Storytelling
What’s the Best Way to Tell Your Story?
By Lan Yao, Director at PRLab
People learn through stories. Nearly all our early understandings of the world come from a piece of good story. It doesn’t matter whether it is of a princess, a monster, or a robot from the future, by the end of the day, it is the things behind the story that make a difference. Stories are emotions, ethics, and attitudes disguised in a storyline. Throughout our whole life, we read or listen to stories knowing that even the characters may fade away as time goes by, the emotions, ethics, or attitudes will not.
As PR professionals, even though we understand the significance of storytelling, we are not necessarily qualified as good storytellers, especially when it comes to a professional setting. Often times, PR people are either too eager to get their social media drafted or too bored by the cliché work of compiling a blog post for the client. They seldom stop to ask themselves a question: what’s the best way to tell the story?
Text
Following the millennials’ lead, this oldest format of storytelling is being less and less used in contemporary communication. When emoji and Snapchat has dominated our lives, there is a common belief of “the less text, the better”. Will text die? Absolutely no, and I doubt it would ever. The imagination ignited by words can never be replaced. Different people read a written story in different ways and with significantly different takeaways, which is exactly the charisma of words. But, taking the current situation of newspaper and magazines into consideration, we should definitely work to produce better and more involving text stories.
Audio
Podcasts continue to be the best friend of regular commuters (or people who are trying to sleep in some cases) and the best way for certain brands to express themselves. When Ginny Mineo came to the PRAdvanced: What’s your story, 2017 PRSSA regional conference and talked about storytelling, she brought a series of photos plotting in a vintage game room with people appear to be from the 60s playing arcade games. This is another case of a story that could be better in audio. You could almost hear the noise in the room, the unique soundtrack coming from a retro game machine, the young man in bell bottoms shouting “No way!” to his friend. You may never notice it, but people do pay more attention to the sound when they can’t see any visuals.
Video
Video is probably the most talked and increasingly used format in the realm of storytelling lately. Generally speaking, video is suitable for any story that would be difficult to explain or tell otherwise. As the combination of sound, visual, and text, it is often time easier for a video to attract its audience and offer more information in a relatively short period of time. At the same time, however, it is equally easy for it to lose focus point. How to balance between the different elements of a video, and make them a harmonious unity is the key to a good video.
Other
New technology develops on a daily basis. So does public relations. The rising methods including VR and AR (augmented reality) may still seem to be new to the industry, it is for sure that they will soon become competitive storytelling tools and, probably for one day, the cliché work of a PR professional.
Next time you are reading a blog post named “5 reasons why every PR professional need a blog”, or “7 reasons why podcast is important”, take some time and think about your story. Does your message fit in the format? Is it for sure the best way to tell your story? And most importantly, will the method help your audience save the emotions, ethics, or attitudes?