Before you can write your brand’s story, you need to pick your format and style. This starts with understanding who your target audience is—a crucial step to learn for the success of any business. From there, you can better pick the format that your audience understands and enjoys using.
The format includes the medium or materials you use to tell a story.
Here are the common formats used for corporate storytelling that can either be used alone or together to engage your audience fully:
- Oral – Oral content includes podcasts, recorded audio, public speaking events, or other audio that doesn’t require watching or reading content. Live presentations such as TED Talks are a perfect example.
- Visual – Visuals include memes, infographics, motion graphics, pie charts, and videos. Visuals are used in conjunction with written content to further expand upon the story. Humans are visual creators and often gravitate towards this type of content as it’s easy to consume.
- Written – The most common format for storytelling includes written content. Common examples for corporate storytelling include articles, blog posts, e-Books, e-mail campaigns, case studies, or white papers.
Some important tips on choosing the right format for your brand’s story:
Remember Your Company Mission Statement and Values
Over time, your company will likely benefit in some way from using each format listed above. However, you need to make sure you start with the right structure that makes sense to your goals and niche.
For example, to start a podcast and get more people to join your network, it doesn’t make sense to push out a lot of written content to gain the right audience. Your audience wants to hear you. They are most likely on-the-go types or people who prefer to listen rather than read or watch content. Therefore, you need to keep creating podcasts and pushing out other oral content to be sure you keep attracting the right audience.
Start and Guide with Your Ending Objective
In other words, write the end to your story first and then develop the beginning and middle. This way, you can be sure you develop the best story to make the most impact. When you know exactly what kind of outcome you want, you can better pick the right style.
If you want more customers to join your monthly program, for example, then you’ll likely be more successful with a story from a customers’ point of view or visual experience with your product.
Don’t start developing a story and then realize you need to start over or worse that you’ve offended everyone. Don’t put out a story that doesn’t work for your audience, ultimately pushing people away and making it harder to gain their trust and respect. Remember, even if it’s about you it’s really about them and how they perceive you.
In the end, if you truly understand your audience, where they are, and what goals you need to achieve, then you will know what storytelling format is right for you.
Over the next 60 days, we will be talking exclusively about becoming a better storyteller so you can work on increasing your audience engagement.
It’s a fact that the human brain is wired or attracted to stories. This is because stories are how the human brain learns, grows, and remembers things. Through stories, you can better remember important events and communicate or connect with your peers and audience. And, more importantly, through stories, you gain audience engagement and the action required to run a successful and sustainable business.
Let’s be honest, we know that you’re unlikely to follow us through the entire series, so here’s a little cheat for you – the entire series of articles as an ebook – our gift – no strings attached. If you’re ready to catch up on some summer reading that will actually propel your business forward then this is for you.
DOWNLOAD THE FREE E-BOOK: Become a Good Storyteller to Increase Audience Engagement
