10 Mistakes most Corporate Storytellers make without even realizing

There is a beautiful town located some 125 km from the Himalayas in the Indian state of Uttarakhand named Nainital. The town is famous for its 7 beautiful lakes surrounded by lush green mountains.

I along with my group happened to be there in May 2016 and just when we were returning and waiting for our train, we witnessed something amazing going on at the railway station.

A theatre group was travelling to Ahmedabad for a competition. Just like us, they were also waiting for their train. They were a couple of hours early. So, they decide to rehearse the play at the railway in front of hundreds of people.

I too joined along with one of my friends. It was a huge crowd and there were no instruments, so they had to almost scream to make themselves heard. In doing so, the nuances of acting were put on hold in exchange for making themselves heard.

Suddenly, I heard someone asking me a few questions from the crowd — “Who are these guys? What are they doing?”

“They probably are a theatre group and I’m not sure but they are rehearsing their play,” I replied still unsure of all the details.

“Oh, are they good?”

“Yeah, I mean the story seems good, and it’s funny. Overall quite entertaining!”

A couple of minutes after our small discussion ended, the same guy joined the play and started doing his lines and I thought to myself, “Wow, that’s one way of getting feedback!”

Unfortunately, a lot of corporates aren’t doing this. They aren’t listening to their customers while telling their stories. And that’s the first point of this list of where corporates are going wrong while telling their stories:-

1. They don’t listen — Knowing is crucial to storytelling and listening is important to know things. A skilled storyteller is good at stealing people’s emotions, experiences, and moments. She steals them, makes her own, and creates a story out of them. She listens and learns; it’s a never-ending process. But a lot of corporate storytellers seem to miss that. They rely too much on their own experience and learnings which makes it a one-dimensional and boring story that not a lot of people like to hear. As a corporate storyteller, you need to listen to your colleagues, your audience, your competitors, your industry, and sometimes different industries. Talk to them, read about them, ask questions, and be there always whenever there is a call for a dialogue. If you aren’t doing that, take a moment and reevaluate your approach.
2. They don’t know their audience enough — Because stories create empathy. Of all the emotions, be it anxiety, sadness, excitement, romance, hope, and fear, cannot be invoked if your audience doesn’t connect to what you’re saying. The ‘connection’ starts with an agreement and by finding a common ground you both agree upon. Often this common ground is a problem (or tension) that storytellers like to call ‘conflict. A conflict between aspiration and struggle is the best one. Don’t worry if you don’t have both clearly defined, you can work with only one. Just listen to Steve Jobs:-
   The coolest thing about iPod is that your entire music library fits in your pocket. OK? You can take your whole music library with you, right in your pocket. Never before possible. So that’s iPod.
   Steve Jobs knew his tribe. He simply defined a dream, an aspiration that was never possible before. Everyone wanted to realize this dream as never before in their lifetime they could carry the whole bunch of their favourite songs wherever they wanted. That’s where a conflict was born between aspiration and a problem that people didn’t know existed.
3. They make it all about themselves — ‘We are happy to announce that we are coming up with this new cool product with these extraordinary features.” “Okay, good for you. Why should I be interested?”
   If you don’t want the reaction above, you have to make it about your audience. Out of the 4 main elements of a story, Character, Plot, Setting, and Conflict, Character is often considered the most important one. If you got the character wrong, you’re in big trouble. Also, if at any point, you’re confused about who is the central character (the hero) in your story, it’s not a good sign- It is always your audience.
4. They often don’t know where to tell a story — At times, they are confused if they should be telling a story at this point or not. And since they have this habit to follow a predefined structure with an introduction, a middle, and a conclusion, they do it without even thinking about it. But sometimes, there’s no story — there are just a problem and a straightforward solution. As a corporate storyteller, you need to understand that sometimes when a user asks how to change her iPhone batteries, she just wants her battery changed. That’s it. There’s no, “A lot of us face this challenge of changing our iPhone batteries. iPhone is a great brand and they produce great batteries which are……………change your iPhone batteries in 5 steps:-” Don’t do that as often it gets boring. Storytelling is a special craft and you cannot let it go wasted into boring someone.
5. They don’t know their kind of stories — Being inspired by Google and Amazon is fine and trying to emulate their success stories too. But you need to understand that you cannot follow the exact same path they are taking right now. They were in your shoes when they started and making this jump can harm you more than doing any good. Amazon’s audience recognizes, knows, and identifies with them, so they can tell a certain kind of story. But your audience probably doesn’t know you or doesn’t identify with you, so it’s a long road you have to take while presenting yourself to the world.
   You might meet your audience through an informative blog. But here is a problem, 40% of internet users said they don’t read blogs. So, are you doomed? No, you aren’t. They do read blogs, in fact, 80% of internet users read blogs and they’ll read yours too if you manage to rank in SERP-1 for the query they ask!
6. They just do a data dump — Today the world runs on Data. All the tech giants and medium and small-sized companies have plenty of data. Always remember, data is for you and the story is for your customers. Don’t get me wrong, stories can never be told without reliable data because data is the truth, but it has to be presentable and it should convey a message. If it’s there just to make you look smart, it’s probably unnecessary, so you can cut it out. Always ask this question if these numbers convey a message or compliment my message in any way. If they don’t, go back, analyze and visualize it again and come back with a story.
7. They are not credible -Did you believe the above-mentioned data of 40% of internet users reading blogs without even consciously knowing it? No, you didn’t and your audience doesn’t believe you either when you just throw random numbers and facts at them. In this era of information, there’s a lot of fake information out there. This fake information calls for scepticism. So, how do you present yourself as a credible source? It’s simple, provide sources. If you’ve conducted the study, you’re the source. If not, provide third party sources.
   So, here’s the source for you regarding the above-mentioned data- https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/do-people-read-blogs
8. They have the habit of putting unnecessary CTA — ‘Call to Action’, just like all the other elements, is important. After all, the sole purpose of all your marketing efforts is to convert your audience into your customers. For that purpose, sometimes, you explicitly have to tell them to take a certain action. If that action goes along with the story that you tell and helps your audience, they’ll most likely take that action. But I often feel that CTAs are there just for the sake of being there. As a storyteller, either avoid such unnecessary CTAs or find ways to make them a part of your story.
9. There’s no Structure — Some storytellers are so confident of their craft that they often miss one of the most crucial elements of the whole process, i.e, preparation. Being a programmer and a writer, I know it for fact that both, programming and writing are mostly about staring at a computer screen and thinking of what to type than actually typing. This process can be made easier if you have a structure already planned up. Before even coming up with the first words of the story, you should be clear on the theme, plot, character, and contrast. If you have both, the problem and the solution with you, that’s perfect. Even if you don’t have a solution, a vision would do it too. Even if it’s a journalistic story where you have no intention of suggesting a solution or a vision, your story still has a vision. When you expose the world to a problem, you have this innate desire to change things better even if it’s not the part of your story. The audience may not find it explicitly mentioned, you as a storyteller have to be aware of that.
10. They make it boring — Like every craft, storytelling can be learned and taught and like every craft, it has a few principles. You may break a rule or all of them but there’s one basic rule of storytelling that you cannot break — you cannot be boring. You don’t need to apply all the rules or follow a set of principles defined by gurus, instead, you need to find your own voice and cast it into something that your audience would like to listen to. Don’t just follow the norms because everyone else is doing so and probably that is the right way to do so. It might be the right way for them, but if it doesn’t work for you, find something that works. Don’t be afraid of showing your failures, don’t try to make them look perfect, and stop being boring!

One thing, I can say for sure that the play in Nainital wasn’t boring at all. After the play, I met the same guy and congratulated him on his play. That’s when he told me that he was the writer/director of the play and his group was travelling for a competition. I met his team, shared my views and told them that had it not been for the lack of proper instruments because of which they had to almost scream, it’d have been a real pleasure to watch all of them act.

The director laughed really hard and said to me, “Sometimes, it’s more important to have yourself heard to entertain the audience than to prove how skilful you’re at your craft!”