Did you create a business with an excellent idea? Great.
Now, how do you ensure that you pass on that idea to people? How do you ensure that people resonate with your business and become your loyal customers?
The answer to the questions above is through storytelling.
Storytelling is one of the most ancient forms of communication. It is not just an excellent way to share experiences and teach lessons, but it also serves as a great form to entertain audiences.
In recent years, storytelling has evolved to suit the current digital needs and become even more popular as a way to create engaging content.
This new and evolved form of storytelling uses various digital tools to tell stories; therefore, it is known as digital storytelling. This can include everything from videos and photos to blogs and social media posts.
By using digital tools, storytellers can create more immersive and engaging stories.
If you are looking to connect with your audience and create engaging content, digital storytelling is a great option. It is a versatile and powerful way to share your story.
But before we jump to discussing the techniques of digital storytelling, let’s understand more about storytelling and its digital form.
What Does Storytelling Mean?
Storytelling is among the most ancient yet most effective ways to communicate. It is a form of using a narrative to convey a message to your audience. When this is combined with digital forms of marketing, it becomes digital storytelling.
There are many different types of digital storytelling, but they all share some common elements. An excellent digital story will have a solid narrative arc, exciting characters, and engaging visuals.
Storytelling in a digital content marketing strategy can be used to inform, educate, entertain, and persuade. It will also be told in a way that is unique to the medium.
When done well, digital storytelling can be an incredibly effective way to engage your audience and achieve your marketing goals.
How Does Storytelling Work in Content Marketing?
Now that you know what storytelling is, it is imperative to understand how you can implement the art of storytelling into content marketing to engage your audience and lead them to the end of the sales funnel.
What are the primary, most essential elements of content marketing storytelling or any storytelling?
A likable character, a dispute, and then a resolution to that dispute, and there you have your story
How do you alter the story to match your needs? Through the second element- dispute.
A dispute or a conflict indicates that your character desires something but can’t have it as something prevents them from achieving it.
In content marketing, your product or service is what leads to the resolution- it enables the character to overcome obstacles/disputes and achieve their goal/solve their problem.
Benefits of Storytelling in Content Marketing
If you are looking to take your content marketing to the next level, digital storytelling is a great place to start.
It is a great way to connect with your audience. Therefore, it can be an effective tool for your digital content marketing strategy. Digital storytelling allows you to share your brand’s story in a way that is visually appealing and easy to consume.
It can further help you:
- Build relationships with your audience
- Humanize your brand
- Bring your audience together to create a community
- Influence their behavior and motivate them
- Create loyalty and trust
What are the primary, most essential elements of content marketing storytelling or any storytelling?
A likable character, a dispute, and then a resolution to that dispute, and there you have your story
How do you alter the story to match your needs? Through the second element- dispute.
A dispute or a conflict indicates that your character desires something but can’t have it as something prevents them from achieving it.
In content marketing, your product or service is what leads to the resolution- it enables the character to overcome obstacles/disputes and achieve their goal/solve their problem.
You will know that your story is an excellent one if it is:
- Entertaining your audience
- Making them believe in your offerings and brand
- Educating them
- Relating to their issues
- Organized
- Unforgettable
Digital Storytelling Techniques That Work
Knowing Your Audience
As digital storytellers, it is vital that we know to whom we are telling our stories. After all, the whole point of storytelling is to connect with our audience on a personal level.
By realizing who your audience members are and what they want, we can create stories that resonate with them on a deeper level.
Below are a few ways to go about understanding your audience.
- The first is to ask them simply. You can do this through interviews, feedback, surveys, or even just informal conversations.
- Another way to understand your audience is to observe their behavior. This can be done through analytics tools, social media monitoring, or even just paying attention to the types of stories they consume and share.
Once you have a good understanding of your audience, you can start to craft stories that will resonate with them.
PS . Your audience may change over time. As their needs and wants evolve, so should your stories.
So don’t be afraid to experiment and try new things. The most crucial thing is that you are always considering your audience and what they want from your stories. This is the only pathway to truly connect with them the way you want.
Defining the Message You Want to Convey
What is the point of your story? And what is the action it desires from the audience?
You should have this clarity before starting to create a story. Not only will this help you in making better digital storytelling, but it will also get you the desired results from your audience.
Therefore, you must have a clear message in place that you wish to convey with your story.
What Kind of Story Are You Telling?
Every story will have a different way of speaking to the audience, a different tone, a different core message, and a different expected action from the audience.
Therefore, you must know what is the end result you are going for so you can choose the right method to tell your story.
Consider the below ways to understand better.
Get Audience to Act
If your story is a simple call-to-act one, you must ensure that you keep it simple and straightforward. With this, you can convey how you have solved a problem in the past and how it changed the users’ lives.
With this kind of storytelling, the readers will get an idea that your brand can solve their problems and can change their lives.
Express Your Story
This works best when you want the audience to connect with your brand and stay connected. You can share your nascent stage, your successes, failures, and whatnot with the audience through this form of digital storytelling.
Tell Your Values
In your digital story, share values that the readers can relate to. This is the best way to tap into their more profound, emotional side.
Nurture a Community
With this form of digital storytelling, you can create a digital story so resonating that readers can’t help but share, communicate over it, and keep the comment thread going.
This will help you build a like-minded community of your audience who share a common liking for your brand.
Educate Your Audience
Educating or informing your audience through various content forms is common. So, what difference does digital storytelling make?
When you educate your audience through storytelling, you share with them your mistakes and trial-and-error experiences for them to learn from.
Choose Your Call-to-Action
As we discussed above that every story might have a different end goal. And your Call-to-actions or your CTAs must be clear to communicate that.
Let’s take some instances.
- Let’s say you run a charitable organization, and your storytelling entails that people donate. So, you can use a CTA like- I Would Like to Donate.
- If you are looking for people to join your community, you can opt for a CTA like- Click to Share.
- Or, if you want the audience to subscribe to your newsletter, you can put a CTA- Subscribe to Know More.
Select a Suitable Medium to Tell Your Story
Storytelling is an art, and so is choosing the suitable medium and format to communicate your story. While some people love reading a story, some like to listen to it, and some are interested in visual storytelling.
When you get to know your audience, you also realize the form your audience resonates with the best. So you can choose a suitable medium and share your stories.
Writing: Share your stories through articles, blog posts, or even eBooks. This form is text-dominated with some pictures.
Audio: This form mainly includes podcasts. People these days love this format of content marketing.
Spoken: This includes presentations, talks, and so on. This is where you prepare a story, practice it, and deliver it before the audience (mostly live, without edits).
This format generally requires more practice.
Digital: This format includes using social media to deliver a story through animation, videos, and interactive methods such as games. These can be a little costly to produce, but they are able to elicit emotions in the audience best.
Plan and Organize Your Story
Once the objective, message, and format of your digital story are in place, you must next strategize and structure your story. Again, the plan must be as per your end goal.
So, from the start to your CTA, every line of your story must meet your end goal.
As you create the outline of the story, you must ensure that it is able to instill the imagination and emotion in readers that you want.
Creating presentations, vision boards, and timelines will be extremely beneficial for you to stay in the course from the start to the time your story meets the world.
Write and Share
Now that you have visualized, planned, and structured, it is time to start writing your story.
Remember to stay true to your story and not copy another successful story. The audience is looking to read your unique story.
So, if you feel you are losing track of the authenticity of your brand, you can get inspired and resume writing.
Once the writing is done, you should share your story on as many relevant platforms as possible to ensure that it reaches every member of your audience.
Create Meaningful Digital Stories with One Digital Land
Your story will decide how your audience perceives you. As much as other formats are a crucial part of a digital content marketing strategy, digital storytelling comes on top of it all.
Therefore, it is essential to make digital storytelling a part of your content strategy. If you need more information on how you can do that, we at One Digital Land can help you.
Want to share your brand story with the world? Contact us here.