The Ultimate Guide to Digital Storytelling For Businesses

For ages, storytelling has been an important part of communication. From ancient cave paintings to today's presentations, stories help us connect with people, share our experiences, and pass knowledge. In today's digital world, everything has moved online and so have the stories.

Many brands have scaled themselves by successfully creating stories that people can resonate with. Yet many companies don't know much about the power and benefits of digital storytelling. Even if they know, they are not sure how to create successful stories that engage audiences and resonate with them. But don’t worry!

In this handy guide, we will tell you everything about digital storytelling from what it is to its benefits and major elements. We will share an easy guide for creating successful digital stories with some practical tips and provide answers to all your queries.

Understanding Digital Storytelling

Before learning more about the techniques and key elements of digital storytelling, let’s start by understanding what digital storytelling is with the help of an example and learn more about its benefits for businesses.

What is Digital Storytelling?

The method/art of using digital tools to create stories is called digital storytelling. It combines the method of traditional storytelling like a strong narrative and emotional appeal along with digital formats such as images, audio, videos, or any other type of interactive format. Today, most businesses use digital storytelling to promote their products or services and connect better with their audiences.

An Interesting Example of Digital Storytelling:

Nike - You Can't Stop Us (2020)

Nike's 2020 campaign, You Can't Stop Us, is a wonderful example of digital storytelling. The campaign was started during lockdown when most of the sports events were canceled because of the pandemic. During the time of isolation, most people felt hopeless, so Nike created a split-screen video. It had a message of overcoming challenges and told people no matter how many obstacles come your way you can rise stronger and achieve your goals.

Impact of the Video: The video gained millions of views online and reinforced Nike's identity as a brand that inspires people.

What are The Advantages of Digital Storytelling?

There are many advantages of digital storytelling such as:

• Humanize Your Brand: Stories create emotional connections with customers and help them relate/connect to your brand/company on a personal level.

• Increase Customer Engagement: Compelling digital stories grab attention, encourage likes, shares, and comments, and keep your audience engaged longer.

• Improves Brand Differentiation: A different story can help your business stand out and create an identity in the crowded market.

• Strengthens Online Visibility: If people resonate with your story, it increases social shares, and backlinks and boosts your engagement on social media platforms. Overall, it will help you to improve your visibility, and strengthen your SEO and website's search engine rankings.

• Inspires customers to Take Action: Emotionally appealing stories encourage the audience to take actions like joining a cause or making a purchase that helps in business growth.

If done right, digital storytelling builds trust, makes customers resonate more with your brand, and helps to form long-lasting relationships.

What Are The Methods of Digital Storytelling

Here are a few methods of digital storytelling that you can use to create a story:

Videos: You can use a combination of images, text, and voiceover to tell a story through short films or animations.

Photo Essays: You can share a series of images with a caption that conveys the narrative and opinion of the story.

Audio Stories: Podcasts or audio clips are also a good way to share your story. They can be featured on radio or similar platforms that use only audio as a medium to convey a message.

Social Media Stories: Nowadays platforms like Instagram and YouTube use shorts, reels, stories, and carousels as a medium to share a story.

Blogs or Articles: One of the widely used methods of digital storytelling is blogs/articles. You can use them with some images, videos on interesting graphics in between to make it more informative and helpful.

Key Elements of Effective Digital Storytelling

Certain elements of digital storytelling make it effective. Here are the few most important things that you must focus on while creating digital stories:

1. Point of View: Every story must have a clear perspective or angle which helps to make it stand out. The point of view can be either from the brand's perspective or customers. It helps to provide a context or narrative to the story.

2. Dramatic Question: Humans are wired to respond to questions. A good story can be created around a central question that grabs the viewer's attention and compels them to keep watching until the answer is revealed.

For Example: A travel agency's story might begin by asking questions such as  “What’s your next dream destination?” and build a story around it.

3. Emotional Content: Emotions play a major role in connecting with the audience. Whether it is inspiration, joy, or sadness, emotional story/content helps to build a bond between the brand and the audience. A good story around an emotion helps people remember the story and the brand associated with it.

For Example: Coca-Cola's "Share a Coke" campaign focuses on the emotion of sharing and caring. It focuses on inviting people to share a Coke with someone they care about.

4. Storyteller’s Voice: While telling a story, the most important thing is the storyteller's voice. His/her voice makes the video authentic. It should have a perfect tone and pitch that makes it feel genuine. It helps to establish a connection with the audience and makes them feel as if they are hearing from a real person.

5. Soundtrack & Pacing: A wisely chosen soundtrack adds more emotions to the story. Also, using the right visuals, music, and a good pace (neither too fast nor too slow) helps the audience engage better with the story.

How to Create a Good Digital Story For Your Business?

Digital story creation takes a lot of knowledge and understanding of the brand, its target audience, and the message carried with it. Here are a few simple steps that you can use to create a good digital story for your brand/company.

Step 1: Define Your Purpose and Message: Before you start creating the video, be clear about the purpose of the story. To know it, you must know answers to questions such as: What do I want to achieve with this video? What is my main purpose? What messages do I want to convey with it?

The purpose can be anything like building brand awareness, educating the audience, or promoting a new product, etc. You must also know what will be the central theme of the video, it can be a question or an emotion that resonates with both brand and customers.

Step 2: Know Your Audience:  You must know the audience well to convey a story that they can resonate with. Your target audience defines which kind of content will they resonate with. Depending on your audience, you can craft a story around their interest and point points.

For Example: If your audience is young, tech-savvy consumers, you might create a digital story using some fast-paced videos or even memes. However, if your audience is aged, you can focus on creating an engaging story and highlighting the practical benefits of the product/services

Step 3: Create a Strong Narrative Structure: Every good story has a clear beginning, middle, and end. You can start by asking a question or introducing a problem/ situation. Then, build the whole story around it and finally provide an answer to the question or reveal a meaningful conclusion. This helps to keep the audience hooked.

Step 4: Add Major Elements: As mentioned earlier, there are a few elements that help to make a story memorable. So once you have created a narrative you must use elements that align well with it such as a good soundtrack, background voice, visuals, pacing, etc.

Step 5: Test and Refine Your Story: Lastly, ****test your story with a small group of people from your target audience before a full launch. This will help you understand how well the story resonates with them. Take their feedback about what is working and what can be improved such as visuals, pacing, etc.

Best Tools For Creating a Digital Story

There are various elements needed to create a digital story, like good background music, visuals, videos, and voice. Here are some tools you can use to get all these things and merge them together to create a good video/story for your brand.

Adobe Spark: Adobe Spark allows you to create videos, web stories, and social media graphics. It is an easy-to-use and beginner-friendly tool with customizable templates.

Canva: Canva is an easy-to-use tool for beginners that helps to create visuals, infographics, presentations, and short animated videos for the digital story. It has many templates that you can choose from. The best part about the tool is its drag-and-drop feature, making it easy to create anything. It is free to use with a premium version available.

Camtasia: Camtasia is a screen recording and video editing tool. It helps to create tutorials and explainer videos with good visuals, voiceovers, and annotations.

Animoto: Animoto is a tool used for storytelling. It provides templates and allows users to create engaging videos with photos, clips, and music. It is perfect for marketers and small-scale businesses.

Where Else is Digital Storytelling Used?

Besides brands/businesses, digital storytelling is used in various sectors, including:

• Education: Teachers use digital storytelling to explain difficult concepts to children.

• Healthcare: Hospitals can use storytelling to share stories of their patients or promote a healthcare campaign.

• Social Activism: Nonprofits and activists use stories to highlight social issues and raise funds for a child/anyone in need.

• Entertainment: Stories have always been used for series, or movies as a source of entertainment.

Final Thoughts and Tips on Digital Storytelling

Digital storytelling is a method to connect, engage, and communicate with your audiences. In a world brimming with information, your story makes your business stand out and resonate with your audience. It also allows them to remember about your brand with a sense of emotional connection carried by your story.

By properly defining your purpose, understanding your brand and audience, and using the elements of storytelling you can create wonderful stories that last forever. If you don't have much experience in its, you can start by using easy tools like Canva and Adobe Spark and then make your way as you move forward and develop more skills.

Make your brand unforgettable with the art of digital storytelling. Let Better Marketing guide you to success!

Here are some tips that can be helpful for creating successful digital stories:

• You can use data to make your story more interesting like: This product helped customers to reduce their cost by x%

• Involve your audience in the story by encouraging them to share their experiences, and use pools or social media posts to do so.

• If you are located in a particular place, localize your story by using the local language, culture, and images.

• Make your story accessible to everyone, including people with any kind of disability.

• Stay relevant by using trending topics or memes in your story.