Non-Stop Malaysian Plane Media Coverage And Your Business

Unless you are REALLY good at ignoring what constitutes “news” these days, you have undoubtedly heard about the “missing” Malaysian airplane that has dominated every media outlet for the past couple of weeks.

I’ll admit that I have indeed heard about the mystery plane, but ever since I first heard a newscaster say, “We don’t yet know exactly what happened” on the day the story broke, I knew that this was exactly the kind of “news” story that I stay far away from.

Whenever a “we-don’t-really-know-the-facts-yet” type of “news” story breaks, I apply my personal strategy of waiting until the facts are known before investing three minutes of my time to find out everything about it; instead of wasting hours, days and even weeks getting caught up in all the gossip, conjecturing and other nonsense.

Of course, that places me square in the ultra-minority of human beings, who LOVE an engaging, unfolding story.

Long before there were any written languages, information and history were passed from person to person through the telling of stories. The Bible is full of stories. The most memorable and beloved movies, books and songs are all based on stories. We’ve been conditioned to listen to, learn from and remember stories ever since we were little kids.

Therefore, it should come as no surprise that the most-effective marketing is based on the skillful and purposeful telling of stories.

As Seth Godin once said:

Great marketing is storytelling.”

You should be telling stories in your…

• “About Me” area of your brochure and website
• Newsletter
• Sales messages
• Social media posts
• Success stories
• Emails
• Blog posts
• Articles
• Videos
• Webinars
• Speaking presentations

…basically EVERY PLACE and EVERY TIME you communicate with your prospects and customers, clients, patients or members.

Do you lean too heavily on charts, graphs, bullet points, features, benefits, etc.?

Remember the age-old saying all master persuaders live by:

Facts tell, stories sell.”

Whenever you need to make an important point, use a story to illustrate it. There’s a MUCH better chance that your audience will remember the point you’re making when you tell it with a story.

Your audience will also more easily and powerfully form a bond with you when you include personal details in your stories — especially whenever they discover an experience or attitude they have in common with you through a story you tell. People like to do business with people who they feel are similar to them.

Another great place to use storytelling is in place of ever just stating, “My product or service is useful.” Even better in that situation is to have one of your satisfied customers tell their own “before-and-after” story about their experience with you and your company.

Stories are also effective and elegant ways to inform your clients of other products or services you have that they might not be aware of. “Cross-selling” is extremely easier and more effective when you use customer stories instead of just some awkward and blatantly self-serving “Here Are All The Services We Provide” list.

Here are 5 tips to help you get better at using effective storytelling in your marketing…

1. Craft your own heroic business owner story as if you were a comic book superhero (minus the inhuman superpowers, of course)
2. Read fiction, and study the art of fiction writing
3. Study character development in movie sequels and television shows
4. Study storytelling comedians, and develop a few amusing and illustrative anecdotes of your own
5. Allow your followers to engage in an ongoing relationship with you and your real-life experiences through your newsletters, emails and social media posts

And one final tip…

Have fun!

If you have fun telling stories about you and your customers, you’re bound to discover that you’re making stronger connections and developing better business relationships than ever before.

That will make it more interesting for you to run your business and for your customers to do business with you, which will lead to happier customers and higher profits for you – even if your story won’t likely dominate all the major media outlets for weeks, with millions of “get a life” people around the world clinging to every shred of “breaking news” they can discover about you.