Why We Need a Core Story for Our Business

Humans are hardwired for stories. We love to hear them. We love to tell them. Also, we tend to remember things better when they come to us in a story form. So, why not tell stories for our business to help stand apart from the competition and make it easier for potential customers to remember us?

Swap Boring Business Descriptions with Stories

We use the term “core story” for our default, basic, go-to descriptions for a company. Often, companies string together a few facts for business descriptions, which can serve the purpose but also be dry and boring. Think about how often we describe our companies – on our websites, social channels, networking sites, conference or event materials, and more. Let’s use every opportunity we can to connect with our customers, employees, investors, and more through stories.

A Core Story as the Starting Point

Our core story is meant to guide all our other content that we need to create. This is especially helpful for small business owners who don’t have a lot of time to market the business. Once we have a go to starting point, we can develop the rest of our content from this single source. 

Discover Our Core Story

When just starting out, it can sometimes be difficult to think through what to include in our core stories. Check out our 25 Questions to Help You Discover Your Business Story for a list of questions to help kick off the brainstorming. This can help gather ideas about the history of our business, what sets us apart from our competitors, and our future visions for our company.

Build Our Core Business Story

Then, narrow down which messages are most important to include in our core story. How do we pick? We always think about the people we want to reach:

• What is important to them? 
• What do they care about? 
• What will set us apart in their eyes? 
• What is unique about us that they will remember months from now?

This helps us write our first drafts to capture the initial story and details. Then, we continue to edit it until we are happy with it. During the editing phase, share it with a few people to get feedback as well. 

Take Action

Try this out for your business. To help, download our five story starters with blanks to fill in as starting points to develop your core story. Or, if you want a little more help, check out our online course on how to write your business description.

Other Articles You Might Like

• How to Deliver a Presentation that People Will Remember
• The Art of Storytelling for Business and Beyond: The Human Mind Connection
• The Psychology of Storytelling in Business
• 3 Books to Become a Better Communicator in Business
• How to Give a Killer Speech

Like what you read? You can sign up for email updates for tips, worksheets and advice delivered straight to your inbox. Our resources are always simple and actionable because you do not have time for anything else when you are running your own business!