Ever wondered how you can use your excellent storytelling skills to captivate audience or market your books? Do you often feel your books are not reaching enough readers? Have you exhausted all your resources to target your readers? Well, the answer lies in storytelling.
Storytelling is a strategic marketing initiative that is used to market one’s business. How do you use your storytelling skills to help market your book business? Read on.
Establish an emotional connection
Marketers have been using storytelling through advertising to promote their products for years. If you are good at storytelling, then you can use it to promote your book. The moment you are able to establish an emotional connection with your audience, you have almost won them! How do you create an emotional connection? Emotional connection does not mean you need to narrate maudlin stories. You need to narrate in such a way that your audience can relate to what you are saying. This ensures that they listen to you and they may come back to you for more. Obviously, this means that they would also be interested in reading what you have written.
The following banner is an affiliate one. That means Writing Tips Oasis receive a small % of the sale if you purchase The Novel Factory, but at no extra cost to you:
Infuse a truthful quality
People would love to listen to you provided you tell them something that is honest. Honesty does not mean that you have to share everything that you have done in life. Your stories need to be engrained in reality. Life is not a fairy tale. When you share something that sounds transparent, the audience would love to hear or read more from you. Be creative but do not digress from what you intend to do—that is, persuade your audience.
Leave something to imagination
The golden rule of keeping your audience is to never reveal all details of your story. Leave something to their imagination. You can consider using teasers via Facebook, e-mail or Pinterest. This stimulates their imagination and arouses their interest. Something like “Watch this space” hooks your readers, and they will come back to you.
Include a beginning, a middle and an end structure
Most fiction stories adhere to a beginning, middle and an end structure. Your stories also should follow this structure. Make your opening as strong as possible. A strong opening helps in keeping your audience glued. The middle should flesh out your characters, their conflicts or situations they face. Let your readers enjoy the ride from the beginning to the end. Make your end a resolution. If your audience likes what you say, then they will spread the word. You will eventually have more people coming back to you.
Infuse personality and creativity
Nobody likes listening to boring stories that are narrated in a monotone. Include your personality in your story. Narrate your story with confidence. Include some humor and your persona as you narrate. This personal touch connects the audience with you. As soon as you establish a bond with them, you are halfway on your way to win their hearts.
Include inspirational experiences or stories
An inspirational story or experience based on yours or somebody else’s life inspires your readers. You should be able to create characters and build stories that motivate your audience. As long as you do not exaggerate or overdo, you can be rest assured that the audience will be with you.
The key to successful marketing of your book lies in building story experiences that your audience can connect to.
Image credit: Nick Piggott on flickr and reproduced under Creative Commons 2.0[author] [author_image timthumb=’on’]https://writingtipsoasis.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Smitha-Abraham.jpg[/author_image] [author_info]I’m Smitha Abraham. I love traveling in my flights of imagination and use these flights to craft short stories and poetry. I am a budding writer from India. My passions are reading, creative writing, listening to music, learning new languages, meeting new people, getting acquainted with different cultures and traveling. Authors like Isabel Allende, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Carlos Ruiz Zafón, genres like magic realism, historical romance, and writing styles that are imaginative and flow effortlessly fascinate me. I love to unwind with a book curled up on a sofa or by gazing at the stars by the sea shore. I am a nature lover and spending time admiring the sunset and sunrise is relaxing for me.[/author_info] [/author]