There are many times when we need to tell stories in our business and marketing. Nicola outlines a 5-point plan for making sure you are telling stories with the most impact!

Clicks And Leads is a "tongue in cheek" digital marketing Vzine by entrepreneur, author, podcaster, speaker, Nicola Cairncross.

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Okay, well, it's Nicola here and I'm just about to head off to the Amora Hotel for the SuperFastBusiness Live conference. Starts tomorrow and goes on for the next day, big dinner tomorrow night. But most people are getting together this afternoon as they're sort of arriving in, so I'm going to go down and meet a few people that I've met only online, which is going to be exciting.

I've had an amazing week, I've had just an incredible week. I was speaking for a big corporate coaching company on Thursday night, and then they took me out to dinner at Cafe Sydney on Friday night, which was just the most incredible view over Sydney Harbour from the customs house.

Then I went down to Wollonngong to see my friends Lorraine and George. Lorraine, where I shared flats with her when we were in our teens, so that's how long we've known each other. And I had to go down on the train and they got the most amazing trains here, they're double deckers! I don't know why I found that so exciting, but I did.

So you step onto the train at platform level, and then you can either go upstairs or downstairs. Fabulous. I do, I do get excited about silly things. And that was really lovely. Lorraine laid out a spread in her garden. And it wasn't particularly sunny but it was warm enough to see outside and they've got a little deck and a pool and everything, as they all do over here.

And then what happened? Yeah, I've just had a really incredible time going around. I've had my nails done, I've been resting, I've been learning about writing from a master class I bought, and I've been treating myself to lots of lovely deli kind of food and the odd meal out as well as hanging out with my brother quite a lot which is nice.

So let's get on with the show, shall we?

So this week I want to talk to you about story telling in your marketing.

As you probably know, I'm learning how to become an author, how to write a novel, fiction. It's really quite hard work, but there are some principles that I'm finding incredibly helpful in my own marketing and the first principle of storytelling is that, usually, things are told in what's called three acts.

So you have the first quarter of a book, then you have the last quarter of a book, and you have the middle section of a book.

And this is called the First Act, and this is where the ordinary world of the hero happens and then at the end of the First Act, in what's called an inciting incident happens. An inciting incident is something that calls the hero to adventure and makes them have to make a choice about whether they stay in their ordinary world or go off on this adventure.

In the middle section, things now happen to challenge the hero, so there is usually one, possibly two, complications in the hero's life. And at the end of that middle section, at the 75% point, yes that's right, then there's usually some sort of climax or crisis that make the hero have to recommit to their journey or change in some way, there's a change in the hero, and often a change in their circumstances, too. Perhaps a mentor has come along and helped them or given them something special that will enable them knowledge or a tool or a trick of some kind, or magic, that enables them to overcome the crisis at the end of this part of the book.

And then the final section of the book is where everything gets resolved.