Kyle Flaherty, Twitter commander-in-chief at BreakingPoint, put on a great presentation yesterday at the monthly Social Media Breakfast, and here’s my take-away from the event.

Social media is all about the story you tell. By telling a good story, you will engage people. We all love our crazy uncle, or the weird guy at the coffee shop, or the engaging presenter at a conference, because they all have one thing in common: they tell great stories.

By telling a good, authentic, consistent story through various social media platforms — Kyle used Twitter as his example — you can help drive traffic to your blog. By bringing people to your blog, you’ve moved to the next logical step in your relationship: You can have more substantial conversations. At this level, you can also introduce this new relationship to the rest of your “friends” — or community. As they read the blog, read comments by others, and become engaged — and educated — by others who are like-minded.

Communities naturally rally around good stories — local kid makes it big, rags to riches, overcoming all odds, the list goes on and on. To build a community for your business, you need to find the story.

The more people can relate to your story, the stronger your community will be. Kyle shared a great example of how the Associated Press picked up a thread of a story about BreakingPoint — but that thread was inherently inaccurate. BreakingPoint didn’t have to spend too much energy on getting corrections out … their community did it for them through their blogs, tweets on Twitter and other places that users can post content.

By finding your story, and creating community, your business will be creating loyalty, which is the magic bullet of branding. Why is loyalty so important? People prefer to buy things from others they trust, others they have relationships with.

There’s been studies that show most people, when presented with a blind test, prefer Pepsi over Coke. However, when the subject is shown which brand they’re drinking, they prefer Coke. In other words, Pepsi tastes better for many people, but more people are loyal to the story of Coke.