The Ultimate Guide to Storytelling
Storytelling is an incredibly valuable tool for you to add to your proverbial marketing tool belt. It sets apart vibrant brands from simple businesses and loyal consumers from one-time, stop-in shoppers. However, like art, it requires creativity, vision, skill, and practice.
Define your core message
Tell your story in 6-10 words
Stories Bring People Together
Stories are a universal language of sorts
- Sharing in a story gives even the most diverse people a sense of commonality and community
- Despite our language, religion, political preferences, or ethnicity, stories connect us through the way we feel and respond to them. Stories make us human.
Storytelling Resources
Storytelling is a trial-and-error process, and no one tells a story perfectly on the first try.
Share your story
Depending on your chosen medium, sharing your story on social media and email is a good place to start
- Digital stories can be shared on YouTube and Vimeo
- The more places you share your story, the more engagement you can expect from your audience
Stories Inspire and Motivate
When brands get transparent and authentic, it brings them down to earth and helps consumers connect with them and the people behind them.
- Stories also foster brand loyalty.
- Creating a narrative around your brand or product not only humanizes it but also inherently markets your business.
The Storytelling Process
Like art, storytelling requires creativity, vision, and skill. It also requires practice.
- As an organization or brand, you likely have a ton of facts, figures, and messages to get across in one succinct story. How do you know where to begin? Start with the first step.
What is storytelling?
Storytelling is the process of using fact and narrative to communicate something to your audience.
- While everyone can tell a story, certain people fine-tune their storytelling skills and become a storyteller on behalf of their organization, brand, or business.
Over To You
Storytelling is an art. It’s also a process worth mastering for both your business and your customers.
Stories Solidify Abstract Concepts and Simplify Complex Messages
Stories help solidify abstract concepts and simplify complex messages
- Take a lofty, non-tangible concept and relating it using concrete ideas is one of the biggest strengths of storytelling in business
- Apple, for example, uses real-life stories to describe how their products benefit users
Decide What Kind of Story You’re Telling
Figure out how you want your audience to feel or react
- Tell a story that incites action
- Foster community or collaboration
- Empathize with readers
- Teach knowledge or educate
- Embark on a journey
Establish your call-to-action
Outline the action you want your audience to take after reading
Know your audience
Do research on your target market and define your buyer persona(s).
- This will get you acquainted with who might be reading, viewing, or listening to your story.
- It will also provide crucial direction for the next few steps as you build out the foundation of your story
What Makes a Good Story?
There are three components that make up a good story: characters, conflict, resolution.
- Characters – the bridge between you, the storyteller, and the audience
- Conflict – the lesson of how the character overcomes a challenge
- Resolution – the story’s resolution should wrap up the story, provide context around the characters and conflict(s), and leave your audience with a call-to-action
Choose your story medium
Your chosen story medium depends on your type of story as well as resources, like time and money.
- A spoken story is told in person, like a presentation, pitch, or panel; audio stories are usually recorded; digital stories are told through a variety of media, such as video, animation, interactive stories, and games.
Write!
With your core message, audience objective, and call-to-action already established, this step is simply about adding detail and creative flair to your story.
- Read more about our storytelling formula here
- Put pen to paper and start crafting your story
Why Do We Tell Stories?
There are a variety of reasons to tell stories – to sell, entertain, educate, or brag
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