Once upon a time there was a website owner who wanted more traffic. He scratched his balding head as he searched for websites offering advice on how to get more people to visit his website. But every suggestion looked like hard work or that it would cost too much money. He couldn’t make up his mind what to do. So he went on a training course about getting more traffic to a website. But that was too technical. He went back to searching for ideas and found an ebook that offered “practical advice”. But after he had paid his $27 he found it was only useful for people selling ebooks.

Every day our website owner searched and searched for ideas on getting more website traffic. He asked questions on forums, he asked for ideas on Twitter and he joined groups on LinkedIn and Facebook. Each day he spent an hour or more trying to find answers to his question. But every time he got an answer it threw up more questions.

After several months his balding head had lost even more hairs and he sat in front of his computer screen dejected. He looked at his website statistics and thought that because New Year was approaching he would make a “New Year Wish” that his website would get more traffic. It was the last resort, he thought, because his months of fruitless searching had rather wasted his time. No longer was he going to search for ideas on getting more web traffic.

The bells chimed in New Year and our website owner resolved never to search for ideas on getting more web traffic again. One week later he had not done a single search for more web traffic but as he looked at his website analytics he noticed there was a slight increase in the number of visitors. A week later there was another small increase. Every week, without attempting to get more web traffic he was getting more visitors. He scratched his bald head again; how on earth had that happened?

Then he looked back again at his website analytics and noticed something obvious. Since he had given up searching for ideas on getting more website traffic he had written more blog posts and articles on his website. All those hours that had previously been spent on forums, social networks and search engines were now being spent on producing web content. His New Year Wish had come true.

Your brain has just been changed

Stories are powerful; they get messages across in ways that simply stating things cannot. We engage with stories more, we create visuals in our mind that we connect with and we remember them more easily. Indeed, stories can even lead to increased sales. However, new research, suggests that when people read stories they have lasting, long-term effects that actually lead to changes in our brains. In other words, if your website simply tells the facts, you have less impact upon your target audience. If your website uses stories, you have a lasting impact. You choose.