Yesterday we explored WHY stories can be such a powerful communication tool on your blog.
Today we’ll look at 14 types of stories that you might like to try on your blog.
14 Types of Stories You Can Tell On Your Blog
- Personal Discovery Stories – tell how you discovered a lesson. These stories show your readers how similar you are to them and also might give some practical advice on how they might learn from your experience.
- Stories as Analogies and Illustrations – tell a story that on the surface has nothing to do with your topic but which illustrates a principle that is relevant.
- Success Stories – tell how you achieved something. These stories can be inspirational and motivating for your readers.
- Failure Stories – I find that these stories are incredibly powerful – particularly if you are able to show some lessons learnt through a failure.
- Tell Someone Else’s Story – sharing the journey of someone else and how/what they learned can be effective
- How I did it Stories – these practical stories can be effective because they talk your readers through a process in a relatable way
- Biographies – pick a key person in your niche and tell your readers that person’s story – pulling out useful parts that can be applied and used to enhance your readers lives.
- Autobiographies – tell your own story from start to finish. I’ve done this a couple of times (example) and find readers really respond well to it. It can also be something to link to from your About Page for further reading.
- Picture Stories – using images or video can be another great way of communicating a story because it engages the senses in a way that text can’t (similarly – audio posts/podcasts can do this too).
- Case Studies – quite often pulling apart someone else’s experience in a case study can be a powerful way to connect with readers. Similarly you can use your own story, or the story of a project, brand or company that you had something to do with can be useful.
- Fiction – if well written a made up and imaginative story can be a good way to lead into a post. You’ll probably want to come clean about the fact that it’s not true though :-)
- Reader Stories – ask your readers to tell you their stories/experiences on a topic. You might kick things off with a short one of your own but then quickly hand it over to others to share.
- Collective Stories – sometimes telling the story of a group of people, industry, niche etc can be very powerful. This might be presented as a ‘history of….’ your niche/industry which chronicles key developments over time. These pieces can almost become reference material for others in your industry.
- Imagine If…. Stories – another type of story that I’ve seen used well on occasion is one where you get your reader to imagine a hypothetical scenario that they are in. Here’s an example of this where I told a story in the 2nd person (with YOU the reader as the main character). These posts can be particularly useful for getting readers to FEEL something or to help them to understand that the problem that you’re writing about is one that is personal for them.
I’m sure there are plenty of other types of stories to tell. Feel free to suggest your own in comments below. I’d also love to see examples of where you’ve tried some of these story telling techniques (and others) as part of your blogging and to hear your stories of how they went!
Great ideas. I might also suggest telling some “off subject” stories that could potentially surprise/impress your audience. This might also be a great way to find out what kind of additional content your audience would like to see.
Great article,great points.I am telling success stories of business world in my blog.
5 and 10 will be quite useful if you are active blogger.
Stories are worth the time you spend crafting them into your article or blog. It’s inspiring to learn someone successful had the same problems you’re tearing your hair off over, and overcame them. They motivate you to keep going forward. .I sometimes use personal discovery, success, failure, how I did it and autobiography style stories to illustrate my points and find my readers are more open to discussion, commenting and even giving suggestions after, as opposed to ‘dryly’ lecturing the information.
People also love lists of the top (whatever number of) things in a given topic.
Great list though.
Darren,
Your content continues to inspire myself and other bloggers.
I get so energized and enthusiastic when I read your blogs.
I’ve been thinking about setting up a new blog for awhile. Finally, it was set-up over the weekend. Thanks to your energy.
I’ll definitely post a personal or a failure story on my blog someday.
Keep up the good work!
Peter
Last month a few of my blogging buddies actually believed my flight of fancy that the president of Bulgaria whisked my family and friends over to his country in his mach17 jet for a weekend of traditional Bulgarian-style camping. So, any such fictions will be confessed to at the bottom of the post. Great learning experience for me.
Excellent! I keep hearing how people run out of things to write but using stories you have shown that there is no end to the things you can write on your blog.
My most recent blog, ‘out of work, build a website’ uses video to tell the story but you have given me many more ideas.
Thanks for all you do.
Bill Morgan
The Job Swami Career Blog
http://www.thejobswami.com
Great post.Got a lot inspiration to write from this
helor Darren,
I like your blog posts very much. Your writing are very inspiring. I already addicted to your writing.
What can i say about your article. Excellent write up.
It will help me a lot because i am new to the blogging. Thaks for everything.
agree. Too many stories we can share with our readers.
I love reading your post. This is a perfect guide. Thanks for sharing this one.
Darren, this post has given me so many ideas that are so helpful. Going to bookmark it and reference the points when I intend to use story. I strongly believe story is a great way to engage and connect with online and offline audience of ALL age groups. Being a trainer, I experienced the power of story in delivering a message or concept.
I like to use aesop fables, my personal and others experience as my story to tell.
Thanks so much!
Stories are great. But it should be told in such a way that it does not makes the reader bore.
thank you, I am happy to visit your blog. you think, should we write a story that favored visitors or stories that we like? if writing stories that I liked but not in the interest many visitors, making me get bored quickly
Other types of stories include back in time and forward in time. eg. What will blogging be like in 25 years?
Thanks for the post it too informative.You provided information for Promoting blogs is really valuable.I appreciate it lol and seems to me too interesting.
Good article. I bet it’s not such a good idea to tell embarrassing stories about our bosses
I like using picture stories, they tell a thousand words. :)
Dang! Who’d’ve thought there were so many variations! That’s a fertile mind you have there, Darren. Many thanks for all the ideas. Best regards, P. :)
I think spreading out your story types will confuse readers of your blog, this is a great list but I think people should stick to a handful of these types. It’ll be great to see which type of story makes more money or gets more clicks, someone get the stats up! :)
Good article. I love reading your post. This is a perfect guide. Thanks for sharing this one.
I think failure stories are not welcome, because people want to hear success stories. There are many bloggers losing their credibility because they blog about how they failed. This is quite boring to read. Thanks for sharing. Great post.
Prasanga, I think if the failure story shows the lessons as mentioned then people can learn from it which is why, for me, these stories can be powerful.
I like real human stories and we have all experienced failure, so why not include them?
Thanks a lot for sharing this Incredibly useful article with us. You have a cool blog, just keep adding more interesting posts, I have you bookmarked. Will be back again.
I am so bookmarking this for the next time I get a writers or Bloggers block!! Great ideas!!
Aside from articles and pictures, videos too tells more! Mine is not a story its a videogame blog. Glad I bumped to this post added new insights in writing articles..Thanks
I think so nice posting.
I’ll follow your way
It’s good that you pull no punches in pointing out the power of failure stories can be so powerful. In fact, many sales blogs and letters use them. Many times the writer says he used to be broke and had his car reposessed. I’ll have to try it.
I usually do the “How Am I Doing?” kind of posts at my blog. Showing my fellow bloggers and readers my progress as an online marketer, a profession I’d like to do really well.
Andy Michaels
http://www.andy-michaels.com/
Interesting subject.
I typically write my opinions on something or a certain story or situation I found myself in.
Maybe its time i became a little more diverse :)
Check me out: http://blakes-blogg.blogspot.com/
Thanks
The renowned hypnotherapist Milton Erickson used this method consistently to get his point across and to allow the participant to engage and to come to a solution for himself. It is brilliant as engaging is the key. Story telling…its how we learnt basic life.
Such a great blog Darren…never fail to get valuable points and reminders from you. Thanks.
I have tried this STORY approach with my article writing but my results were not good.
If I recall right, my CTRs fell like 50% and conversions suffered badly!
But that may have been because of the niche and there might have been other factors. This was also ages ago, when I was relatively new to marketing. I’m definitely going to give “story telling” another shot. After all, it’s one of the few things that I do well nowadays! LOL
i think you has describe many type of what we should write in a blog. however, some time we wanna write some thing happy in our blog, but that’s different with our niche.
My only contention is the Failure Stories – If they’re about you I think you then have to show how you turned your faliure around into a success story! And how do you do that without coming across as boastful? It’s tricky….
Good tips.. Don’t take all of the method.. Just grab 3-4 method and elaborate it to become a great article