How do you engage your audience and convey your message with storytelling?

There are some basic human traits and life experiences that appeal to any audience. - Humor - Vulnerability - Resilience - Kindness - Humility Finding stories that highlight one or more of these traits is a great way to start connecting with the audience.

Also, knowing the history of a particular region’s people for which you are writing can also help connect you to your audience. Knowing how to connect your message, story, etc. to an audience’s historic journey, or how to connect it to the theme of a major event in a target audience’s history can create a deeper connection and understanding to your message. For example a story about the “strength or determination to rebuild” would resonate with a middle aged and elder person or people from New Orleans. Likewise “relocation amidst fear” would resonate with a young adult from New Orleans.

How can I relate to my audience? That's one of the first questions I ask before I tell the story. If people are unable to relate to what you're telling them, your story won't resonate as well.

Anecdotes that include babies, animals and our beloved elderly are also great ways to connect with people. They tug at the heartstrings.

Here are some tips: 1?? Familiar Audience: Customize your content by leveraging information about their interests, preferences, and pain points. Make it relevant and relatable to their needs. 2?? New Audience: Engage in multiple conversations to gather insights about the audience. Understand their pain points, learn from previous successful presentations, and explore articles or media coverage to understand their culture and expectations. Consider pre-event interactions for deeper insights. 3?? Lead with Understanding: Strike a balance between expertise and engaging communication. Avoid forceful viewpoints. Craft an engaging narrative that encourages interaction and comprehension.

Putting ourselves in the audience's shoes - distraction, overwhelm, fatigue .. Amidst all this what will they remember when we open our mouth, right after they leave the session, a day, a week later. The story needs to endure so that it can be a door opener to new relationships, business opportunities. But only if the story endures long after the audience has left the room.

The 1st step should be to have mission & vision. That helps you create a roadmap for your journey. It not only acts like a tool to assess your performance but also helps in taking corrective actions wherever needed.

Here, I like to identify the right question to answer for my intended audience. Every audience has them - sometimes stated, often not. If you can get into their heads - figure out their concerns and goals, fears and desires - and identify the key questions they will have on their own uncertainties, complexities, and confusion, you will have a great starting point for crafting a relevant, useful story they will want to receive.

Consider telling a funny story. Humor can reveal truth and speak truth to power. It can uplift, form shared community, and create a common bond. A good joke requires authenticity, self awareness, a sense of timing, audience engagement, a perspective of the world, and for you to share an insight. Practice is extremely important. Consider taking a standup or improve class. Watch interviews of commedians for ideas.

Personal experiences, even bad ones, have a positive impact in the audience. If the story is light, simple, told with ease and with full confidence, it will have an impact and promote an engaging conversation.

1.The HERO narrative is one of the best story type you can use when you want to talk about a topics which is relatable to your life. You can showcase how the protagonist had to face multiple obstacles and despite those he/she came out as a winner. You can add personal pain and wins. You can give hope to those who are on a similar journey and let them know there is light on the other side of the tunnel.

Tailor your storytelling approach to your objective and audience by employing different types of narratives that align with your purpose. Choose the narrative style that best resonates with your message and audience to enhance the impact of your LinkedIn post.

I’ve found one engaging way that brings everyone in as I start is a shared experience, for example, an observation about the audience, or reflecting on something earlier that day in the news or weather.

When you offer people numbers, charts & graphs, it makes the story more appealing to them. It attracts interest of the viewers and helps your content spread the message.

When you have numbers to back up your story, it makes it even more impactful. Combining analytics and a great story is gold!

I'm a fan of argument mapping as an outline tool. Put your main claim or point at the top, and work your way down - identify what you believe, and why you believe it. Just build the map - don't plug any data or evidence in yet. Make it as complete as you can, THEN go through and plug your evidence in where it fits. Don't add data just because you have it - if it doesn't add to the story, it detracts from it. Once you've built the map on what you believe, go through and identify the objections to every point you can - if you don't do this your audience certainly will. Then go through this with the same care to flesh out the counterargument and its supporting data, then preemptively rebut the objections to strengthen your own argument.

There are multiple story telling techniques one could consider but most effective is the "Hook". Hook can be presented in multiple ways: 1.It could be a response evoking image. 2. It could be a catch phrase. 3. It could be a positive assertion. 4. It could even be a negative assertion or statement, it has been observed people respond more to negative assertions and statements. You can also talk about a hot topic and mix your personal experience in it. You can share useful insights and demonstrations which prove the effectiveness of what you are saying. Overall, you need to observe which technique your audience is responding to more.

Your audience can resonate well and engage with your content when they understand that you have a message to share with them from your journey. When people get value and see that you have helped them in a way in their journey too, it works best!

Personal stories are the ones that endure in my experience. We could be the hero or heroine or the culprit or the victim. Anything that makes it a direct hit home is usually what sticks in the audience's mind. So chronicling life stories and using those as a goto personal encyclopedia and picking the ones most relevant to that audience and topic always works.