The most effective way to connect with your audience, to teach them and to help them remember your message is through storytelling.
Stories are effective because they:
- Help Us Learn –Think about how we learn history, how much of it is stories? We are hard-wired to look for lessons in stories.
- Are Memorable –it’s hard to remember facts and figures so we use stories like Newton and the apple or Archimedes and the bath to help us remember ideas and concepts.
- Connect With Our Emotions – Facts and figures speak to the logical side of our brain and it can be harder to convince people with mere statistics. Stories speak to the emotional side of the brain and could provoke the listeners to make decisions based not on logic but on emotions.
- Stories Are Easy To Share – How many conversations have begun with “you’ll never guess what I heard”, we communicate through stories, get the right story and not only will it be understood by your audience but they will share it with friends and your message and ideas will spread virally.
Using stories in business presentations
- Similar Situations – we can share our experiences of a similar problem or situation and how we found dealt with that issue
- Case Studies & Customer Experiences – stories of how customers interact with our product can be useful both as a marketing tool as well as a method for the company itself to learn how people use your product.