📖 Simple Storytelling Marketing Strategy To Boost Engagement 📈
Do you have tiny or big moments you want the world to know? How do you engage with your audience more effectively? Eliya Finkelstein is a storytelling coach and story-based marketing consultant who helps entrepreneurs harness the power of storytelling. In this episode, she shares how she got started as a storyteller and the lessons learned along the way. She’s on a mission to change the marketing landscape to a more human-centric experience by closing the digital gap using stories. Tune into this episode to learn how to create transformational stories that will allow you to serve your purpose and make a difference in other people’s lives.
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📖 Simple Storytelling Marketing Strategy To Boost Engagement 📈
In building an online business and working to grow your followers and audience, but you don’t just want any followers and empty followers, you want followers that are raving fans who are 100% engaged with everything you put out there. They’re obsessed with you and your business and recommend you to everyone, engaging with all of your content more than all of your competitors. The simplest strategy that we’re going to talk about in this episode helps you to achieve exactly that. The trick, spoiler alert, is storytelling. If you’ve ever struggled with feeling like you’re not a good storyteller on social media, this simple framework could change everything. Let’s do this.
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We are with Eliya Finkelstein, storytelling coach and digital marketing consultant. She is a master at all things storytelling and has systematized this process in such a smart, simple way that you are going to love. I cannot wait to dig into this topic. It's one of my favorites. Thank you so much for joining us, Eliya.
Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here.
It would be silly for us to talk about systematizing storytelling without me asking you to share your story. Let the audience know a little bit about you, who you are and your business. How did you fall into storytelling? Tell us a little bit about that.
It was completely by accident. I had no idea that I was a storyteller. It's not like someone that was born as a storyteller or I knew I was a storyteller and I was going to do it my whole life. It was not the case at all. I was joking with a friend of mine saying that I could make a great storyteller. I could tell great stories of the industry that I was in at the time. We were joking about it. He called me up one day and said, “We joke all the time about you being such a great storyteller. You're going to have to put your money where your mouth is. A buddy of mine is starting a media company and he needs a good storyteller.” I was like, “That's what I'm going to do.”
Boost Engagement Through Storytelling: Everything you do in digital marketing has a story behind it. When you can share that, it helps your audience understand that you've been through something.
I went in. I had no idea what I was doing. I was young and fearless. I wrote my first story about a woman in horse racing. It ended up breaking all the records on their website. It crashed the website. It broke all the records that they'd ever had for views, shares, and everything. I thought to myself, “I'm onto something here.” Over the course of three years, we managed to grow that media company to the place where we have thousands of followers. We converted them into a print publication that I was then in charge of putting together. I was overseeing all the social media in all of our digital articles all through storytelling. We built the entire community through storytelling. It ended up being quite successful at it.
I took that. When I left that company and got into the world of digital marketing, I saw how complicated we had made storytelling and digital marketing with fifteen steps. I thought, “This is not what I know to be true about storytelling. Something's off here.” That's how I fell into it. It was totally by accident. What I do is help entrepreneurs simplify their processes, find the stories in a very simple way that are going to move the needle in their business, help them captivate their audience, connect and convert.
Number one, I'm so glad that you're bringing this topic to this audience because every digital marketer needs to be a storyteller. What I love even more about it is your gut instinct was correct. You were a storyteller. No one bestowed some rational title on you. You just knew it in your gut and joked about it. The proof is in the pudding. You are a natural storyteller. That's awesome.
The thing that you are nailing there is that it wasn't just me. As humans, we are natural storytellers. It's how we know ourselves, how we relate to other people, how we describe our place in the world, what we've been through, and how we connect to other people. It all happens through story. We do it naturally, which is why when I got to the world of digital marketing, I was like, “What is happening? Who said we need 25 steps to tell a story? This is crazy.”
Since this whole event is all about simplifying and systematizing, this is perfect. Tell me, when you're working in the online world, building your audience and your business there, we all know deep down that we need a good story, but do we need a big grand story or some like a rags to riches? Do we have to have some massive transformation that we talk about? What kind of stories are we talking about here?
Every story, no matter how big or small, is super valuable, especially when it comes to connecting to the person you need to connect to.
The thing that we're all told is you need a grand hero's journey and it's true. You do need a hero's journey but we can leave it up to Disney and Pixar to do them in that huge grand way. As humans, what we do is tell tiny micro stories about our experiences in the world. That's where in digital marketing, it's powerful to know how to look for tiny moments that are packed with a ton of meetings. I always say to people, “You are not one story and one story is not all that you are. You are an accumulation of a lot of these powerful moments in your life.” It's about getting into the practice of looking for these tiny meaningful moments that are powerful that connect to what you're offering or what you're saying and why you're saying it or what you're doing and why you're doing it.
Everything that you do in digital marketing has a story behind it. When you can share that, it helps your audience to understand that you've been through something. You were once where they are now. It also helps us connect as humans. It shows some vulnerability, some character and depth to who you are. It doesn't have to happen in these huge stories or in crazy rags to riches stories. Every story, no matter how big or small it is, is super valuable, especially when it comes to connecting to the person that you need to connect to. Oftentimes for digital marketers or marketers in general, we get caught up in the big picture things when it's the tiny things that make the biggest impact. It's about looking for those little moments that are super powerful.
I love those tiny moments. It makes it seem so much less overwhelming innately.
It goes both ways. Think about something you're sharing. For instance, when we have a sales page that we need to use, you know the objective is to create a sale to create a conversion. We go looking for the story that's best going to help somebody understand why they need what we're selling. Sometimes things happen in your life and you're like, “That was crazy. That was amazing. Something is changed in my life.”
You had an a-ha moment or a light bulb moment. Those are little stories. We attached meaning to them because we know that the meaning is perfect for our ideal clients. It can go both ways but they're everywhere. Stories are everywhere in your whole life. It's about getting into the habit of looking for them, capturing them, and attaching meaning to them that is going to be meaningful for your ideal client. It matters to them.
My creative brain is going and I'm realizing it can be about tiny moments. For those in the audience watching, think of some tiny moment, tiny story, or a seed of an idea. Through the rest of the interview, try to apply what Eliya is teaching us to that one tiny moment that you have in mind. Take a second. Do you have it? Hold on to that little seed of an idea. Once someone has this little seed of an idea of zooming in on a tiny moment, is there a certain framework they can apply, a three-step system, or something like that? Where do they get started?
Boost Engagement Through Storytelling: Stories are everywhere in your whole life. It's about getting into the habit of looking for them, capturing them, and attaching meaning to them that will be meaningful for your ideal client so that it matters to them.
Those are three steps. We're going to make it so simple. The first thing that you need to know before you begin, like with anything that you do in your business, is you need to know, “Why am I doing this? What am I doing it for? What do I want to teach or impart to somebody else?” You need to know what you're doing because stories without that fall flat. They just become noise. That's the first thing you need to know.
Once you got that moment, that's the first component of a good story. You need to zone in on a tiny moment of time where there was some massive transformation. That transformation could be a new thought or you do something that you couldn't do before and you have a new belief. It could be you physically move a location and something changes but we have these little moments of transformation.
The first component that you need to know is what is that moment? You need to know it with as much detail, texture, and juiciness as you can get out of it. You need to get into that moment. The first component of every story is what happened before that moment of transformation? What was that moment itself and what happened after? “Where was I before? What did it lead to?” That's why it's so important to know why you're telling the story because the after the moment of transformation is going to reveal that why or that lesson. The first component is know that moment of transformation.
It's the tiny things that make the biggest impact. So look for those little moments that are super powerful.
The second step that we do is that we feel that moment of transformation with a ton of detail, as much detail as we can pack into it. We do that because storytelling is a co-creative process. The more detail that I put into my story, the easier it is for your imagination to work at building that scenario out in your mind. As soon as I've got your creative process going, I've got your brain hooked on me and what I'm saying. As we know, in digital marketing, we're all competing for attention. If I can hack your brain and get you creating the story in your imagination, I've got you reeled into my story. These details do so much for the context and setting of the story. They're super important.
You want to get as much detail as you can in there. If I was flying 3,000 feet above wherever your moment of transformation is happening, can I describe it from that level? From the level where if I'm in it, at eye level, can I describe it like that? Can I also describe it in the body? How does it feel under hand and foot on the skin? Internally, what is going on? Can we get to that level of detail? That builds layers of letting somebody drop into your moment of transformation. The second component is all these details. How juicy and how much texture in life can we bring to this one tiny moment?
The third piece, which is so important, is that we know that buying decisions happen from an emotional place. We connect emotionally first. We buy emotionally and we're going to justify or bring in logic later. Not even just for sales but getting somebody to connect with you to want to hear more about what you have to say, you need to bring the emotion into the story. This is not like, “I was scared but I need you to tell me how that felt in the body. Coming back to the details of it, give me the real texture of this emotion. What does it feel like on the skin? What does it feel like in the stomach? The floor is dropping out all these different things. Can you get me to feel what you were feeling in that moment?”
This is important for two reasons. One is any time that the brain is triggered emotionally. If the listener or the consumer of your story gets triggered emotionally, the brain says, “This is important. We need to remember this. We might need to survive this later. Remember this information.” We've biohacked the memory of the brain by triggering some emotions. The other thing is it's so important for entrepreneurs or anybody in a digital space where we're connecting across the screen. This is how you reach through that screen. It's your chance to say, “I'm the same as you. I’ve experienced the same as you.”
In the emotions, can you get down to some of the real core human emotions that we all experience? In doing that, it's saying to your audience, “I see in you what was in me and so you can see in me what's going on in yourself.” It bridges that gap. That's it. You've got this amazing story that is designed to connect and convert.
That's fantastic and that totally makes sense. I always tell my clients all the time, “You have to captivate your audience's attention where they can't stop thinking about what they saw you post two days ago or something like that.” It totally makes sense if you can get them to create an image in their mind and then a feeling in their heart. They're not going to forget you.
We know digital marketing. The people who are ready to convert immediately are going to convert immediately. Some other people are going to refer you to somebody else or they're going to come back to you later. It's still important that you’re the one that they're thinking of. You got to get yourself into their minds.
The storytelling can take you far towards captivating your audience. Do you have any quick tips on how people can move from that captivating place to implementing a call to action or getting someone to interact with your business then at that point?
It's the same thing as knowing that you are not a single story. You're a ton of different stories. It's knowing before you even begin, “What's my point here? What am I trying to do?” If I'm trying to specifically get you to convert, I need to know where you are in your experience. Where do I need to get you to be so that you are going to convert? It's knowing going into it before you even begin what the reason is. “What's the purpose here? Why am I doing this? Why does my program exist the way that it does? What's the mission behind it? How did I get here? Why am I the one doing it? Do I want someone to leave a comment on a social media post? I need to be aware before I even begin that social media post that I'm looking for thought provoking things. My story has to be thought provoking or maybe it sits on the edge of the status quo and that's going to create a little dissonance. People are going to want to comment.”
To get somebody to connect with you and to want to hear more about what you have to say, you need to bring the emotion into the story.
You have to know what it is before you go in. You have to be willing to tell the stories and test the stories because it's impossible for us to know what's going to land for our client, our ideal client, or whoever it is. It's impossible for us to know until we put it out there. You have to be willing to put it out, look at the data, and say, “This story performs well. I got this kind of conversion out of it. I know I can use this story when I'm trying to get that same result.” There's no one size fits all kind of thing. You have to be willing to try, test, look, and see what happens.
Start with the end in mind and then layer the simple three-step framework over top of it. You have everything you need. I'm guessing, at this point, the audience is getting energized and maybe had a lot of creative ideas. Maybe we helped them co-create their mini moment and some story ideas. What if some of the folks in the audience are struggling with coming up with those mini moments? Do you have any way to help them if they're struggling on the creativity side?
Boost Engagement Through Storytelling: It's so important to know why you're telling the story because the moment of transformation is going to reveal the “why” for that lesson.
I'm going to give you fifteen prompts to get you started. I'm going to tell you my fifteen favorite stories that entrepreneurs can tell that are going to help your audience get to know, like and trust you faster than anything else you could put out there on the planet. That is what I'm going to give everybody. It's specifically designed around finding these moments that are very intentional and strategic in the grand scheme of your business to attract the ideal clients, to connect with them, and to captivate them.
For people who are grabbing that VIP ticket, I'm going to throw in something a little extra. If you grab that VIP ticket, I'm going to give you my masterclass on how to tell stories in three simple steps. It's going to break this process down for you in a step-by-step, how to start, what to do. It also comes with a workbook so that you can put it all down, see it all and then be able to easily and simply write your stories.
Be sure to grab Eliya’s freebie. If you are a VIP ticket holder or you decide to scoop one up, what I love about this is if you read this storytelling framework, this system that Eliya has built and you got some goosebumps thinking about what you could do with it, you know who you are. If that was you, imagine taking the fifteen story ideas that she gives you for free. Go into the VIP pass and watch the masterclass.
You could probably go pretty deep because you can get in far more detail in that class than we can here in a couple of minutes together. She'll go deeper into all the details of how to build out those stories, so then you can build out all fifteen and be killing it. You can use them in your business over and over again, testimony in different ways, different places, or different platforms perhaps.
Thank you so much for joining us and for giving us such abundant gifts that is very generous of you. I'm super excited to connect with you in the Facebook group to make sure that we are implementing what we learned from Eliya. She'll pop in for Q&A as well to make sure that you get all your questions answered. We'll see you in the Facebook group.
Thanks for having me again.
Thanks. Bye.
Helpful Links:
✅ Connect with Eliya: https://www.facebook.com/heyeliya
✅ Book a 6-Figure Strategy Session - Adrienne’s free gift for you: https://www.adriennehill.com
✅ Adrienne’s Entrepreneur Community on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/groups/profitablepassiveincomestrategies
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About Eliya Finkelstein
Eliya Finkelstein is a Storytelling Coach and Story-Based Marketing Consultant who helps entrepreneurs harness the power of storytelling.
On a mission to change the landscape of marketing to a more human-centric experience by closing the digital gap with stories, she helps purpose-driven humans share their brilliance through sensory-rich, emotionally charged, and transformational stories that connect and convert.