The Art of Storytelling (And Why It Beats Production Every Time)

Video quality and production aren’t what sells. Stories do. I’ve tested this over and over again (both intentionally and accidentally). The data keeps backing it up: the content I create that tells a story consistently outperforms everything else I make. Higher engagement. Better retention. Real conversions. Actual conversations.

And the clearest proof of that has been my work with Wet For Her.

I Didn’t “Qualify” & I Still Got the Yes.

When I first reached out to Wet For Her, I cold-pitched them with fewer than 1,000 followers.

They responded kindly and honestly: They work with creators who have 10,000+ followers. That’s fair, that’s cool, industry-standard, buuuuut… I had a new benchmark to track.

I remember feeling genuinely honored that they even replied. So I said: “Okay. Bet.” And I kept showing up, even on days when showering was a chore. But I’m too old and weird to be trendy, my aesthetics are “was probably a frog in a past life,” and I piss off too many people to be a major influencer. But I’ve always been a natural storyteller (Sagittarius stellium), so I just started telling stories.

Months later, Wet For Her reached out to me and asked me to become an affiliate even though I’m not at 10k (yet!).  Why? I wasn’t selling products. I was talking about lesbian intimacy with nuance, humor, and zero shame.

How Storytelling UGC Plays Out for Me

Here’s what that looked like in practice.

1. I Started With a Story, Not a Product

My first video wasn’t a review. It wasn’t an unboxing. It wasn’t “Buy this.” It was a personal ode to underwear harnesses, and I told my story.

The plotline included:

• Searching for a new strap

• Finding Wet For Her organically

• Sharing my genuinely hilarious and great experience with their products before I was ever an affiliate

2. Education Wrapped in Relatability

Then someone asked what types of attachments lesbians actually prefer. So I made a tutorial using whiteboards, partly to bypass moderation. And partly because whiteboard art is my version of a mandala practice. 😌

I explained:

• Different attachment styles

• Different harness options

• Why preferences vary

And I invited Wet For Her to the conversation, asking for their expert sapphic advice. They showed up in the comments and connected 1:1 with my audience. Trust building in real time is one of those marketer moments of joy we don’t talk about enough.

3. Humor > Hype

Later, I made a video featuring one of their intimate products and told another story about my user error that almost made me write the product off. Then I realized I forgot my lube.

So I told the story about the outcome, joked that it’s the product you reach for when you feel like texting your toxic ex, and used drawn diagrams instead of explicit visuals. I taught users how to circumvent a very common user error with suction toys and posed it as a “you’re not alone” scenario. I mentioned my affiliate code almost as an afterthought. And it worked.

Why This Matters (Especially If You Hate Influencer Culture)

Here’s my biggest realization: I was trying to create UGC like a B2B marketer, not like myself. I’m not the “aesthetic girl,” and over-edited videos intimidate me into freeze mode. Unboxing content is boring, and fake influencer energy makes my skin crawl.

My audience can smell bullshit instantly (queer communities are exceptionally good at that). When I made purely informational content, it performed fine. Solid engagement. Limited reach. But the second I took that same information, laid in bed, and told it as a relatable story?

Engagement jumped, and people stayed. Humans don’t bond over information, they bond over experience.

Storytelling Is Older Than Marketing

We are psychologically wired to sit around a fire and tell stories.

That’s how we’ve always learned:

• Who we are

• What’s safe

• What’s possible

• Where we belong

That’s the direction marketing should be heading: not louder ads, not shinier videos, not more “hooks.” Just tell stories.

Why I Keep Doing This (Even If I Never Hit 10K)

Three years ago, I could barely look at myself in the mirror when I whispered, “I’m a lesbian” even though I’d been out of the closet and living my life openly gay for years. 

Now, I’m an archivist for:

• The teenager crying after intimacy with a boy because it felt rote

• The woman who’s “boy crazy” and hates herself for it

• Late bloomers

• Lesbian moms

• Trans lesbians

• BIPOC lesbians

• Anyone who feels like they still have to whisper

I don’t know if I’ll ever have 10,000 followers, especially in the era of suppression, shadow bans, and algorithm roulette. But I do know this: I’m telling the right stories, and the right people are finding them.