Even if the opportunities to tell stories have always existed as a part of intra-community communication and more recently for marketing purposes, very few people have ever been trained to do so, including most marketers. In destinations practicing marketing 3.0, storytelling training has three main purposes:
- Empowering and motivating stakeholders to contribute in the story creation and delivery, hence boosting the destination’s content marketing machine.
- Providing the transformational experience that storytelling training creates in many people as a self-awareness exercise, healing therapy and development of social consciousness.
- Developing leadership skills among the community members to empower them in becoming change leaders of the new culture to be built and the mission pursuit.
- Educating students by transferring wisdom and values, and by developing innovative thinking, artistic and communication skills.
Storytelling training is a key tool for the development of destinations developing a marketing 3.0 approach. As aforementioned, it may have many different purposes, for it is usually adapted to the main purpose. This training is carried out through workshops.
Before planning a Storytelling training workshop it is necessary to assess well the goals of the target audience. In this regard, we may distinguish between three main types of workshops:
- Story circle: focused on sharing personal stories about specific concerns
- Change leadership storytelling: focused on developing storytelling skills for change leaders
- Digital storytelling: focused on mastering the techniques for editing digital stories
Despite the different focus, the three types of workshops have some common learning outcomes. Participants learn to craft and tell stories to connect with their target audience, learning how to find the right words, rewrite, reframe and craft their story, and developing skills to convey emotions and engage their listeners. The main learning outcomes are:
- Theoretical framework of plot and character prototypes
- Techniques for creating and developing characters
- Techniques for crafting a compelling narrative
- Process for stretching stories to convey different messages
- Techniques for public speaking and communicating in a dynamic and compelling way
- How to use stories for different purposes such as teaching, building community, selling, etc.
- The importance and roles of logic play, credibility and emotion for successful storytelling
- Creative process from the brief to the delivered story
- Quick and easy story creation formulas
Do you think of other ways to train on story making and storytelling?
