7 Essential Storytelling Tips For Your Business

Storytelling has been around since humans learned to speak, but it's no less important in today's business world. Whether you're pitching a client or rallying your team, telling stories will connect with your audience and inspire them to become active participants in your brand's journey. Here are seven storytelling techniques that will help you get your point across:

Start in the middle of the action.

One of the most important elements of a good story is starting in the middle of the action. When you start with a long description, history, introduction, or explanation in your business video, it bores and frustrates your audience.

Instead of telling them what they need to know, you should show them by starting in the middle of something that happens and then move forward through time by showing more detail as it relates to this moment in time.

The best way to do this is by having an opening scene that visually shows what’s happening right now rather than describing it verbally or explaining it over text graphics.

Craft a solid beginning, middle, and end.

Tell a story with a beginning, middle, and end that is crafted to fit your product or service.

When you begin crafting a story for a business, it's important to remember that the audience doesn't care about the details of how or why something happened—it cares about what happens next. A good storyteller will always start with an intriguing hook, followed by characters who face problems in their lives and are forced to deal with them. The resolution of those problems should be satisfying while leaving some unanswered questions that make readers want more from this world.

As long as you stay focused on building suspense by keeping your audience interested in finding out what happens next, they'll follow along through any twists or turns your story takes.

Show how characters change.

It's a common mistake to think of characters as one-dimensional. But if you're aiming for a complex plot with a satisfying resolution, you'll want to make sure that your characters have depth and dimensionality.

The best way to do this is by letting them change over time. Characters should start out as something different than what they become at the end of your story—for example, maybe they're shy at first and then grow into an extrovert; maybe they're self-conscious and then learn to accept themselves; maybe they're brash and confident as teenagers but lost in life after college graduation until rediscovering their purpose in life later on. Whatever the case may be, it's important that each character has undergone some kind of transformation by the end of your story—even if it's small (like learning an important lesson). This makes them feel more real, which makes readers care about them more deeply too!

Write for an audience of one.

The most powerful technique you can use to write a story is to imagine that you are writing it for a customer or prospect. Imagine the person who will read this story and think back on their own personal experience with your business. What did they want? What did they need? How were they feeling at the time?

Think about how you would feel if someone were writing about your experience with their company or product. Would you care enough about what was being said to keep reading? If not, then there's no point in writing it in the first place!

Keep it simple: Use short sentences and paragraphs, avoid jargon, and keep the language simple so that anyone can understand what's going on (even if they don't work in your industry). Don't worry too much about sounding professional; just be yourself! People like authenticity more than perfectionism anyway 🙂

Use a conversational tone: You're telling a story here so let's try our best not to sound like robots! A conversational tone makes everything seem more human which helps readers relate better when reading stories online rather than feeling like they've been sold something by some salesman trying too hard to sell them something else later down line somewhere down the road somewhen somewhere sometime maybe someday but probably never possibly probably definitely never happening now ever!!!

Get on with it.

In business writing, we often hear about "the elevator pitch." This is a short speech (usually 30-60 seconds) that summarizes your company in order to attract interest from other people. The goal of the elevator pitch is to get someone interested enough in your company or product that they'll want more information. It's not enough to just tell them what you do; you have to also explain why it's valuable and how it will benefit them.

While this concept isn't exclusive to business communication, it applies equally as well when writing anything else: emails, blog posts, reports—anything where you're trying to convince someone else of something important enough for them to act on. If there's no emotion involved with your content—if there's no urgency or excitement—then why should anyone care? And if they don't care, then why would they take action?

Stories engage your audience, so tell them!

Stories are the most powerful way we learn, connect, and remember. They’re also the best way to communicate more effectively with your audience.

In fact, stories are so powerful that they can make us feel like we’re living them ourselves. And that’s what makes them so effective at engaging your audience.

But there’s a problem: most businesses don’t use stories to their full potential. They either don’t tell them at all, or they use them in the wrong places. This means that the stories you tell are missing out on one of their most powerful benefits: helping you connect with your audience.

At the end of the day, you don’t have to get it perfect. Your audience will forgive you for any mistakes if they can understand what you’re trying to say. That’s why storytelling is so powerful; it allows us to connect with each other through our shared experiences and emotions, rather than just by communicating facts and figures.