Storytelling Prompts To Build An Online Community For Your Online Business
All I wanted was to be seen.
As the new kid in a 5th grade class, I was desperate for anyone to notice me. I’d come home crying, begging my mom to please, please, pleaseeeeee buy me a Louis Vuitton under-the-armpit sized purse. I believed its flash would get me attention — that it would make me worthy of saying hello to in the halls.
During a particularly solitary lunch in the library while I was lost in the pages of Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, I felt a tap on my shoulder.
“I finished that one last week. Sylvia Plath gets me,” a bookish girl said, her eyes meeting mine with genuine interest. We're still friends.
Real connections are made by sharing what matters to us — our interests, aspirations, struggles, and experiences. These factors build a community.
An online community is invested in you as a person or brand, and their support goes beyond just liking posts. These are the real MVPs who:
Regularly engage with your content.
Participate in events you organize.
Recommend you to others.
Become repeat customers.
It’s easy to overlook the power of common ground, especially when prevailing wisdom tells us “standing out” is the only way to succeed online.
If social media is fake taught us anything it’s that being your relatable self gets noticed.
ICYMI - social media is fake got more than 50 million views on TikTok in March 2024, featuring creators going viral by confessing secret struggles.
Think: A life coach skipping self-care despite preaching it in posts. Is it because people are being purposefully fake? Straight-up dishonest? Sometimes.
But for most one-person businesses, it’s fear that authenticity will cost them credibility or that struggling undermines their expertise.
Ironically, the opposite is true.
Alex Hormozi wrote in his book $100M Offers that when you can articulate your audience's problems better than they can themselves, they’ll view your approach as more credible and valuable. Why? It’s human nature to gravitate toward people like us.
Smokers are more likely to trust advice on quitting from a former smoker than a doctor who has never smoked.
There’s no better way to articulate it than to live it. (More on articulating the problems you solve in next week's newsletter).
Overcoming a common enemy you share with your audience makes them feel seen and heard. Leading by example is the most authentic way to create content people care about in 2024. Communities are built on commonalities. It’s worth noting if you want to build a community that sticks with you amidst ever changing algorithms.
You build a community with stories that say, “you get me.”
This week’s storytelling prompts algorithm-proof the bond with your followers.
Brand Storytelling Example
What’s on your shit list? I’ll bet my marketing degree that there’s a good story behind why it irks you. What “enemy” do you and your ideal client share? In this storytelling marketing example, online marketer and podcaster Amy Porterfield calls out “second-guessing, shiny-object syndrome, and “not-enoughness” as the common enemies. These are feelings she shares with her readers.
It’s best to think of the enemy that embodies a concept rather than a person.
5 Common Common Enemies
Corporate Culture
Perfectionism
People-Pleasing
Packed Schedules
Defining your brand's "enemy" builds comradery around something to push against, which becomes the tension all stories require to be interesting.
It’s the regular, everyday, normal moments that make us relatable to others.
Relatable moments + larger context = “you get me” vibes.
Happy Storytelling!
Your Content Strategist & Storyteller,
Cyndi
STORYCRAFT PROMPTS
These storytelling prompts were originally published in the StoryCraft Newsletter, where I share two-minutes stories of doing life and business better with actionable tips to tell your stories every week-ish. Sign up for the StoryCraft Newsletter.
