“No one cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.”
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt’s words still stand as sound advice for powerful communication in the 21st century.
If you what you say is to have any impact, you need to understand what your audience needs from you.
A helpful starting point is the work of social psychologist Amy Cuddy in her book ‘Presence’.
She writes that there are two fundamental questions we ask ourselves when we meet someone for the first time:
‘Can this person help me?’ and ‘Can I trust this person?’
And which answer do you think we value most?
Trust.
This is what psychologists call warmth before competence.
The first goal in all your communication should be to build empathy with your audience.
For people to be receptive to the facts, figures and logic of your business, they first need to be open emotionally to you as a human being.
In short, you need to build rapport.
In the online world, video is the most effective tool you have at your disposal to build that affinity.
In a video, your audience can look you in the eye, hear your voice, and see what you do. This is the closest we get in the online world to replicating a face to face interaction.
But if all you do in your videos is bombard people with facts, you’re not making the most of the medium.
Instead, build emotional connection by sharing stories.
When you tell a story, you invite the audience to share in our experience and join you on an emotional journey. Stories let you reveal your true motivations and passions, as well as your vulnerabilities and failures.
All this builds rapport, connection and trust and makes it far more likely your audience will seek out the answer to that second question: ‘Can this person help me?’
Ideas for storytelling videos
For some inspiration have a look at these blogs on storytelling videos:
Brand storytelling: Find your inner superhero and share your origin story.
Internal communications: Sharing employee stories for ownership and increased engagement
Bring client testimonials to life with storytelling: Client Testimonial or Client Story?
Harness this simple storytelling structure to identify stories in your business: The ABC of Brand Storytelling
