If you missed the first part of this post, you can find it here
Remembering can take a little effort, though. It’s worth the time it will take to go back in your mind and write down what your situation was like. What’s your story? What did you feel? What did you dream about? What did you fear? What was preventing you from having it? What happened that made you decide once and for all that you were going to go for it? What problems did you come against when you first started your journey to where you are now? How did you struggle? How did you overcome those things? What do you have at this point that makes the struggle worth it? In what ways have you changed that you didn’t expect? What will you have in the future as you continue to go forward?
Does that sound a little bit like a movie? It’s an age-old story formula called The Hero’s Journey and it’s the foundation for almost every epic story (I actually can’t think of any that don’t use this formula in one way or another, if you think of any, leave a comment). It’s Romeo and Juliet, it’s Star Wars, it’s The Odyssey, it’s timeless because it’s wildly compelling. We are hard-wired for story. Brain research has proven that when we listen to someone’s story, our brains react as if we had actually experienced it.
I’ll go into more detail about storytelling in a later post, but for right now, grab a pen or open up your laptop and start capturing your story. Once you know your story, you’ll know your tribe.
The more you share your story, the better it gets and the more people you will attract to your tribe. Telling your story may even attract some of your friends and family, but since you aren’t desperately chasing them, they’ll become willing members of your tribe and far more open to hearing about what you offer.
Once you have the first iteration of your story written, go through and make a list of characteristics in it, you’ll probably find a lot of adjectives. Those adjectives describe your tribe members and offer great clues about keywords to use to find them.
Coming up next time: Building home for your tribe. We’ll go into to setting up your web properties in a way that attracts your tribe and makes them feel at home.
Does that sound a little bit like a movie? It’s an age-old story formula called The Hero’s Journey and it’s the foundation for almost every epic story (I actually can’t think of any that don’t use this formula in one way or another, if you think of any, leave a comment). It’s Romeo and Juliet, it’s Star Wars, it’s The Odyssey, it’s timeless because it’s wildly compelling. We are hard-wired for story. Brain research has proven that when we listen to someone’s story, our brains react as if we had actually experienced it.
I’ll go into more detail about storytelling in a later post, but for right now, grab a pen or open up your laptop and start capturing your story. Once you know your story, you’ll know your tribe.
The more you share your story, the better it gets and the more people you will attract to your tribe. Telling your story may even attract some of your friends and family, but since you aren’t desperately chasing them, they’ll become willing members of your tribe and far more open to hearing about what you offer.
Once you have the first iteration of your story written, go through and make a list of characteristics in it, you’ll probably find a lot of adjectives. Those adjectives describe your tribe members and offer great clues about keywords to use to find them.
Coming up next time: Building home for your tribe. We’ll go into to setting up your web properties in a way that attracts your tribe and makes them feel at home.