real. Give them something no other brand can. Give them your story.

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One Brilliant Arc (OBA) Media supports writers who want to change the world in finding their own voice, finishing their projects with pride, and sharing their stories boldly.

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Author bio:

Ceylan wanted to become a hermit, but instead her passion for stories got her sucked into building a media company and talking about the power of community connection through storytelling. She still entertains her hermit dreams by working at home as a freelance editor and dreaming of building a homestead with her husband once he’s done being owned by the government (active-duty military service).