7 Storytelling Techniques and How to Apply Them

Storytelling is one of the marketing world’s new darlings. It has made its way from boardrooms to mom-and-pop stores. Some marketers say storytelling is the single most powerful business skill for the next decade.

Unfortunately, storytelling in business can seem a bit lofty — more like a concept than a tactic. That’s especially true if you’re not a Fortune 500 company with a multi-million dollar budget for television commercials.

So does storytelling apply to smaller businesses? Can storytelling be practical?

In a word, yes.

Storytelling is the oldest way to deliver a message — or to explain the world. Ancient peoples used storytelling. The Bible uses storytelling. Your uncle uses storytelling. You’re using storytelling for yourself and your business, even if you don’t call it that.

Storytelling is one of the oldest forms of communication.

Here are seven techniques to help explain yourself and your business. Even a few tweaks to your story can deliver major results.

But knowing how to be a better storyteller isn’t enough. So I’ve listed four areas of your business to apply your new storytelling skills. These address concrete goals, like getting more readers to your blog, explaining what your company does, and attracting ideal employees.

Storytelling can seem like a lofty, magical topic, but it’s actually one of the simplest, oldest ways to promote anything. You may even like it.

Storytelling Techniques

Omit irrelevant detail

Omit any detail that doesn’t move the story forward or develop the characters. It’s about keeping the readers’ attention. If they don’t need to know about your red bicycle to understand the arc of your story, don’t tell them. If they don’t need to know what kind of awesome, high-tech sneakers you used to cross the desert, don’t tell them about the sneakers.

Tell the story as you talk

This one’s pretty simple. Corporate-speak ruins stories. Write as you would normally talk. If you sound a little too corporate to pass as an average person, hire a storyteller.

Make it visual

There’s a reason children’s storybooks are mostly pictures, and that so many of the greatest stories are now movies. Images bring a story to life. You can tell a story just by standing up and talking, but it had better be a heart-clutcher. And even then, added images will make it more powerful.

Add visual elements to your business storytelling to make it more convincing.

Have an enemy and a hero

Stories need a good guy and a bad guy — also called a hero and an enemy. The enemy can be a thing, such as a desert, “the system,” or even a fear. The arc of the story is the hero’s victory over the enemy.

Questions to ask yourself: What’s the core enemy of my customers or clients? Is it danger? Wasted money? Unfulfilled dreams? Bad hair?

Use conflict

Conflict is how the friction between the enemy and hero manifests. Maybe it shows up as the hero deciding to cross the desert, or when you (the business owner) figures out how to defeat a problem. Conflict also describes the obstacles you encountered on your way to success, whether they were problems with your bank or with a tornado. If the hero has no struggle, then it’s a lame story.

Make it personal, relatable

To borrow from a previous point: Use images of what actually happened, or where it happened. Use images of the real people in the story, not stock photos.

And again, write like you talk. Show your personality. Reveal a bit of your weaknesses and your fears. Everybody else has those weaknesses and fears, too. This leverages a subtle power of storytelling: When we tell our own story, we often tell other people’s, too. Those people are your ideal audience, and your ideal customers or clients.

Add surprise

A story with no surprises is boring. Every good story has at least one surprise. It’s as essential to a story as conflict.

Recommended

Q&A: Joe Pulizzi, Content Entrepreneur

June 2, 2024

Apply Storytelling

Now that you’ve got the thumbnail version of how to tell a good story, here’s where to apply that story in your business:

Your blog. Use your blog to tell a story in whole or in part. For example, write a post about your father, who was in the same business as you are now, and write the post as a story about something he did. That’s telling a segment of your extended story. Or you could write about a client who struggled with something and how she overcame it.

Videos. Any story you can think of — about you or your business, industry, or customers — is made better by creating a video about it. A tool called PowToon can add some animations to your videos. You could create entire videos with just PowToon, and skip all audio or any images of you or anything else, but adding specifics will help.

About page. This was already a page for your company’s story, though no one called it that until storytelling was cool. Look at your About page as the ideal place to tell your story. View your story through that page.

Attracting employees. Whether you’re attracting new employees or inspiring existing ones, stories are a fantastic tool. How would you explain your company’s worldview in a story to new hires?