Sharing Your Story
Storytelling through creative films is the heart and focus of Tripp Films. Learning to share your story is an important part of marketing your business, because PEOPLE LOVE STORIES. They capture attention and leave them wanting more. And trust me, they want to know your story too. This blog post is meant as an encouragement to get you started, and I’ve divided it into into 3 sections: The Purpose of Sharing Your Story, What Does it Mean to Share Your Story, & How to Share Your Story. We’ll start with the purpose of sharing your story, because it’s important to keep in mind ‘the why’ behind what you’re doing.
Purpose of Sharing Your Story
The #1 thing to remember is that the point of sharing stories is to connect and engage with your audience on a deeper level, so they trust you with their business. We’re in an age where it’s incredibly easy to start a business, which is great in many ways, but what makes you stand out from the competition? How do you get people to understand and connect with you when the market is saturated with businesses just like yours? Ultimately, it’s you and your unique story. Stories engage, connect and build deeper meaning behind your brand and products. They are an opportunity to show and tell why yours is the right business for the client or consumer.
What Does It Mean to Share Your Story
Ok now that we have a good understanding of why stories are important, let’s dig into what it means to share your story. Usually our stories are long and rambling and aren’t so simple and straight forward. There are many different aspects to a story, so how do you know what to share? Well, remember our purpose in telling stories. Think about your customer. What are they struggling with that your product or service can help? Were you once in their shoes? How did you overcome the challenge? And now think about your brand mission and values. Why did you start your business? How does it serve clients? What does your business do differently? In all aspects of sharing our story, we should be focusing on building a relationship with our clients.
To get started, I would recommend having a short & sweet origin story, like what you would put on the “About” page of your website. Next, write down your brand mission & values and start listing stories that can relate to each of them. Lastly, double check that your stories relate to your customer in some way, whether directly through your product or service, or indirectly through similar emotions or challenges your customer may be facing. The great thing about this process is that you’ll find your stories are multi-faceted and aren’t limited to just one Instagram post. You can break it up into different themes of content that you can use later on. Just because one aspect of your story doesn’t fit the purpose of a particular post, doesn’t mean you can’t use it later in another post with a different objective.
How to Share Your Story
There are 2 approaches we can take to this question: How to Share Your Story through Professional Film Production & How to Share Your Story through Simple Videos.
Professional Film Production
When you hire a videographer, know that the storytelling is a collaboration between you and them. When I take on a client, sometimes they will know exactly what they want to say, and I will give them feedback & edits from my perspective as the filmmaker. And sometimes, it's the other way around. They aren't exactly sure what they should say and rely on me to get things started. In those cases, I have a process that we will walk through to figure out what needs to be said in the film. In either situation, collaboration is vital. You know your business and your industry best, so you must have a say in the storytelling. However, you have a partner that has done this many times before and has a formula, so you can rest easy knowing you're not alone.
I love how L&B’s story connects with who their customers are & what they are looking for in a home.
Simple Videos
The easiest way to get started telling your story in a more casual video setting, is to jump on Instagram Stories! This is a low-stakes way to test the water with what types of stories resonate with your audience. Begin sharing some of the stories you listed from above. Once you start trying different topics, you can see what your audience is engaging with most and start to gear your content towards those subjects. As you feel more comfortable, you can progress to sharing even longer videos on IGTV (if that fits your marketing goals). For my own business, I have found that I have more engagement (thus better chances of showing up in the IG algorithm) when my audience sees my face on Stories at least 1-2 times a week, usually sharing some sort of BTS aspect of my business. In addition to business content, they also tend to engage when I share more about my husband and dog. Now I don't think anyone would describe me as super upbeat or outgoing (I do not have the high energy of a YouTuber lol), but I try to be myself and people like to see that. All this to say, you don't have to have a certain personality type or amazing Brené Brown-level advice for people. All you need to do is show up as your true self and let your audience get to know you.
Also something to note, I used the example of Instagram, but I suggest you engage wherever your audience is! If your audience is on a different platform like Facebook, then post pre-recorded videos to the feed or do a Facebook Live. Meet your customers where they’re at.
Whether a professional Branded Film or a casual IG Story, the goal of telling your story is the same: connect and engage with your audience on a deeper level. I hope this frees you to not worry about the exact words, but focus on being open and honest with your audience.