The Importance of Story Sharing

A good friend of mine, Gin Phillips, recently sold her first novel (The Well and the Mine, Hawthorne Books 2008). It's a beautiful novel, by the way, and is loosely based on the stories she grew up hearing from her grandmother and great aunts about their childhood in a small coal mining town. Last week, Gin was in my town for a reading and book signing at our local library, and as the event began, I was so glad to look around and see that the room was full.

There were a number of people in the audience who are probably around the same age as Gin's grandmother and could identify with the tales of hard work, poverty, racism and simple pleasures detailed in the book. Actually, when Gin finished reading and opened the floor for Q&A, a number of those people raised their hands not to ask a question, but to share some of their own stories. While that's not typical for an author reading event, it was actually kind of heartwarming: Gin had shared her stories; they wanted to share theirs too. So we all listened to one man tell about his memory of watching FDR roll into the train station in his hometown for the funeral of a local statesman, and a white-haired woman tell of her first year as a teacher in a coal mining town.

The whole experience reminded me of why content marketing is so effective: because we all love to hear good stories. And when others share their stories, we want to share ours back. When you share your organization's stories with customers, through a newsletter or magazine or online publication, they'll get to know you, and they'll often want to share their stories (and their business) with you too. That's a conversation worth starting.