Episode 34
The Secrets to Storytelling - Grow Your Reach! **BONUS Master Mini with Veronica Sopher**
Join us as we take a break from our normal formatting here at Saturday Soundbites and offer you a BONUS Masterclass on storytelling!
Join Veronica V. Sopher as she shares all you need to know about crafting and curating the perfect story to create help your target audience hear you and take action.
Hello. Hello and welcome to Saturday soundbites. I so appreciate everybody tuning in today. We have got a treat for you guys. We're going to do a bonus masterclass here at Saturday soundbites. We normally have guests, but today we changed it up a little bit. We had some scheduling issues, whether technology.
But none of that stops us from talking about all the things that are really important to your visibility strategy. And that can look like advertising, marketing, public relations, branding, networking, all of those things. And one of the things that we try to communicate to you guys through the show and through our guests is the importance of stories.
So I thought this would be the great opportunity for us to talk about storytelling, the value that it brings to you and your brand and how to create one. So thank you so much for tuning in to this bonus content that we have. I am not going to bore you with sit and get information. I'm going to give you.
Techniques and strategies and insight that's going to help you grow your business because that's what it's all about here at Saturday soundbites, where we talk all things that are going to help you and implement techniques and strategies right away. So if you are listening on our podcast, make sure you hit subscribe.
We want to make sure that you don't miss any episode. And if you're watching on Facebook, thank you so much for tuning in, go into the comments, ask me your questions. As we go through this presentation. It's really going to be information for you to learn and grow. I want to make this a masterclass so that you can be able to walk away with something tangible and exciting for you in your business.
So let me know where you're watching from as well. We'll go ahead and get started guys, because this is what it's all about. Really at the end of the day, there are going to be a set of questions and I'm going to put some of this content in the show notes, and you can always reach out to me afterwards.
But we're going to talk about not only identifying your target audience, which we've talked about here a lot, I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time of it, but I'm going to talk to you about structuring that story so that you can communicate it, whether it's in your Facebook posts, whether it's in your tweets, your reels on, on any of the other platforms that you're using or in crafting your blog content, because that's really important too, because at the end of the day, the story.
That you going to share has to have a call to action that is aligned to the services and the products that you provide. I want to make sure that we we've talked about that first and foremost. So I'm just going to pull up a couple of things for you to look at here, crafting your message, guys. It's really, really, really important.
We have got a couple of things that you need to know. There are a couple of steps before this slide, but I want it. This is where we're going to focus. Most of our attention. I'm going to go through the first things really quickly. The question I talk about all time. What problem are you trying to solve?
You need to be able to identify the problem that you are trying to solve and be ready to articulate it to your team and to your audience or to your potential customers. So identifying the problem, you're trying to stop that's step one, step two. Who's your target. Okay. Most of you already have spent time working on this component.
You know, their ages, you know, the gender, they know their interests, you know, where they hang out on social media, you know what time of day they're engaged. They know if they're inside Facebook groups, you know what podcasts I listened to. You already know where it is. They consume their content. If you don't know that I've got a great course on my website, Veronica V sofer.com.
You can always go check that out. It's a great course. There's a worksheet you can work through and narrow down your target audience. And here's the other thing I tell people all the time, you generally have more than one and it can be an internal audience. It can be an external audience. But you need to be able to connect with them.
And part of that is understanding what drives them. What, what, what brings up that desire for them to want to purchase or engage in a particular piece of content? So spend time identifying your target audience. What's the current target perception that step three, what's the current target perception. Is there a lack of, is there a gap?
Is there misunderstanding? Are there misconceptions? You need to be able to articulate what some of those current perceptions are so that you can move on to step four right here, because this is where you're going to get the most bang for your buck. It starts with being reflective. So you've identified your target audience, you know, the problem you're trying to solve, you know, what the current perception is, and now you want to move straight into step four, step four.
What's the single message that will create the design. Perception from this group. So this is where you might want to do a little research. You might want to engage in some focus group conversations with folks. You may want to interview a couple of people. A lot of business coaches are really great about emphasizing how important learning that piece of information is as you move forward in your business.
So spend time so that you can identify what that single message is. My services solve this problem for you. The next thing you're gonna want to do is identify the key insights that support this message. This is where testimonials come in. This is where earned media PR. This is where those articles, where you're featured in blogs and articles, where you're featured in digital content.
Maybe you're being interviewed by a TV reporter. This is where the PR component of your visibility strategy really brings in. The, the muscle behind the fact that you are, are, you are an expert and this is your key insight, and this is going to how this is going to be, how it helps you grow what it is you're trying to grow, whether it is, you know, your, your product or your, your service-based business.
And then six is going to be tone and manner. And the reason why I wanted you guys to see this on paper is because, or in this case, It's because there are steps and strategies that can be used to help you craft your message. And part of that is going to be a little bit of research, which is not always fun for folks, but if you spend time.
You talk to people, you, you find out where their pain points are. You identify the current perception and then the perception you want them to have, then the creation part comes next. And that's where a lot of times people bring in creatives, you maybe hire a copywriter, maybe you hire a graphic designer, someone who can help you put all those components together.
So I always want to make sure that you are right on the tone and message there. And as we start talking about storytelling and how that might look for you, depending on how it is, you're engaging with folks, you need to be able to celebrate, but also be authentic authentically true about maybe a particular pain point that might be uncomfortable or may not be as positive as you'd like.
So feel confident in that, especially if it's something that, you know, your target audience is struggling. So I don't shy away from some of the things that aren't as pleasant in a message, but for you in particular, depending on the target audience, you're trying to reach, you want them to connect with you and you want them to understand that you are authentic and that you're transparent and that you understand maybe some of the frustration that they're experiencing, because sometimes expressing frustration.
And your branding is a little bit more difficult and maybe a little bit more uncomfortable for you as a service provider, but don't shy away from it. Do not shy away from it. That is where you're going to bring value to folks. So when we talk about what's in the story, there are a couple of things I want you to keep in mind.
The first one is time. You need to be current. You need to be relevant. You need to be maybe ahead of the curve or right as that, as that problem is manifesting so that you've got the solution as people as identify that as soon as they identify that they have a problem. If you come up with a solution way too late and you're behind the curve, it won't bring the value and you won't get the response that you're, that you're hoping for.
So you want to understand the timing of a particular pain point that you're tying, trying to adjust. And you also need to know what's happening around the world, around the region, what's happening in your local community, what's happening in your niche and your. Have there been new maybe regulations that affect the way you deliver business or a product that you've, that you've created and that you're bringing to market, you need to be mindful of all of those things.
I've got some folks who say, I just leave all of that. Whatever's going on in the world and the media too, to my spouse or to someone else. And they'll just tell me what it is I need to know. And for some people. That may be a good way of protecting your energy and protecting your creativity. But you, as a business owner, as you were pursuing, getting your product and your service to market, you do need to know what's happening in the world.
You don't have to be completely glued to a television or, or your news app on your phone. But you need to understand the sentiment that your target audience is experiencing in that moment. So that's a really important part of how to grow your business is being connected. Because if you're, if you disconnect, people will see that right away and it'll come across in your messaging and it will really come across in your visibility strategy.
So do not shy away. Be current understanding what's happening in the world, be relevant. That's the other thing that people get confused when they have a really great idea. If it's not relevant to your target audience, it's not going to bring up. So it's important to spend time identifying your target audience because the other thing I tell people all the time is if you stay stuck in what's relevant for a same, maybe your business is directed towards new moms mompreneurs.
If your product is timed and relevant. For something that was happening in the early two thousands, you will not be successful in 20 21, 20 22. And you will not be successful in 2027. You want your business to grow. You want it to be relevant to your target audience. So you have to invest time and understanding how people feel, how they consume information, how they consume your product so that you can grow with your audience because they.
Just like we do so that, you know, 15 to 18 year old is going to look a completely different and think completely differently and consume their information completely different in 10 years. So you, as a business owner, and as you're driving your team and your strategy, you need to keep all of that in mind.
And this is, this is part of storytelling. This is part of understanding. The timing, the relevance and putting all those connections together. So then when you've got that part under control and then the emotion and wow, the emotion is going to be where you get the most connectedness with your audience, it is about you being able to invoke a feeling.
A desire, some sort of connectedness, something that really, really touches at someone's heartstrings. I love scrolling through my phone and I see a post on social media or maybe I'll take talk, and it really compels me to want to either click and learn more. Or order order, it placed an order right then and there, I saw a great ad recently for a children's book.
I scrolled, I thought, wow, I've got two goddaughters that would love that I immediately purchased. So the story and the way that they framed the book and its mission and how it was designed for children to help them learn and grow in a particular way, spoke to them. I was their target audience and it created a space so that I could go ahead and make that purchase.
And that was a phenomenal experience after I'd done it. I thought, wow, that was really quick. Like I just did it, but in hindsight, It was their ability to connect with me and then create a call to action that ended them and an, a sale and a sale of two books. So I took that example. I screenshot it and I saved it.
So when I'm working with clients, I can give them examples of how simple it is to do when you create time. Relevance and emotion. And that works when you are connecting with your target audience. So don't forget that part because at the end of the day, those components really are going to drive how you connect with people.
And a couple of examples when we're talking about storytelling, Success, highlight successes, highlight how your product has helped someone, how your service has made a difference in someone's lives. Maybe they participated in a philanthropic campaign where a portion of their proceeds went to a particular nonprofit celebrate that provide highlights and spotlights.
Storytelling is about connecting with people and creating a desire. And in that moment, when you are spotlight, Something like, you know, working with the cheery, you invoked a feeling of maybe pride or connectedness or community. And that created an opportunity for them to make, have, have a really strong impression of your business.
And that is where the story takes. Really comes in as you are developing your strategy for, for creating more impressions. And they're more likely to share that story with someone else. So when it's a story that they can connect to, they may just tell a friend or colleague, oh, Hey, did you hear about X, Y, Z.
They may even share it on their social media, or they may just copy and paste it and forward it to someone they know that is the call to action that you did not ask for, but that you intended when you created a spotlight for people. For a person or a product or service. And you know, we talk about call to actions a lot and we'll get to that in just a second, but there are two calls of action, two models that people often don't talk about.
And number one is the very clear buy here. Share this, reach out, learn more. Those are the traditional call to actions, but then there are implied. Calls to action that people can, can really leverage when they are connecting with people. And that is by not necessarily asking for it, but providing it so that it makes it an easy, intuitive thing for your audience to do, because sometimes they may just feel compelled to do it.
And oftentimes if you don't ask them to, they won't, but sometimes they will. So you can take advantage of designing a strong story. With, with a very clear purpose and know that some people will just automatically share it because it pulled at their heart strings or it was meaningful to them. So that is another valuable way to connect with people.
So the other thing we talked about too, is. Some of the, some of the successes that you've had, not only with your clients and your products, but you can also share successes about you personally as a business owner. So make sure that you're connecting with folks and celebrating your wins as a business owner and definitely celebrating milestones in your business.
Just we had 500 downloads of our podcast. We just celebrated one year worth of business in our space. Celebrate those wins. Cause it, it really can remind people about how successful you are and you want to make sure that they that they're, that they've got more than just one reason to like you, you want them to have several reasons to like you and celebrate your business and then showcase your showcase, your team.
How many times do your team members have a great story about how it is they connected with you? I have awesome teams. I have awesome team members. There's one right there and we need to celebrate them and we need to make sure that people know that they're a part of the team because they are part of the energy.
And they're part of the creation that you bring to them. So we want to make sure we're celebrating our team members too. And again, we're talking about examples of how to celebrate your story. It's so call to action back to the technical part. We talked about connectedness and relevance and understanding your target audience and having your message clearly defined.
But then we need to do a couple of things right at the end to make it really worthwhile. And this is the part of today's bonus masterclass that I hope you get the most out of. So called calls to action. You know, we all have those buttons that automatically pop up on, so some of our social media, and so those are already predesigned, but when you are creating blog content, or maybe you're writing a press release, or you are creating some sort of presentation for something that you are really excited about, your calls to action at the very end need to be very clear, very simple.
They need to be something like let's schedule a call. Let's talk about this next Friday. Let let's go ahead and schedule something today. You need to be ready with a call to action and several options for people to consider. If it's not by now. I mean the traditional one is buy now, click here, learn more and that's great.
But when you get them to where it is, you want them to go next? You need to have something ready to go. Easy access. You know, you want it to be like, let's connect next Monday. Here's my calendar link. Let me call you on Tuesday. This is the number I'll be dialing for. All of that. It's going to be super, super important as you are getting them to what's next.
After you've shared your story and made some connections, strong, actionable verbs. That's also really, really important because I've actually seen some call to actions that look really really long. They're about 10, 12 words. I look to hear what you think about. XYZ. That's way too much information. You want to make it simple.
You want to use actionable words, actionable verbs that really compel them to want to do it's next and make a commitment because once a commitment is made in their mind, then there'll be willing to take on those next actions and it will be easy for you to follow. Even if at the end of the day, you don't make the sale or you don't make the connection, you know, that you created several opportunities for them to do that.
And that's really, really powerful. And then creating the sense of urgency and not like a sale, like, you know, do this now or else, not in a threatening way, but provide a sense of urgency by expressing to them clearly how your product or service can bring value can make a difference. We're leading up to the holidays.
Most of you with product-based businesses have already planned out weeks ago. How you were going to move into what's next for black Friday sales, right? Many of you are ready, designed strategies and budgeted what it is you were going to do. Moving into the holidays. So understanding where it is, your target audience makes their purchases is going to be really important.
And when you have those call to actions, you want them to be so crystal clear that there's no doubt that your black Friday sale is going to be available here, or the, the discount code is going to be available. Those are the kinds of, kinds of things I'd want you to start thinking about and for your service-based providers?
It's absolutely just as important that you have clear call to actions to, even if you're not selling a product, creating a sense of urgency and that space can look like. I know your clients are happy with your services, but when we start working together, I'll be able to bring this this much more value to you and your courses or your products, and when they start making those connections, because remember you've been, you've been sharing that all along in your conversation with them, that there'll be able to very quickly see how working with you immediately is going to make a difference.
Not only for them, but for their business, for their teams and for their calls. So those call to actions are really important. And then we talked a little bit about some of those implied call to actions, which are super helpful to you too. So you're creating, you've created this buy-in with this story, you've done all those things we talked about earlier.
And now they're, they're in. They're like, yes, that story was amazing. That team member, you have their commitment to what it is. They do moved me. I want to work with you. And, and you've already talked about how relevant your content is, how timely it is, how it evokes an emotion. Now, what they've they've clicked buy now, now what?
So not only does the experience end or the story ends. With them making a purchase or commitment to you, but it's what's next. So you send the product, you provide the service, you need to be able to close out this story, such that they are left with an emotion that's just as compelling as the first emotion that you helped them vote for them.
When they connected to you, do you send them a handwritten thank you. Card. Does your survey provide some bonus content to them? Did you maybe follow up three weeks later with a connection call or a networking call to, did you, did you connect them to potential client through your vast network? Those are the kinds of value.
Add that round out the story, because at the end of the day, When they are done working with you and they have used your services, they're going to have a beginning, a middle and the end and the end of the story needs to be just as strong. And you're writing that as you go and you're connecting people to what it is that brings value to them.
So I highly, highly encourage you to think about someone's last experience with you because it's going to make a difference. And so now that you've, you've created this experience. And this story for someone, I always encourage people to find different ways to repurpose. So you've gone through your target audience.
You've done all of the content to create a great story or a great post or a great blog. And then you're like, wow, I had a lot of success with that. People felt compelled to work with me. They came and they visited my website. And then there was a click-through I can track someone's engagement with me now.
What? Well, there's an opportunity for you to repurpose that and you can do so in a lot of different ones. If you had a great blog why don't you repurpose it and create some content that is accessible, maybe via video, maybe you create some reels from that blog. Maybe you package it into a newsletter that you're providing to maybe just your clients or just your customers on a quarterly basis.
Maybe you go live in your Facebook on Instagram and you use that same content, or maybe you repurpose that content and such a way that it's more unique and submit it to some of your industry, digital content, a lot of industries, and a lot of professional organizations also have blogs that also have magazines that get set up.
Two people across the country. So there's a, there's a lot of different ways to repurpose a story. Once you've created it for one particular format, podcasts are a great example of that. You've created a great podcast. You maybe had a great guy. What if you were to repurpose some of that interview so that you can use it in some of your other platforms and or maybe you put it in a, in a vault for your members only group and you create some additional content.
There that's something I've really enjoyed doing when I've participated in virtual. It's using some of those sessions and repurposing them in a way that people can learn and grow from them in a lot of different spaces in a way that they learn best. So I highly encourage you to think about your story as a piece of, of, of an asset that can just grow along with you.
So if you go back to all of those things we talked about, and again, I'll put some of this in the show notes. As you're developing your story, make sure you understand that it's not one dimensional. It can be multi-dimensional and you can get a lot of great content from there. So I hope you've enjoyed this masterclass our, the bonus content that we provided for you now that you can always go to my website@veronicavsofor.com.
I create lots of different content there. You can look at some courses that I've developed. You can take those at your own time. Join us inside my Facebook group. Magnifying your message with media, reach out to me whenever you've got a question or you need somebody to come in and provide some content and tips and strategies on how to grow your visibility strategy.
Cause that's what I'm here to do. So I hope you enjoyed this masterclass here on Saturday soundbites. Thanks so much for the comments. I'll be going back and checking in with folks. If you are listening on the podcast, make sure you hit subscribe. We want to make sure that you don't. Any episode of Saturday soundbites and thank you everyone for tuning in, and I'm sending you lots of positive, light, and energy.