People pay more attention to a message if it is concealed by an interesting story.
Parents prefer to tell young children the story of “The Boy Who Cried Wolf”, as opposed to directly telling them not to lie because it captivates their audience and makes them think about what they have been told after the fact. Effective storytelling makes your message stand out by being more memorable.
Younger audiences are constantly being bombarded with heaps of information on a daily basis, especially from social media. However, this information is rarely presented to them in the form of a story. Those who are most successful at engaging with a younger audience are those who can tell a good story, as they will remember it.
With this in mind, we at All Good Tales have prepared three tips to help you use storytelling to engage with a younger audience.
Bring them into your world
The amount of serene and breath-taking photos and videos young people are currently exposed has expanded the capacity of their imagination.
It is now much easier for a young person in London to imagine what the world of someone who lives in Nepal looks like. If the message you are trying to convey takes place in a world that is personal to you and your experience, bring this young audience into that world.
Use videos, pictures or even just vivid descriptions. This will make your audience want to visit your world and to be a part of it. They will want to join the experience which you are conveying to them.
Use newer platforms
Traditional social media platforms such as Facebook and YouTube still hold the lion’s share of the market. When it comes to younger demographics, platforms such as Snapchat, Instagram and TikTok dominate.
The key thing to understand in regard to telling stories on these platforms is that imagery is key.
On Instagram, while the majority of the actual storytelling will take place in the caption. However, the picture must be evocative enough to entice your audience into reading it. Once they have read the caption, they will look at the picture in a new light. They will now know the picture’s story. The picture and caption complement each other’s stories. This will greaten the interest of a young audience.
Make your story interactive
Due to their large exposure to social media, young people, unlike previous generations, are used to a world where they can interact with the media they consume. The most successful YouTubers are those who interact with their audience. They also attribute the audience’s interaction with their successful rise to the top. This makes their fans aware of their story. It makes them feel as if they are a part of it, which will make them want to continue consuming their content.
Similarly, public stories on Snapchat allow anyone to contribute to a story about a certain topic. If your brand ran a public story concerning an event you were running, those who attended could upload a story to it, making them feel more involved in the collective story of your event.
The key thing to understand about how young audiences view stories is that they often see them as communal entities to which they can all contribute. Any brand which can succeed in providing them this ability will be very successful with this demographic.
