Storytelling is the social and cultural art of sharing stories, with improvisation, theatrics, or embellishment. It ages back to thousands of centuries ago when lords and kings dwelled in castles and dungeons. Human beings have been telling stories around campfires since the Stone Age. History was created and left for the future through manuscripts and scrolls in the form of stories and tales. This proves communication has always been there even when the word itself wasn’t coined. Stories can directly or indirectly affect the behavior of a mass of people altogether, changing the way they think and feel. Learn why storytelling and creative writing are criticial skills to thrive in today’s job market.
Storytelling as a Skill for Students and Young Professionals
Did you know that IBM is the first technology company to use Storytelling “To figure out the business value of the internet” way back in 1995? These days, several brands including startups and tech companies are leveraging storytelling to scale up their businesses. Hence storytelling has become one of the most sought-after soft skills in today’s job market.
Not only for marketers or visual artists, but storytelling is also a must-have skill for STEM/tech professionals including data scientists.
Why You Must Learn Storytelling as a Data Scientist or any STEM Professional?
Storytelling is just as much a part of a data scientist’s job as any other technical aspect.
Context is what builds value that surrounds insights generated through data. Through their storytelling skills, data scientists can help build significant context and can effectively explain their ideas to everyone present.
A good storytelling narrative can help make data and analytics a lot more accessible. Read The Value of Mastering Data Visualization & Storytelling for Data Scientists.
Role of Storytelling in Business Communication
In business communication, storytelling refers to the process of telling a story, rather than listing facts, when communicating with current or potential customers. It ensures an edge over other competitors.
Storytelling still holds its ground today and is one of the most important factors upon which businesses and working organizations thrive. It can be very powerful if used efficiently, although a lot of small businesses fail or struggle to grasp its potential effect.
Here are a few reasons stating its effects:
Stories Get Attention
Nowadays, every business gives sheer importance to their marketing which drives their profits, and to do so they pitch themselves, their products, or their services through various types of media. But we live in a culture where self-promotion and self-branding are viewed as something negative and thus serve as an instant turn-off.
Storytelling helps to get around this problem by allowing you to talk about your business without it sounding like a sales pitch. Moreover, people will stay not because you are trying to sell them something, but because you are providing them entertainment and knowledge through a story.
Stories Inspire Change and Invoke Emotion
Stories have the ability to make a mass of people one, by the use of relatable moments which in turn creates emotions and feelings in people. In short, stories move people. They can create change rousing individuals to distinctively get things done. By utilizing powerful business narrating methods, organizations can motivate the aggregate individual change that is important to execute hierarchical change.
Stories Become a Memory
When was the last time you were with companions or associates and the discussion existed around memories? Individuals recollect great stories, and they will return to them and rehash them. Great stories foster culture and endure everyday hardship.
For example, Hutch (now called Vodafone) used a pug called Cheeka for their advertisement “You & I”. The ad showed the dog following a boy in unlikely locations, prompting the tagline, “Wherever you go, our network follows.” It blasted and led to the rise in popularity of pugs in India, with the extensive sales of the breed even with high prices.
Storytelling is Important for Brand-Building
Storytelling is being used in digital marketing for business as a tool for user-generated content. It is highly used by innovative start-ups to pitch their ideas to potential customers and investors to get feedback on the potential value of their products or services. Creating stories for the sake of connection and entertainment helps develop an emotional connection with your brand and develop trust which in turn helps build brand loyalty and brand value.
Benefits of Storytelling in the Tech Sector
Stories revolve all around us, especially in this rising digital age where the progress of technology can be compared to the speed of light. The motion pictures and television we watch, news stories we read, and discussions we have; stories have taken the shape of water and co-exist with us. We anticipate that they should shape the foundations of our connections and relationships. Research states that individual stories and gossip on normal makeup almost 65% of our discussions.
Here are a few benefits of Storytelling in the Tech Sector:
Storytelling Spreads Brand Awareness
Business communication is about awareness, memorability, and persuasion, especially in the tech sector. For this, nothing can match storytelling. Storytelling is the oldest and also the most powerful form of communication we have. They address a human need to comprehend and interface genuinely with how and why things occur.
Provide a Vision
The storytelling technique is the process of clearly understanding how the customers’ life is affected by our technology. A good storyteller typically creates a realistic scenario, personalizes the value proposition to benefit the customer, and provides a vision to the customer based on factual data. This ensures a clear and sheer vision that speaks both for the company and to the customers as one.
Solve Doubts of Customers
Telling a good story about a technology company requires knowledge of your customers. Understand your customers, realize their problems, and relevantly provide a solution through storytelling. Customers will be happy knowing their band supports them even without them asking for it making them loyal to your products or services whenever they need them.
Quality Content Retains Consumers
Leading tech companies like Google, Facebook/Whatsapp, Uber, Spotify, Truecaller, Red Hat, Netflix, Hotstar, and Amazon are continuously telling us compelling and consistent stories about who they are and why what they do matters to us, humans. In this ever-growing sector, the use of digital media to produce content-rich graphics and videos help procure consumers at high levels through visually appealing and aesthetic content that not only looks good but feels good as well.
Importance of Storytelling for Students
Everyone loves stories, especially children and students. Storytelling allows them to put their imagination to the test, allowing emotions, feelings, ideas, and most importantly creativity to flow. It teaches empathy and provides a unique experience of an adventure in another world. As children, we learn how to enjoy a story to grow up to tell the same story as a storyteller through our perspectives which ensure a better understanding and help us make sense of the world and ourselves.
For students, storytelling is also used as an instructional strategy to not only build relationships and establish people’s social presence online but also as an alternative format to present content. It can even be used as a tool for scholarly communication. Read Developing Student Storytelling Skills To Set Up Future Career Success.
Storytelling is an art that one can learn, understand, implement and grow from. Here’s how to improve your storytelling skills as a student:
Storytelling Provides a Clear Message
A great story always has a clear message or moral at the end. It gives meaning and provides a certain kind of significance to the story. You need to have a definite idea of what or where you’re leading the audience to. It is crucial to be transparent on the main theme or plot that forms the main crux of the story.
Integrate Your Personal Experiences
Nothing speaks more than emotions, feelings, and moments, especially the ones unaccounted for. Implement your personal experiences amidst your stories. It will not only make your story specific to you but will make it relatable as well.
Interact More
A lot more can be learned and taken through interaction with people and walking through their stories in their shoes. All these experiences help you make stories, people can relate to. Storytelling also helps students to enjoy and be aware of intonation by keeping in check the tone of voice, natural-sounding expressions, and phrases as well as interaction between native speakers.
Follow Good Storytellers
There is no better way to learn the art of storytelling than by watching, hearing, and following professional storytellers or other storytellers who you admire. Learning how to craft and deliver a narrative from professionals will help you create unique content.