Checkpoint: Positioning and Storytelling

Quiz

1. According to the audience analysis lesson, why does audience evidence come before any positioning statement?
   • Because audience research replaces the need for proof of your strengths.
   • Because positioning is a claim about value to a specific group, so without an audience the claim stays vague praise.
   • Because a positioning statement must sound impressive to as many people as possible before you narrow it down.
   • Because you should write the headline and bio first, then find an audience that fits them.
2. In the audience profile, what is the role of the secondary audience?
   • They are the group whose problem you can solve right now with evidence you already own.
   • They are the groups you explicitly name as not served.
   • They are the people who amplify or gatekeep, deciding whether your primary audience ever hears about you.
   • They are a third and fourth audience you add once you feel worried about missing out.
3. Which question sharpens a problem statement fastest when profiling an audience?
   • How many followers do they have?
   • What adjectives best describe their personality?
   • What tools do they already pay for?
   • What have they already tried that did not work?
4. Which sentence is a credible positioning statement following the Audience + Strength + Outcome pattern?
   • I help Fortune 500 teams transform their culture.
   • I help businesses succeed through my passion for storytelling.
   • I help first-time grant writers at small nonprofits submit funder-ready summaries, through having edited 30+ grant drafts.
   • I help people unlock their potential through authentic leadership.
5. A draft reads: 'I help nonprofit grant writers succeed through my writing skills.' Which slots are still weakest?
   • No slots are weak; the sentence is fully defensible as written.
   • The audience slot only, because 'nonprofit grant writers' is too vague.
   • The strength slot only, because 'writing skills' is an adjective.
   • The outcome and audience slots, because 'succeed' is undefined and the audience could be sharper.
6. An audience member hears your positioning sentence and asks, 'Have you actually done that?' Which failure mode does that question reveal?
   • A voice bank problem: you borrowed the wrong words.
   • The overclaim: the sentence outruns the evidence.
   • The fog: the sentence is too vague to be understood.
   • A decision trigger problem: the audience lacks a reason to act.
7. Which of these is a turning point rather than a climax?
   • I got promoted to team lead after the project shipped.
   • We hit our target three weeks early.
   • A mentor told me the copy was confusing, so I stopped rewriting it and started asking users what confused them.
   • We launched the campaign and it went viral.
8. You are adapting one true story for a recruiter screening. What should change?
   • Nothing at all; every audience gets the same two-minute version.
   • Emphasis and length, while the facts stay fixed.
   • The turning point, which should be replaced with the most impressive result.
   • The facts, so the story fits what the recruiter wants to hear.
9. In the audience profile, the specific event or piece of proof that moves someone from aware to acting is called a ____.
10. Write a 90-second story draft about one project you plan to include in your capstone portfolio, using the four beats (situation, tension, turning point, changed capacity). Then self-assess it against the criteria below.

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