Storytelling to Support Your Goals
Storytelling to Support Your Goals
Slide 1
Hello and welcome to this recording from Support Cambridgeshire, a partnership of Cambridge CVS and Hunts Forum. This is one of several recordings we have developed to support small charities.
To accompany the recording there are guidance links, available at the end of the transcript which will provide you with any materials or links we mention.
Slide 2 What we’ll cover:
During this short introduction, we will cover
- Why we tell stories
- The power of purpose
- Story structure
- Sharing stories – how to maximise your efforts
I will also be referring to some case studies to provide real-world practical examples showing how charities have used storytelling in practice to promote their cause. This on-demand training is aimed at individuals linked to community and voluntary groups and small charities, the goal is to encourage you to take your first steps on your storytelling journey and to briefly introduce you to how to make the most of your stories.
Slide 3 Why Should You Tell Stories
Its important to get the fundamentals of storytelling right first. Why should you as a (not for profit) tell stories ?
- Stories build interest, awareness, and empathy
- Your story is what attracts people to you—and what keeps them coming back.
- They are the basic building blocks for reaching every goal you have as listed on the slide this includes raising money, recruiting partners and volunteers and building relationships.
Slide 4 How do you begin your story?
How do we start putting your story together? As we all appreciate, everyone has limited time – you as an individual, as an organisation, and your target audience. So thinking through how a story can help you achieve your aims and make a difference is important. So how do you create a story that achieves the outcome you want? Like a lot of things, it starts with questions. Keeping these points in mind when creating content or a campaign could help you achieve your storytelling goals.
- Who are you telling your story to?
- Why are you telling it?
- What do you want to happen and when?
I will discuss each question in a little more detail over the next few slides.
Slide 5 Who are you telling your story to
So lets start with the “who?”
It’s really important that you get to know your audience. This will help you to create a more targeted campaign. You might think about segmenting your audience – introductory guides on how to plan your campaign are included in the links. Consider what barriers your audience are they facing – that are perhaps stopping them from engaging with your cause – is it time, digital or other access needs, finances etc. Also think about how they might want to get involved, based on what you know about them – so for example busy working individuals may want quick information on how they can support your cause outside of core working hours
Slide 6 WHY are you telling your story?
WHY are you telling your story? There could be many reasons or just one, but thinking about this will help you to achieve your goals with your story. Don’t tell a story or share content for the sake of it. Think through the outcomes you want to achieve early on and this will inform the story you tell and how you tell it
Slide 7 What do you want to happen and when?
What do you want to happen and when? What would you like the reader of your story to do or how you would like your story to impact your reader? It can be helpful to categorise your story to shape your message. You might think along the lines of a hard or specific ask for example; you want your reader to “donate here” or “volunteer now”. Or perhaps you want your story to have a “soft ask” so that your story shares information and inspires your reader to access further information or to further action.
Make sure your call to action is clear, for example, “click here to donate.” It is clear to your audience “when” they should take action.
Slide 8 Case study
This case study highlights how simple it can be to share a story. I found this very straightforward yet powerful story on the COOP website
The story is: Ian is a talented conductor, he has been a part of the Paisley Abbey choir for 20 years, he started a new community group called The Paisley Senior Singers. The group aims to attract seniors in the local area and beyond to join their singing and social group, on a weekly basis. The story shares details of when and where and who to contact for further details. There is also some text about sharing your own story about how your community has come together to support each other.
Referring back to our starter questions: Who, Why, What and when……
- Who: Ian is a volunteer who wishes to support his community in particular the lonely older people, he is a talented conductor.
- Why: The aim is to decrease loneliness, improve well being and increase community engagement
- What: Ian used his experience to set up a group to engage with the local community to improve well being. The call to action is to share your community engagement story
- When: Coop are asking community groups to share their stories about how their community has come together to support each other, there is a clear Call to action: “Share your story” button on the page.
Slide 9 Be More Cat
A useful tool to support you with starting to tell your own stories: it is to be more CAT
So looking at our Paisley Senior Singers case study again
- Challenge: Decrease loneliness and increase community engagement
- Action: engage with local community to improve well being
- Transformation: volunteer used his experience to set up a group to engage with local community to improve well being. The call to action/transform is: share your own story on how you transformed your community for the better.
Slide 10 A second case study
A second case study. This is actually about a cat. This is a Cats Protection social media post. The story is about a cat called Gizmo who was found 20 miles away from his home, he had jumped into a delivery van, but he was microchipped so when he was found he was returned to his owners without further delay. The post included a direct quote from the joyful owners of Gizmo.
So there was a Facebook post, with text and pictures
Breaking the story down using the questions I posed earlier
Who is the story aimed at – cat owners – and what do cat owners like – pictures and stories of cats. This social media story includes a cute pic of a cat to ensure a wide reach with a personal story and a happy ending, where Cats Protection has played a positive and vital role, and how the target audience as cat owners can help Cats Protection to continue their work.
Why share this story – to keep cats safe. Cats Protection mission include rehoming cats and championing their rights, ensuring they return to their owners when they are lost forms part of their key objectives.
What outcomes does Cats Protection want to achieve with this story: If cats are lost, they can be returned home quickly and safely, and microchipping cats ensures this happens. So increase the number of cats being microchipped.
So; the final call to action is to Find out more about microchipping with a link
I have also posted a screenshot of some of the comments just to show how a Social Media post can engage an audience and continue the story, with re-shares, comments by other cat owners with their own stories and likes etc. So the one story about Gizmo can generate a conversation and “microchipping movement.”
Looking at this same case study using the CAT tool:
The Challenge is to engage with cat owners to encourage them to microchip their cats
The Action is to share Gizmo’s successful story and to inspire cat owners
The Transformation is for cat owners to be inspired to learn more about microchipping and microchip their own cats.
Slide 11 Sharing stories and how to maximise your efforts – less can be more
Moving on to sharing stories and how to maximise your efforts. Really helpful to remember that when thinking about digital storytelling, especially social media, think less is more. A few top tips are included on the slide
- Keep sentences short (20 words maximum)
- Keep films short 2/3mins maximum
- Use short words
- Don’t over-do punctuation
- Be concise
- Use every day English
- Be authentic
Slide 12 sharing stories and how to maximise your efforts – accessibility
Sharing stories – how to maximise your efforts. Accessibility. There are a lot of free readability and accessibility software to assist you with this, including Microsoft which can help with accessibility, Grammarly can help with readability and CHAT GPT and AI can also be used to create content BUT be careful and make sure you are checking over any AI created content, so that it is your story and it makes sense. There are also some helpful, straightforward style guides when using various software tools. For example; Social media now have Alt text features and most have their own accessibility guides that tell you what to do. But across all platforms think about your presentation including your font and colours etc. There are some helpful links and resources on the slide
Slide 13 Memorable stories
To be able to maximise our efforts we want to make sure we are creating and sharing memorable stories, but what makes a memorable story? There is a clear beginning, middle, and end. The story is fairly short. It offers some action or transformation. We have already discussed this when we looked at story structure and how to create our stories, remember our initial questions, why are we telling the story and what do we want to happen, and the CAT tool, what’s the challenge, action and transformation. Also, remember Less is More (from the previous slide) when sharing our stories. When we looked at our initial questions, we did look at “who are we telling our story to.” And this also forms part of creating memorable stories, we should aim to tell and share a story that is personally relevant to you or the person who shared it with you so that it creates that all-important emotional connection with your audience.
The links on the slide provide further information and guidance on this idea of emotional connection with your audience when telling and sharing stories. The first step in making this emotional connection is your story’s voice, which we will discuss next.
Slide 14 “Person first Charity second.” Third Case Study.
If you are sharing someone’s story, you want to ensure an authentic voice to create that emotional connection. You need to be respectful and ethical. Remember; person first and charity second. On the slide is our third case study, from the Anthony Nolan website (they are a blood cancer charity). The links are to a short YouTube video and blog post with photos, sharing Jo’s lived experience. This case study shows that successfully sharing someone’s story, using their own voice doesn’t have to be slick professionally created content, instead user-generated low-quality footage but with quality content can be authentic and engaging, this is because Jo is charismatic, positive and confident. The audience is left rooting for her and it’s an inspiring story of lived experience created and shared authentically in Jo’s own voice. But remember that sharing lived experience can be complex depending on the people your charity works with, you will need to make judgements about what is appropriate. You must ensure that consent and ongoing consent is properly obtained and recorded. (We have provided links to further resources in the final slides and transcript.) The key to sharing lived experiences and others’ stories, ethically is to ensure that you build a consensual relationship based on trust, which continues even after the story has been created and shared.
Slide 15 Choosing your platform
Where do we start with what platform to use to share our stories?
This initial first question can already be overwhelming before we have even begun to share. As you are probably aware different platforms can reach different audiences. On the slide there is a link to We are Social Digital 2024 which does break this down a little. So for example the younger generations tend to use snapchat and tik tok and perhaps older generations use Facebook.
Think about your knowledge and capacity, as an individual and as an entire team.
If you think back to the Cats Protection case study – when I shared the screenshot of the comments section to Gizmo’s story – those comments can be just as important as the original post in creating that engagement and momentum, keeping the story alive and present. So, the knowledge and capacity to monitor and engage with the comments.
And remember that you can reuse or edit your content so that it can be used on more than one platform. Thinking back to Jo’s story with the Anthony Nolan Trust on the previous slide it was a blog post with a photo and also YouTube videos – which were then shared and posted on different Social Media platforms as well as their website.
Finally, remember essentially you are a matchmaker – matching your story to the best platform – so that as many people as possible will see it / hear it and action it
Slide 16 It’s part of a Process
In summary, storytelling is part of the bigger picture of your group’s story and it is all part of a process starting with:
- Your audience – who are you telling your story to?
- How can you connect with them – create that emotional connection
- Collecting and curating those connections, those lived experiences and voices and include everyone – your entire team;
- Producing the stories. Remember structure – beginning, middle and end. Remember CAT – challenge, action and transformation.
- When you hit share it’s not the end – watch what the impact is – learn from it so that when you consider your next story and digital campaign you can improve on the outcomes.
Slide 17 Policies and procedures
I am ending with a couple of important resources slide. You may already have in place policies around safeguarding, EDI (Equality, Diversity and Inclusion) and health and safety. But as you consider storytelling it is important to make sure that you also have policies for the way you work through digital channels and on digital platforms. I have listed a few policies here that you may not already have, and you may need to think about adopting, including:
- Data protection & GDPR
- Consent & Photography
- Copyright
- Training & Guidelines
- Digital Strategy
- What to do if things go wrong? Dealing with complaints and negative comments
- Social Media
Slide 18 Resources
Some further resources that may be of assistance
Slide 19 Here to Help
We hope that this training has been of assistance as you embark upon your storytelling journey. Please do reach out to us directly with any further support needs and do check out our website for further training resources.
Guidance and support links:
Charity Digital, Eight Steps to Planning Marketing Campaigns
Facebook, Understand Audiences
The Process of Effective Story
1st Case study: Paisley Senior Singers
From raw content to stand out stories – Chris Flood,
content and search lead, Cancer Research UK. Charity Comms.
Pixar in a Box, The art of storytelling, Introduction to Structure
2nd Case study Cats Protection – Gizmo and Microchipping
Microsoft Word’s built-in readability guidelines
Content Design London’s readability guidelines
Lisa Riemers, accessibility resources,
Charity Comms, Accessible Communication: a starting point to foster inclusive comms.
Thekar Pekar, Lesson from Retelling Stories, NeuroCooking
It drew me in… Christmas advertising is not only about storytelling, it is about the story of us as humans – Walnut Unlimited
3rd Case study: Jo’s story – Anthony Nolan and Youtube video – Jo’s story
The Power of Human Stories; How to be an authentic storyteller. Charity Comms
We are Social: Digital 2024 UK
The Catalyst, how to tell your story with digital
Policies and Procedures
Policies & procedures: NCVO help and Guidance (National Council for Voluntary organisations)
Guidance support on social media from NCVO
Resources
Here to Help
www.supportcambridgeshire.org.uk
To contact CCVS
To contact Hunts Forum
