Use Storytelling Elements and Techniques
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Develop a content marketing story with effective storytelling elements.
- Conduct content research with subject matter experts.
- Choose an appropriate content platform to bring stories to life.
Storytelling Elements and Techniques
Everyone loves a good story. Whether it’s in the form of a captivating book, thrilling movie, viral video, heartwarming social media caption, or hilarious recap from a friend. All good stories have similar elements in common, and that goes for brand storytelling, too.
When developing a story for content marketing, keep these storytelling elements and techniques in mind.
- Characters. All great stories revolve around strong archetypes—in other words, a character with a well-known pattern of behavior. You may not think there are characters in content marketing pieces, but they’re just positioned in a different light. In brand storytelling, your protagonist is typically your target audience who is motivated to act or solve something. Or your story could revolve around a client—putting your customer at the center. Ultimately, you need to know your audience to make sure you showcase the right characters that will resonate with them.
- Conflicts and resolutions. In content marketing, your audience is consuming your stories to solve their problems. Create plots in your stories that illustrate their problems while leading them to your recommended resolutions. The conflict in your stories should speak to your audience’s pain points and offer solutions through things like insights, research, product offerings, services, and other useful content.
- Authenticity and emotion. The best kinds of stories are ones that are relatable and have a human element. Emotionless, jargon-y writing creates boring content. Make sure you use a tone and voice that resonates with your target audience, while being appropriate for your brand. Things like anecdotes, examples, and personification can help you illustrate complex ideas and make your content personal. Other narrative elements, like keeping a readable rhythm, maintaining the right amount of detail, and nailing the delivery of your climax, can keep your audience’s attention.
- Cliffhangers. Nothing keeps an audience coming back for more than a cliffhanger. This is a great technique when creating a content series to maintain some tension that will keep your readers subscribed to your next piece. For example, teasing the next topic in your series or creating a two-part piece by publishing the “why” first and the “how” later.
- Visuals. Creative design is equally as important to copy in storytelling. It’s important that your visuals complement your copy to tell a full, compelling story. This may mean breaking up long-form copy in a blog article with engaging visuals or replacing text with bolder imagery in graphics and videos.
- Calls-to-action (CTAs). Content marketing is an incredibly effective way to drive action, from increasing brand awareness to generating leads for your sales teams. But that success isn’t possible without guiding your readers to take the next step after consuming your content, which is why providing a call-to-action (CTA) is crucial. The most common CTAs are links or buttons at the end of a piece of content that directs audiences to do something, like read more content, opt in to a newsletter, subscribe to a channel, download an asset, share the content on social media, or contact your business. Whatever it is you want your audience to do, make sure you explain why they should do it. For example, to learn more information or get more related content.
Do Your Research
Before you put pen to paper, do some research on your topic—especially if it’s a subject you’re unfamiliar with. There are two key ways to do this.
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Source your own information. To gather the information needed to tell your story, you can begin with a preliminary search using a search engine like Google. Start by looking up your topic, sorting through the results, and sourcing relevant insights to help your content development. Make sure you source information from credible sites. (No community forums here!) Research reports from firms like Gartner, Forrester, and IDC are great sources of trusted information. We recommend starting a document that lists all the sources you find so you can reference them later.
As you read information about your topic, take notes. Are there any common themes mentioned across the sources? Are there insights your audience would find interesting? Are there takeaways to make your story angle more credible? Are there common questions that your customers are asking? Learning the answers to these questions can help you determine what information to pull into your content. -
Interview subject matter experts (SMEs). Conducting interviews with SMEs is another way to source information to use in your content. There is no better way to gather information than to consult an expert and get their candid insights and experience. SMEs can be experts outside of your organization. But often, the best ones are internal—like sales managers, designers, technologists, product and service leads.
Say you’re interviewing someone who is an expert gardener. You can ask them the same types of questions you would type into a search engine, like, “What is gardening?” to get their take on a definition. You can also ask them their opinion on specific topics, like, “What are the benefits of gardening?” and “What gardening trends do you think are going to be popular this year?” Your SME’s unique voice and angle will help you produce content with authority that stands out from the crowd. Their point of view can also validate your own research and unveil an angle you may have missed.
If you're featuring your SME directly in your content, do a little research to develop more pointed questions to ask them during the interview. If they've published thought leadership or have hosted webinars on a particular topic, you can review those materials to dig deeper and ask additional questions.
Choose a Content Platform
After settling on a topic, conducting research, and finding a direction for your story, it’s time to choose the best vehicle to tell it. A common myth is that content marketing is only long-form content, but that’s not true. There are so many different ways to bring your content to life, including:
- Videos
- Audio podcasts
- Emails
- Infographics
- Interactive web pages
- Social media
- Landing pages
- Webinars
- White papers
- Blog articles
And so much more! Today, it’s best to keep customers connected with your content across every stage of the customer journey for a unified experience. So how do you choose the right platform?
- Refer to the content funnel. Referring back to your content plan and the funnel stages can help you decide what type of content asset works best for your story. If the goal of your story is to educate and drive brand awareness (top of funnel), maybe it’s best told through a blog post, social media, or video. If your story is to help your audience consider or evaluate your business (middle of the funnel), maybe an email, case study, or webinar is the most impactful format.
- Consider the audience. If your target audience is obsessed with YouTube, maybe your content can reach them best as videos. If your audience is a busy CEO who only has time to multitask, one effective way to reach them is through a podcast they can listen to on the way to work. Or perhaps your audience gets their news from a certain industry outlet, so publishing your story there as a third-party works best. Ultimately, your content isn’t effective if it isn’t being seen by the right people. Keep your audience in mind and consider a content platform for your story that resonates with them.
- Think about the story itself. Sometimes, a story naturally lends itself to a specific format. If you’re featuring a colorful, exuberant SME, that story could shine on a podcast where your audience can truly feel their personality. Maybe your story is coming together, and it just feels right as a written blog article. Use your marketer storytelling instincts to choose a platform that can amplify your message.
