Why tell stories? We humans are narrative animals. Stories are how we make sense of the world. When you meet someone for the first time, you tell yourself a story about who they are and, at the same time, they are telling a story about you. Stories are how we connect with each other.

If you want your audience to remember something, wrap it in a story. Your ideas will be easier for them to retain. Concepts are easier to follow when presented as stories. These skills sound simple but when put into practice, they are powerful.

The reason is that, in our era, controlling attention is power, with every online influencer, network, software platform, and brand competing for a piece of your mind. Also in the contest for your attention are social media platforms, which are built not only to grab your attention, but also to break it into smaller and smaller fragments.

So it should make sense that if you can build the skill of capturing attention, you will become powerful in the information economy. You’ll be an able competitor amid all the other brands, platforms, networks and influencers.

The secret to holding attention is to tell a story, and it’s especially important to tell a story that unfolds over time. You want your audience to discover your message online, connecting with the story you tell, and wanting to come back for more, bridging any attention gaps.

This applies across all media. If you are a public speaker, you want to hold your audience’s attention and get booked for the next gig. If you’re a startup founder, your story can win you the funding you need. If you are looking for support for a social impact project, the story you tell connects you with a supportive community and can launch your project.

Stories hold attention because of their structure. All successful stories have a framework. In the simplest expression of this framework, there is a set-up and a payoff. Put another way, a successful story makes a promise and then delivers on it. The story you tell will succeed or fail based on this, whether it is a podcast, a pitch, prevention, campaign, or video.

Your audience is looking to be entertained, but they also want to be enlightened. For them to feel satisfied with your story, it must leave them in a higher state of consciousness than when they arrived, feeling smarter, deeper, or better, even in the most subtle way. Stories that show change are good but stories that create change in their audiences are even better.

Online media is a conversation between creators and audiences. The most effective online media unfolds over time, in episodes, classes, chapters, or in a multi-part series that captures attention over the long term.

That’s how you stand out, how you or your brand become memorable, how projects get launched and funded.

We’ve become used to entertainment and information being delivered to us using screens large and small. And while the technical bar to entry to create memorable media has never been lower, there’s another, higher level for a creator. When your audience experiences you in person, when you show up to speak, to present, to perform, that action has special value today, in the era of screens. The value of person-to-person connection has never been higher.

Winning attention is the biggest win of our age, and that’s I’ve focused Red Cup Agency on sharing effective storytelling frameworks through classes and consultations.

The Storyline Sessions

I’ve taken what I’ve learned about storytelling and put it into the Storyline Sessions, a series of masterclasses for startup founders, social impact communicators, and architects. Learn more about the Storyline Sessions.

Red Cup Agency

It’s challenging and fun to stretch the boundaries of what we call a story, whether it is told in a minute, or an hour, on your phone, or desktop, or on the page. The format varies but the storytelling framework remains consistent.

At Red Cup Agency, I offer consulting services to get your podcast started. I also offer consulting about how to sustain and optimize your production, saving your time, money, and effort.

Let’s make a great story. Check out Red Cup Agency services.

Lee Schneider