What is your story?
Or more commonly heard…how did you get into XYZ?
It’s a normal question that every small business owner and entrepreneur has heard a million times. Often you just answer it with your elevator pitch. That is what you are told right? You have 30 seconds – why should someone care about your story or what your business does?
So, here is my advice to you. Don’t talk about your business. Talk about you and give them just enough to convince them to keep coming back and asking for more.
Why do I say this?
Most people are slightly intrigued by the fact that my company runs social media marketing for people, but when they hear me say “I needed a new way to help support my family that didn’t require me to work 50-60 hours a week.” Well, that has piqued their interest.
The Gift of Social Media
That is the gift of social media marketing. It allows you to cookie crumb, or slowly give out pieces of your story to your potential customers and clients. They can see small bite-sized chunks of your story and ensure that they are coming back to hear the rest. Day after day and week after week. You have piqued their curiosity and they want to join you on your journey.
But exactly HOW do you do it?
Defining Your Story for Digital Success
First, you need to define your story.
Take out a piece of paper or open up a blank document and answer the following questions:
Why did I start my business/entrepreneurial journey?
Who or What was my greatest influence to begin this adventure?
What is my guiding motivation or purpose to continue my business?
What are the key points of our mission (our roadmap to get to our end goal)?
What are the most emotive aspects of our business? (What inspires, entertains, and/or moves you to some deeper emotion?)
These questions can help you to pull together the pieces of your story – and more importantly, put them into bite-sized pieces to create images, blogs, videos, and other posts.
A Helpful Example of Story Dissection
Let’s dissect one of the above questions to give you an example of how to do this to create some authentic and relevant content for your audience.
The second question is the easiest part of my story and it dovetails nicely into question number one.
Who was my greatest influence to begin my adventure? My son.
I was working retail and had been for over 15 years when my son was born. My initial thought was maybe I will go back to work, but I didn’t really know if I could swing it. Many other mothers had, but I didn’t think I really wanted to do that. Too many holidays I would have to miss, too many nighttime games or weekend events. And then he was born…and my search for a new career began in earnest.
I stared at this beautiful baby boy, born 3 weeks too early, so tiny that we had nothing to fit him at first, and determined that there had to be another option. It came in the form of Beachbody.
I became a coach to help others on their fitness journeys – but that is the shortest part of my story. See, Beachbody gave me a lot of things, education, confidence, motivation – but it also showed me something. The power of social media and how small businesses could not only survive but THRIVE when they used it effectively.
A Simple Journey?
It seems like a simple journey, but I spent my entire maternity leave learning everything I could about every platform, making a ton of mistakes, and then even longer after I quit my job to stay home and pursue a plan to help small businesses…because my purpose had been found on my maternity leave. A question begged to be answered – if I spent all this time just learning how to run social media to be a fitness coach, and do nothing else but workout for a business, how in the world was someone who had a very active small business learn how to create and execute an effective social media strategy?
The answer: It’s pretty damn impossible.
So VENTUREWRITE was born and my purpose was clear – my team will help to raise the voices of small businesses on social media to create raving fans, and in turn, improve their businesses.
Creating Authentic & Effective Content
Now we have the answer – how do we turn it into useful content?
My son is a catalyst – so many posts can be about letting the internet work for you when you aren’t working. Tips for working from home, or letting the posts be your presence when you are with your family.
Other post ideas:
A video on all the items you need to know when you start a social media platform
Effective resources to gain information for small business owners
Create checklists and infographics for small business owners to share and use
Provide video tutorials on effective digital strategy development
Images/Videos of me at the computer and with my kids (I try to use the back of their heads vs faces)
All of this content stems from that one question that came up in my story – how does a small business do it on its own? Because if they do, then they could use some help, and our job as an agency is to help them do it as best as possible, and if necessary, we can also do it for them.
So, what’s your story?
Share it with us in the comments below or tag us in your posts – we would love to see them!