Reflection – Storytelling tool

STORYTELLING FOR SPARKING ATTENTION AND NECESSITY

Challenge and Selection

I am a content creator on YouTube and I make videos on living a more  intentional life. I had ceated more than 15 videos, which the people enjoyed  and appreciated. However, I faced a huge challenge of increasing the average  view duration of my videos. People were watching my videos, but they left it in  between. It was not so easy for me to find out the reason. I tried to improve  content, the shoot, B rolls, animations and many such aspects. I felt that the  content was attractive/ interesting enough to hold their attention, it was  relevant, useful and yet not intriguing viewers. I constantly watched popular  You tubers and realized they had a story to share. The major problem with my  videos was that they were solving a problem without identifying a problem/  cause. The content might have seemed random to viewers, because they  couldn’t connect to it. Story telling as a part of my video, hence helped me  identify a gap and my content as a probable answer to fill in the gap. The story  helped, as it gave people, something to make an emotional connect with.

Application

One of my most successful attempts at using storytelling in my videos was in a  video on the Pomodoro Technique. This technique is a tool to beat  procrastination. However, just stating this would not have helped in  understanding the same.

So, I used a story to connect with the audience and convey the usefulness of  the technique. I narrated how all of us have sometime or the other in our lives  procrastinated and put off tasks for later. I also highlighted how this led to a  vicious cycle of unproductiveness. These were things that were relatable to  most, as they had faced this themselves and immediately understood how this  was a problem. As I ended this story, I brought in the need for something to  fight procrastination and how the Pomodoro technique was exactly that. This  time, for the viewers, it was not just a technique that may help us with

Reflection – Storytelling tool

procrastination, it was a technique that could help them with a big problem  they’ve faced earlier. A link to my video is: https://youtu.be/bDPejFHJSsT

Insight and Approach

Using storytelling as a tool to spark attention and necessity made me realize  how important creating a connection with my audience can be. The emotional  connect that I created by making the issue relatable helped hold the  audience’s attention span for longer. It had generated interest and excitement  in them; to know a solution for this problem they’d all battled with. This time  around I had created a cause and then solved the problem. This gave me more  than 1.5K views on the video and also made a huge leap in my subscriber base.

Through this experience, I recognized that story telling is an effective tool to  connect and bond well with the audience. As I use this tool further, I will try to  think about the common concerns and simple stories which helps me bond  with my listener. Using those commons, to connect and associate with my  audience would also improve the usage of storytelling. I now use this tool not  only in creating on line content, but also in actual sessions I take while working  in a team or on a project.

