The Ultimate Storytelling Guide Infographic

The Ultimate Storytelling Guide Infographic

Storytelling is an amazing tool. As attention spans dwindle and the amount of content skyrockets, it’s become more important than ever to know how to tell a good story. Here is the Ultimate Storytelling Guide!

A Story About Storytelling

Once upon a time, the first story ever was told. Someone killed a yak and was very proud of it.
The invention of books, radio and cinema changed the course of storytelling. Stories were no longer contained by word of mouth and could reach the masses.

To marketers, the first great milestone of storytelling arrived when the visual impact of cinema was combined with the massive reach of radio. Television. Stories were told across entire nations with little breaks in between. Advertisers filled these spots with commercials.

The problem was… unless you owned a broadcasting company or owned a company who could afford it, commercials were not an option.

Though great technology existed, most could only tell their stories… to those around them. The great equalizer arrived in the form of the internet. It was a medium where anyone could tell stories to millions of people around the world.

The problem with such an accessible medium is that attention spans are dwindling and the amount of content is endlessly rising. More so than ever before, we have to find the best stories and tell them right.

What is Storytelling?

This isn’t a checklist for what storytelling must be. There are an infinite number of stories and just as many ways to tell them.

However, most great stories would follow these guidelines:

Storytelling Is:

• Useful Info in a Narrative
• What Motivates Your Team
• What Your Brand Stands For
• About Your Customers
• Emotional & Engaging
• A Beginning, A Crisis & A Resolution
• An Interaction Between Your Customers And Your Brand

Storytelling Isn’t:

• Any 10.000 Word Article
• Your Sales Goals
• An Advertisement
• About Your Brand
• Boring
• Something ’’Cool’’ That Happend
• A sales Pitch

Why Storytelling Works

(Explained with Science!)

People love stories. They appeal to the emotional, decision making bits of our minds in ways facts and figures can’t.

They aren’t quite magic though – here’s the science:

• Customers primarily use emotions (feelings and experiences) rather than information (brand attributes, reatures and facts) when making purchasing decisions. The heart got da’ the $ yo.
• Emotional response to an ad has a far greater influence on a consumer’s intent to buy a product than an ad’s content. The ratio of emotional response to content was3 to 1 for TV advertisements and 2 to 1 for print.
• Brand loyalty is most influenced by positive emotions towards a brand rather than trust and other judgements based on brand attributes.
• Our brains are always searching for stories, that’s why we spend a third of our waking hours daydreaming. The only time we stop is when we have a good story to occupy our minds.
• It’s easier for people to remember stories than cold, hard facts. This is because the human brain does not distinguish between hearing/reading a story and actually experiencing it. In both cases, similar neurogical regions are activated.