In the first part I stressed the importance of writing story-like blog articles. Now let’s take a look at one of the most important stories you need to know how to tell.

Who Am I Stories?

The first question your visitors ask themselves the minute they realize you want to influence them with your blog, is “who is this blogger?” Your story will help them see what you want them to see about you. Logon to TED and watch some videos there. You will easily see that public speakers, who start with a funny joke answer a question “is this guy boring?”. Once they make the audience laugh, the audience understand that the speaker is not boring. From that moment, they relax and listen.However, if the speaker begins by saying “I am a genius” to the audience, the audience will not be happy with that at all.

Demonstrate who you are, rather than telling them who you are. This is much more believable. A story can perfectly help you demonstrate who you are.

Tell Personal Stories To Demonstrate Who You Are

When you tell a personal story, you let your visitors see “who” you are better than any other way of communication. Ultimately they trust your judgment and your words based on their subjective decisions on you. Objective data does not help to build trust.

With a personal story, you reveal one side of your character which otherwise will be invisible. However, there are many ways you can show who you are to your visitors. Telling a personal story is not mandatory to tell them who you are. Fable stories, historical stories, stories from your friends, your favorite quotes. They all become a “Who I am” story when you tell properly. They also reveal a part of who you are on a personal level.

Show Your Flaws To Your Visitors

Throughout the history, many leaders used the power of a story of a personal flaw to influence people. This is called self-disclosure in Psychology. If you trust your audience enough to show them your flaws, they will also trust you enough to show you their flaws.True strength is not found in perfection but in understanding our own limitations. If you show this self-knowledge to your visitors, you will demonstrate strength to them.

Conclusion

With “Who am I” stories, you can break through negative opinions about you. However, even if your visitors decide you are a honest person, they still wonder what is in it for you to get their cooperation. Until you find a good answer, they will assume that you have more to gain than they do. Thus, you need to tell them a “Why I am here?” story. This is going to be the next story you need to know how to tell. We will talk about it next week.

Until next week, please write a “Who am I” story in your blog, and link back to this post. Also please feel free to leave a comment and tell me who you are.

To be a person is to have a story to tell – Isak Dinesen

Last week I introduced you The Six Stories You Need To Know How To Tell
and told you why writing story-like blog articles are important. Today I will tell you more about the importance of stories.

My Quest on Storytelling

My quest on Storytelling started with one single question “How can I add stories into my daily blog posts?” While I was trying to find answers to that question, I traveled around the Web in 80 days, from one website to another, until I found some good answers and resources.

I thought my answers and the online storytelling resources I found could be valuable for your blogging too. Therefore I decided to start writing a weekly post series titled The Six Stories You Need To Know How To Tell.

Here we go…

Why Stories Are So Powerful Today?

Life has become more complex than before. People need guidance. They are even ready to pay money and attention in return for a valuable guidance. Information overload, global organizations, personal development books, TV series, blogs. They all create stress for people.

It isn’t possible for us to read our favorite books, and monitor the websites in our favorites folder anymore. It is even getting more difficult to complete half of the items in our To-Do lists.

Most of the people are not open to learning new things anymore. They don’t spend time on the quest for truth. They don’t care about their role in the big picture.

How To Influence Them?

And now you are trying to influence these people who solely focus on protecting their own benefits. They might be happy in their little worlds or feel like they are destined to an unhappy fate. But, most of them are suspicious about you, and your hidden agenda. If you tell a good story which sparks curiosity in them, or fix the complexity in their life, they will listen to you.

If you help people understand what is going on around them, and let them see the real facts, they will follow you. You can create a winner team from a group of losers with a good story.

Help People Find Their Path In Complexity

While the complexity increases, people are willing to listen to the people who tell the most meaningful stories or things. If you are trying to convince people with logical analysis, then you certainly have a serious problem: People don’t give decisions based on logical analysis. They think they do, but in fact they usually give decisions based on their feelings. If you catch their feelings with a good story, they will pay attention to you.

Next week I will tell you more about stories. Until next week, please tell me your own life stories by leaving a comment to this post.