Digital Storytelling – What Content Marketers Need To Know

Are you a content creator? Then welcome to the first discussion on digital storytelling for content marketing. In this discussion, we will talk about what is meant by digital storytelling, the goal of digital storytelling, and how to plan your story. First thing first, the term, digital storytelling.

Download the first chapter of The Storytelling Series: Beginners’ Guide for Small Businesses & Content Creators by Obehi Ewanfoh.

What is digital storytelling?

A digital story is a multimedia presentation, that combines a variety of digital elements within a narrative structure. Media may include text, images, video, audio, social media content, and interactive elements.

Digital storytelling is not just for the elite few. According to Business Insider, about 70% of Gen Zers and 59% of millennials watch stories on Instagram.

One piece of advice from the article, “How Gen Z and millennials watch Stories”, available on Businessinsider.com, is that content creators should prioritize creating or re-purposing ‘how’ to or ‘tutorial’ type of videos. Those were the stories their studies found to be most popular among Gen Zers and millennials.

Anyone who has a story to tell should be using the innovative technology of today to share their thoughts with others. Digital storytelling is a short form of digital media production that allows everyday people to share different aspects of their stories to connect with other people.

It is an art form that has been around in one way or another since the invention of the written word. However, with the advent of social media and different technological devices, it has taken on new meaning and purpose, especially within the marketing and business ecosystem.

Unlike before, it’s now much easier for people to share their stories with the world through digital storytelling. Now that we understand what is meant by digital storytelling, let’s consider what can be the objective of going digital in our storytelling.

The goal of digital storytelling

Is there any goal for digital storytelling? Sure, there is. Everything we do should have a goal. Now, the goal of a digital story is to provide an immersive and engaging experience for your audience through stories. And to be sure that your story comes out well and fulfills that goal, make sure you pay attention to the following:

• Understand the purpose of telling your story. The best stories are those that are told with a purpose. A powerful story can connect people to the messages and ideas you want them to remember, inspire them to take action, or simply help them understand empathy and perspective.
• Know the core message you want to convey – The core message is the idea that you want to share with your audience. If need be, take five minutes to think about why you are creating your story. I mean what key message do you want your audience to get from the story?
• Lay out the story sequence with a beginning, middle, and end. – The story structure is a fundamental element of all storytelling, including books and video games. It is the skeleton that holds everything together and provides the narrative flow.

If you want to learn more about story structure, consider taking our full discussion from where this was extracted: Storytelling For Content Creators and Digital Entrepreneurs.

How to plan your digital stories

Planning is the key to success for any serious work, and this is true for your digital story, too. To make sure your story is cohesive and well-developed, you need to have a clear understanding of what you want to achieve in the first place.

Not knowing how to structure your story can be a huge issue for content creators and don’t let that be you. One of the benefits of planning out your story is that it will stop you from getting stuck and enable you to focus on narrating your story coherently. Even more importantly, planning the story can help you know how the story will flow.

Now, here are some tips to keep in mind about planning your story:

• Brainstorm your story ideas to know the potential, directions, and approaches to the story. It’s not easy to think of what the next bestseller will be, but brainstorming is a good way to find inspiration for your work. You can spend your time focusing on ways to make it happen rather than guessing about what will happen.
• You can use research tools to find out more about your topic, gather relevant sources, and add context that would help you better understand your story. Remember that if your story doesn’t flow well and makes sense to you, it will even be more confusing to your audience.
• Consider having a central conflict in your story. Emphasizing your central conflict will help you frame and define your plot, and provide a good narrative flow for the readers. Consider J.K. Rowling, for example, who wrote seven books, all of them about the central conflict between the main character, Harry Potter, and the antagonist, Voldemort.

Tools for digital storytelling

By digital storytelling, we are referring to content that is well-written and effectively supported by other media elements like sounds and visuals.

We like using data to support our arguments, developing graphics to illustrate concepts, and managing an interactive site that lets the audience explore the idea for themselves.

All these have become easier with the rise of new digital storytelling tools. It’s now much faster than ever before to bring your story to life, using different digital storytelling tools.

Information can be displayed in a range of formats, whether it’s a traditional timeline or interactive elements that create a more immersive experience.

Digital storytelling tools are digital spaces where people have an opportunity to share their fictional and non-fictional stories. These spaces provide a channel through which people can share their experiences.

They can be used by teachers, students, and individuals to tell a story of their own or someone else’s life. The digital storytelling tools allow the users to express themselves creatively, learn about other people’s lives, and make connections with them.

Here are some good examples you can start exploring for your own digital storytelling adventure:

• Adobe Slate: Adobe Slate is a free iPad app that lets you create beautifully moving stories. The app not only makes it easy to visually present your story but also helps you maximize your chances of capturing the audience’s attention, increasing awareness, and inspiring them to act. It all starts with just adding text and a few images and you are good to go!
• Capzles: With Capzles, anyone can share their inner creativity with friends in a fun new environment. Capzles also allows you to convert links so you can share your projects without any hassles while staying safe online!
• WeVideo: Founded in 2011, WeVideo is an online video-editing platform that runs in web browsers and on mobile devices too. The company’s main headquarters are based in Mountain View, California with a team located in Romania.

Other digital storytelling tools you can try out are as followed:

• WriteComics,
• Sock puppets,
• Storybird
• Smilebox
• Comic Master, and much more.

Digital storytelling has become a vital part of marketing. There are many reasons why marketers need to include this in their content strategy.

Digital storytelling provides you with a way to engage your audience and create better stories that are more powerful and creative than ever before. It is an excellent way to provide your audience with unique, personalized content that they will want to consume.

Conclusion on Digital Storytelling – What Content Marketers Need To Know

If you are really serious about how to make your digital story awesome, there’s no better time to get started than now.

The digital storytelling tools I have shared with you in this discussion are some of the best out there, and they are only a one-click way in creating the content your audience will be excited to engage with.

Start exploring them today. And remember that nothing will change until you take action.

Download the first chapter of The Storytelling Series: Beginners’ Guide for Small Businesses & Content Creators by Obehi Ewanfoh.