How can storytelling help you build a sense of community with your audience?

1 Why storytelling matters

Storytelling is not just a way of entertaining your audience or making your presentation more interesting. It's also a way of communicating your values, your vision, and your purpose. When you tell a story, you invite your audience to join you on a journey, to see the world from your perspective, and to feel what you feel. You also show them that you are human, that you have faced challenges and overcome them, and that you have something valuable to share with them. Storytelling can help you build a sense of community with your audience, because it creates a shared experience, a common ground, and a bond of empathy.

3 How to structure your stories

Once you have chosen the right stories, you need to structure them in a way that captures your audience's attention, keeps them engaged, and delivers your message. A simple and effective structure for storytelling is the three-act formula: setup, conflict, and resolution. In the setup, you introduce the characters, the setting, and the situation. In the conflict, you present the challenge, the obstacle, or the problem that the characters face. In the resolution, you show how the characters overcome the challenge, solve the problem, or achieve the goal. You also reveal the lesson, the moral, or the takeaway of the story. This structure helps you create a clear and compelling narrative arc, with a beginning, a middle, and an end.

4 How to deliver your stories

Delivering your stories in an effective way is essential for connecting with your audience. To create an immersive experience, use a conversational tone and vary your pitch, pace, volume, and tone to emphasize and create suspense. Use body language, facial expressions, and eye contact to convey emotions and meanings. Additionally, include pauses, silences, and transitions to create rhythm and clarity. Props, images, videos, or sounds can be used to illustrate or amplify your stories.

5 How to invite feedback and interaction

Storytelling can be a great way to spark feedback and interaction from your audience. To do this, you can ask open-ended questions related to your stories, encourage your audience to share their own stories, use polls, quizzes, surveys, or games, and utilize social media or other online platforms. Inviting feedback and interaction with your stories helps to create a sense of community between you and your audience. It also allows you to create an engaging presentation that will persuade and inspire them.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?