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You're listening to Up an Octave, a podcast by Sonivia, the podcasting agency that believes that women and non binary people deserve to take up space in the podcasting industry because our thoughts, voices, and stories matter. Here you'll learn how to make dope podcasts that inspire, educate, convert, and most importantly, make your voice shine.
I'm your host, Rue Spence, and I'm here to take podcasting up an octave. Let's get into it.
Welcome back to Up an Octave. Today, we are talking about how you can implement storytelling techniques to strengthen your podcast and to make it more engaging for your audience. So, this is not just for the fiction or narrative or story podcast, this is for my business owners out there, my hustlers, my funnel and fandom podcasters, as well as just the hobbyists out there.
If you are not implementing storytelling techniques, you are selling yourself short and you are missing out on a huge way of engaging with your audience and keeping your content fresh and exciting. So let's dive in. One of the main things about implementing storytelling techniques into your podcast is that it's going to humanize your content.
So, whatever you're talking about, and especially if it's something that's typically seen as a little bit more dry or not as engaging to people who aren't totally in your ecosystem, using storytelling can help to give it a human element and can help to Buy into people's emotions, make them feel a connection with what you're doing, the work that you're creating, and the work that you're doing if it's in your business.
Storytelling helps to make that drier content kind of carry a heartbeat of its own, so that people buy in more and feel connected to you and connected to what you're doing. It also helps people stay engaged. It's way easier to stay engaged by following a story. And if you ever sat through a super dense history class that was just, on this date, this happened.
On this date, this happened. On this date, this happened. Like, you didn't internalize and remember as much of that as if you read, like, a super exciting biography that feels like you're just reading a story, and you get swept up in the characters and all that, and then you go, oh my gosh, I'm learning history.
The same is true with podcasting. If all you're doing is regurgitating data, regurgitating stats, regurgitating information, you're going to lose people immediately. They're already gone. Bye. But if you can relate it and create a human connection by saying, this is why this statistic matters. This is why this data is significant to you.
That's going to help people feel more connected and feel more like they're wanting to buy into what you're doing and give a hoot about what you're doing. It also helps people really grasp the significance of what you're creating. Anyone can say, Oh, 73 percent of people experience this. But if you can say, Hi, today, I'm going to take you into the life of Susie.
She's a 15 year old little girl from Michigan, and she experiences period poverty. That's going to help your listeners get it. It's going to make your content something that they cannot turn away from. Because it makes it human. That human aspect is what's missing from so much content, from so much advertising, and from so many podcasts, that if you can really get people to see Susie as a human being and not just a number, it's gonna make you un turn off able.
Now, in the world of social media marketing, we are always talking about creating a compelling hook. And creating kind of a narrative for using storytelling arcs is going to do that within your podcast. So, instead of just saying, Hey, Today, we're going to talk about this and 22 percent of people do do do do do do.
If you start with getting people to fall in love with someone, like I mentioned Susie, this kid who experiences period poverty. If you can start with the story, if you can start with, this is a time when I didn't think I was going to be able to pay my bills and then I X, Y, Z. Or if you start with, this is a time when You know, I thought my whole life was going to fall apart, and here's how I turned it into my superpower.
If you can start with that, as opposed to just, boom, here's some data, that's going to make people want to hear how the story progresses. It's going to keep them engaged. And, you know, there is some podcasting strategy to that as well, that like, if you have an ad break mid roll, you want to keep them there through that, and if you just start fact dumping or giving everything away right at the top of the episode, it's not going to be as captivating for retention.
But also, it's just not as interesting to listen to. Now, the thing with the hook of storytelling, is to make sure that it's going to be something that is relevant or interesting to your audience. So finding a sweet spot of, here's a problem that I solved that my listeners are probably also looking to solve.
So a story that I often tell on my show is about when I started my very first podcast, not being able to find resources for voices like mine, for what we traditionally think of as female voices. And how difficult that made learning to podcast and what a barrier that provided for me trying to become a successful podcaster.
And I tell that story, not to toot my own horn, but I tell it to explain my passion, to explain the inequity within the industry. And I tell it to explain why I do what I do. And so if you have a story like that, or if you have a story that's funny, that other people who are in your industry are going to relate to, those are all things that we're all experiencing.
You know, if you're a parenting podcast, I'm in the throes of toddlerdom right now. And so anytime that I see or consume or hear content that talks about toddler realness, you've got me hook, line, and sinker because it's holding up that mirror that makes me go, Okay, I see myself in this. Something that I think is a little bit tougher for like a non fiction business oriented type podcast Is the idea of creating a narrative arc, and this is especially helpful if you're doing one of those, you know, like I talked about, talking to the pain points, etc.
That is somewhere that it's especially helpful to have this, like, narrative arc. I don't think you need to have a narrative arc in every episode. Creating that beginning, middle, and end just helps the content to flow. It helps people to understand What's happening, when it's happening, and this can be done with segments, this can be done with templates, but the idea is that you want people to feel kind of like they know what's coming next.
You want your audience to be able to not see the ending coming, but to kind of know what the beats are gonna be. You know, if you are a romance reader and there's not a happily ever after at the end, you're going to feel shortchanged because you kind of think you know what to expect. You're going to have a meeting of these two people.
They get together. Something pushes them apart. They find their way back together again, happily ever after. You know, if those beats aren't there, your audience feels unfulfilled because that's what they're coming for. So giving people kind of this structure that they know this is going to have this kind of resolution is really comforting.
And that often helps with your retention too, if people feel like it's a little safer, it's a little cozy to be able to predict the style of the storytelling. Storytelling is also a super great place to kind of toot your own horn. You can talk about client experiences, show kind of this proof of this is what I have done successfully in the past, this is a problem that I helped to solve.
That's somewhere that, you know, having storytelling can also be helpful, but also it's a great way to showcase tension and resolution. So talking about these common obstacles or dilemmas that people who are in your niche or people who are, you know, your consumers are facing. And then guiding them through to that resolution.
So that's kind of taking them down to the ending. You know, you get this really high tension of like, I know that you're struggling with this. I know that this feels like it's world ending. And then let me help you coast down the rollercoaster into this really feel good spot of Having your questions answered and being able to use that kind of model, that kind of sloping to give them practical insights and solutions that they can apply is also going to help keep them coming back for more.
It's going to help them feel like they know that you're going to really see this issue. At the beginning, you're going to build that tension and then you're going to taper it off by providing them real life solutions that are going to be game changers for their business, their personal life, whatever it is that your niche is targeting.
And then of course, use descriptive language to clarify complex topics. So what I mean by that is explain something through storytelling. I love an analogy, I love a metaphor, I love a meandering little story that kind of gets to. What I'm talking about in a different flavor and that's something that you can use as well You know if you want to talk about something that your business has solved for someone else Doing it through a story or doing it through these kind of analogies can help people understand information differently Again, it goes back to humanizing it, but it also helps people to kind of think about how they can implement it for themselves You know if you are in the fitness space and you say I'm Work out for an hour a day.
That feels so prescriptive that it can feel challenging to people. But if you can talk about, I have this client, Susie, it's a different Susie this time, uh, she lives in Texas. I have this client, Susie, and, you know, she's a busy parent and runs a business, blah, blah, blah. And so we started talking about what, how an hour of exercise could fit in her life.
And now she does a 20 minute walk with the dog in the morning, and she does Pilates for 20 minutes on her lunch break. And then she jumps on the trampoline with her kids for 20 minutes in the evening. If you give these kind of real life solutions and stories, you can help people start to think of things as, Hmm, how could I implement that in my life?
How could I be like Susie? Could I jump on a trampoline with my kids for 20 minutes after dinner? Instead of just giving this prescriptive, the American Heart Association recommends that all adults blah blah blah blah blah for X amount of time each day. That doesn't necessarily get the wheels turning for people, which also then doesn't make it feel attainable to them.
Same with, you know, if you're in the entrepreneur space and you're like, cool, I made a million dollars when I was like 20 years old. People are gonna be like, well, that's great for you. That's not my reality. But if you can break it down into these steps of this is what I did, this is the trials and tribulations that I experienced, and here's how I overcame that, here's how I think you could implement that, that's gonna make it more approachable to people, which then again makes them buy into your special sauce.
And with using those case studies as stories. You can highlight the transformation, you can highlight how your offering was the fix or how the choices that you made were your own fix, depending on what kind of niche you're in and allow people to trust you and allow people to start to see again, how that factors into their own life with these analogies with humanizing the subject, you're creating a relatable atmosphere.
And, uh, a huge way that I do this is my girl Susie. She's been like three different people on this podcast episode alone, and that's just my go to name, mental image of someone I can talk about. So by creating Susie, I've given you a way to think about different things. Susie is this person, Susie is that person, and if you've been with me for a while, you know it's always gonna be Susie.
But, using that, even though it's this made up name, I don't actually know a single Susie in my real life. But by making this information into a real person, by naming her, I'm helping to showcase these different realities. And that helps people Not get caught up in the nitty gritty, not get caught up in the details, but just to be like, Okay, there's a lady named Susie somewhere and she is this.
So when you do that, you're humanizing that information. You're helping people really see it as reality, which breaks down some of those barriers that people experience between data and reality. A huge thing with my nonfiction podcast, Girlies, And clients is, I see a lot of times that it's hard to get into real emotions.
It's hard to share struggles, it's hard to share setbacks, it's even sometimes hard to share wins. But all of these things make your content, and you, More relatable, more authentic, more easy to engage with, and more likely to be someone that your audience is wanting to work with. So get real. Be ungoogleable.
That's something I talk about all the time, is Be the special sauce that people are looking for, but that they cannot find on Google. Bring your Eunice, bring your Yeah, I made a million dollars by the time I was 20, but what you probably don't know is that I was adopted from an orphanage, or whatever that looks like, whatever that story is for you.
Getting into that reality is also going to help humanize you and it's also going to make your content breathe and have a life of its own by not just making it data. And then finally, you know, we talked a little bit about kind of always having that resolution at the end, having the story arc of your narrative, but always make sure that you are wrapping things up with a bow.
That ties back to your goal, whatever the goal of your show is, if it's to get you new clients, if it's to build a huge Patreon following, whatever that looks like, make sure that your episode is always ending in a way that guides people towards your desired outcome. Give them actionable takeaways. Give them actionable steps, things that they can apply to their own life and things that make them want to explore a relationship with you, with your business, with your offer, whatever that thing is.
Make sure that in that period of your show, you're using strong calls to action that encourage your listeners to take the next step. Whatever that is, whether that's signing up for your newsletter, signing up for your Patreon, enrolling in your workshop, whatever that thing is. Make sure that you're deploying a call to action.
It is just dead real estate if you're not using it, and it's the opportunity that you're going to have to get people who are currently in your bubble to do a thing for you, whether that's helping your show grow or making sure that they're signing up for your class, whatever that thing is, Use that real estate, consider that as the epilogue of the story that you're telling.
Alright, that's it for today. Thank you so much for being here and listening. I hope that this helps you kind of think about the way that you Orchestrate your podcast differently, especially if you are one of my serious, more business oriented podcasters. But I really do believe in the power of storytelling.
I believe that it holds magic and that it can help you get closer to your goals. I will be back next week. Uh, in the meantime, you can find me over on Instagram or on threads at Sonivia Studios. You can shoot me a DM there or you can email me. Email me at rue. sonivia at gmail. com. I do want to take just a minute to say that it's almost time to vote, so please make sure that you have a plan.
It is beyond critical to get out there and make your voice heard. Usually we talk about making your voice heard through podcasting, but voting, if you are eligible and in the United States, is such a powerful way to get your voice heard. So please make sure that you have a plan. Please make sure that you are educated on the choice that you're making, both on the national scale, but also on the equally and sometimes even more important local scale that impacts your community directly.
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