5 Storytelling Techniques You Should Avoid

Storytelling is an integral part of marketing your brand effectively. It allows you to convey your message and your values to your audience, all while making it easy for them to relate and connect to you on a more personal level by capturing their interest and inciting specific emotions. However, storytelling isn’t as easy as you might think it is.

Top 5 Storytelling Techniques You Should Avoid

There are several mistakes that brands commonly make in their attempt to tell a story that can cause your audience to lose interest. The following are five storytelling techniques you should avoid:

1. Making Your Brand The Central Character

One of the biggest mistakes that brands make is to think that the story they’re telling is about them. How is your audience going to relate to such a story? You need to make the story about them instead. Position the customer as the main character. They are the hero on the hero’s journey. As the brand, you should be the mentor that helps the hero overcome their problem.

2. Not Knowing How To Tell a Good Story

There are two essential components of a good story. The first is to have a point. If the story you’re telling doesn’t go anywhere, it’s not going to have much of an impact on the audience. You need to have a primary message that you’re trying to get across or else the audience won’t know what the point of your story is.

The second is pacing. Good pacing is extremely important. If your story is too long, your audience grows disinterested. Keep your storytelling succinct and avoid going on tangents — stay on point.

3. Providing Too Much Information

Many companies have a habit of trying to provide their audience with as much information as possible. Although you want your audience to be as informed as possible, trying to over explain is going to cause your story to become overwhelming. Keep it simple.

4. Only Showcasing Your Successes

Only showcasing how effective your brand is and how well your products or services work isn’t going to come off as very authentic. Don’t be afraid to highlight some of your failures. Tell your audience how you overcame your failures in order to obtain success. Showing this kind of vulnerability is much more authentic and relatable.

5. Not Knowing Who You’re Telling The Story To

To tell your story effectively, you need to know who your audience is. Otherwise, how can you ever present a character and a problem that your audience can relate to? Identify who your audience is before you begin crafting your story.

Storytelling not only allows you to inform your audience about how your business can help solve their problems, it can also help them to relate to your brand on a more emotional level, making engagement easier sometimes called emotional advertising. However, there is an art to storytelling, which means some storytelling techniques work better than others. Make sure to avoid these five storytelling techniques and you’ll be on the right path.

5 Storytelling Techniques You Should Use For Your Marketing Efforts