Article Marketing Tips for Using Story to Ramp Up Your Writing

Grab your audience's attention with story. (Photo by Richard Hammond.)

When you read article marketing tips, they always begin with “write a great article.” It’s easy to know a bad article when you see one. Uninspiring. Boring. Blah. Makes you want to click off before the creeping gray mess infests your brain. It’s not as easy to see it when you’ve written it.

Here’s a technique, often left out of the article marketing tips, that is guaranteed to make your article burst into color and make your reader forget that he’s reading but afterwards remember what he read.

It’s story. Let me tell you one.

The Power of Story

Back in the ’80s a friend of a friend took his kids to see a movie. I don’t remember what it was. On the way home, his kids announced that they were going to be vegetarians because of what they saw. Regardless of what you think of movies, child-rearing, or vegetarianism, the fact that a couple of kids can go from being hamburger-lovers to committed vegetarians in less than two hours is testimony to the power of story.

Story is hardwired into us. Every culture from the beginning of human existence has expressed its deepest truths in stories. Scientists are discovering that the inner language of the brain is made up of simple declarative sentences addressing problems with solutions — stories. As we sleep, our minds take the cares and concerns of the day and transform them into dreams — stories.

All around us, smart marketers use stories to teach, sell, and persuade — from beer commercials to political campaigns to that sales page that had you reaching for your wallet before you got to the last call to action.

Stories work because each member of the audience identifies with the main character in the drama. The character’s problem becomes my problem and I experience the solution. That’s true for fairy tales, movies, commercials, and articles.

How to Use Stories in Your Articles

But we’re talking about nonfiction articles here, not a screenplay. Here are some article marketing tips to use stories to make your writing more powerful:

1. Structure the article like a story. Aristotle said every drama has a beginning, middle, and an end. Well, duh. But think of it like a movie.

At the beginning, the character has a problem. Then something happens to change his world and challenge him to the core. That part is the middle. At the end, after triumphing over the difficulties, he returns to his old life a new person, and has also solved the problem that plagued him at the beginning.

How can you do that in 300-600 words? Briefly.

Begin with a problem. Make it clear and visceral to the reader. In the middle, address the problem. Offer your solution. At the end, emphasize how the solution fixed the specific problem that opened the article.

2. Use case studies or testimonials. Tell about other people who have used this solution and the results they received. Again, structure each testimonial to begin with the problem and show how the solution solved that problem.

3. Personalize statistics. Facts and statistics are important in some topics, but they can cause people’s eyes to glaze over. When you give dry facts and figures, stop and show what they mean in one person’s life.

You might say something like this: “There are 1.6 million new cases of diabetes identified in people aged 20 and older. Each of those people has a higher risk of going blind, having a foot cut off because of wounds that won’t heal, or dying of heart or kidney disease.”

You might also illustrate it with a “suppose” story: “Suppose a woman, call her Rachael, is diagnosed with diabetes. Rachael doesn’t think it’s important to mind her diet. Here’s what could happen.”

Finding ways to show how the statistics apply to one specific person can make them alive and memorable to your reader.

4. Use sensory language. Different people learn in different ways, so appeal to different senses as you write. Give visual, auditory, and hands-on details to make your stories pop for all your readers and draw them deeper into your message.

How Not to Use Stories in Your Articles

There are some things to be careful about. First, get to the point. Understand the point of your story, and give only the information you need to get it across. This is true whether you’re writing 500 words or 100,000.

Second, keep the focus on one problem. If what you offer solves two different problems, talk about them in two different articles. You want a direct and perfectly matched link between the problem and solution.

Finally, don’t lie. If you have a real testimony, that’s great. But if you don’t, an “imagine” example can be just as effective. The anger a person feels at having been lied to in this way is gut-level and intensely bitter.

The power of story is in the human imagination. It puts your audience at the center of the drama and makes them feel as if they have personally experienced the events.

When you incorporate stories into your articles, they capture the readers’ attention and help them understand the point as if they’ve lived it.