Adding Emotion to Our Business Stories

Adding emotion to our business stories can help make them more memorable for the people we want to reach. Connecting emotionally can help foster connections while differentiating us from our competitors.

What Does it Mean to Add “Emotion” to a Business Story?

We want our intended audiences to personally connect with and relate to what we say. So, ideally, they see themselves or someone they know in the story. We want to share the facts of the story—including who was there, what happened, where it took place, when it happened, and more. Then, we want to layer in details that make it easier for people to emotionally connect with the story. Below are four ideas to help add these emotional details.

Tip #1: Get Vulnerable

It can be powerful to share personal experiences and feelings with our audiences, particularly when they are not necessarily positive. For example, we might share a story about a time we were scared or made a mistake. Since the people in our audience have likely felt similar emotions or faced similar situations, the story can resonate more deeply with them as well as they recall their own personal experiences.

Tip #2: Make it Relatable

We want to make our business stories relatable to the audiences and situations we share them. For example, sharing a challenge we faced during our career or growing our business will include details specific to our situation. But, it can also include elements that are more universally felt, such as facing a big decision or needing to pivot quickly based on factors in the market. When we tell our stories, we want to make sure the way we tell it leaves room for people to be able to relate to those universal scenarios.

Tip #3: Pair Personal Details with Professional Ones

Remember that non-work stories can also be successfully used in business settings. Whether it is sharing a lesson learned from taking care of an aging relative or an experience that took place on a recent vacation, these life moments can lend themselves to help illustrate certain points we want to make at work. By sharing personal details, it can also help our audiences emotionally connect with the stories and messages.

Tip #4: Paint a Picture

To emotionally connect with a story, it helps if the audience can envision it. Include the five senses when you can so people can smell the scents in the air, hear what is happening, see colors or other visual details, and more. This helps our stories come alive. On a side note, this is also part of the reason why videos tend to be such a powerful and compelling way to share our messages because it gives people more visual cues along with the words.

But, Make Sure It’s Still Authentic

One note of caution: When we layer in details meant to emotionally connect with people, we want to make sure the final story still sounds authentic to us. We should feel comfortable and confident telling our stories. So, if we don’t normally use a lot of description when we tell a story, then we might include one detail about how something looked or smelled but we don’t want to overdue it. Pick and choose from these ideas but always do it through the filter of what works for you as an individual.

Take Action

Pick an upcoming opportunity to add a story–it could presenting a project update, updating website copy, drafting a social post, or something else. After developing the initial draft, take another pass through the story to try incorporating some of the strategies discussed here.

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