7 Storytelling Techniques You Can Apply in Training Videos

Training videos are essential tools to teach workers about specific processes and make them a skilled and adaptable part of the company’s workforce. As more companies plan to take their training programs up a notch, some corporate training professionals use storytelling’s power to create a better learning experience. Incorporating storytelling can help companies make a memorable, immersive, and engaging learning environment, which can retain information and spur change among employees.

Let’s explore how you can use storytelling in training videos.

The Everlasting Impact of Storytelling

Storytelling has been a powerful tool that has captivated everyone’s attention since the beginning. Ancient oral traditions, bestselling fiction, and movies use storytelling elements to depict interesting life situations, relate to human experiences, and learn each life lesson. Telling stories that create suspense ensures emotional engagement to the intended audience.

In the same way, the corporate world can use storytelling to improve the effectiveness of their campaigns and make training more engaging for their employees. A great story can enhance learner engagement as you teach the basics of a new process. This helps retain information even after the training session wraps up.

Storytelling also helps connect theory and practice. With written materials and presentations, learners often need help applying the theories to the actual job. Storytelling can immerse them in relatable scenarios that show these applications to enhance their skills. Employees can picture themselves in the scenarios and use the lessons and principles they learned from these stories.

How to Craft a Compelling Narrative for Training Videos

Follow these tips and techniques to push a cohesive story in your training video materials:

1. Understand your learners.

Get to know who your learners will be through research. Know about their job roles, learning preferences, and pain points to create characters that resonate with them. People learn better when they relate to the characters they see on screen.

2. Use a narrative arc.

A good story drives your video forward. You can incorporate your personal experience to show learning objectives and create a personal connection with your target audience.

Just like in films and novels, structure the story of your training video into these three sections:

• Beginning: This is where you pose the challenge or problem that needs to be addressed.
• Middle: This part provides solutions, learning points, examples, and strategies to overcome the challenges. Position yourself as the subject matter expert about the topic.
• Resolution: Your video should end with a key takeaway or a few lessons employees can learn and apply to their work.

Having a solid outline for your story’s structure helps reinforce the lessons of the training video. Write the first draft of your script after making the outline.

3. Give your character some development.

Throughout the story, your character should have some growth.

As your story unfolds, your characters should transform from clueless beginners to empowered problem-solvers. Let them face challenges that mirror the obstacles your target audience faces in real life.

Through their struggles and triumphs, your characters can demonstrate the key points of your training content. Show, don’t tell!

By the end, your viewers should feel enlightened and equipped with solutions and takeaways they can apply in their own lives

4. Connect with empathy and emotion.

Engage your audience by making them emotional and empathic to the story. Use some of your personal stories and put facial expressions on your characters to make them more relatable to the viewers. Add some music to intensify the emotions your characters are feeling.

5. Incorporate visuals, metaphors, and analogies.

Use visuals like graphic designs and animations to make your video more appealing. You don’t need to use too many of them in one frame. Keep the animations where important, and use as many tools as you want to create them. You can include closed captions for those who may have hearing difficulties.

Aside from visuals, analogies and metaphors help explain abstract concepts and ideas. Just like animation, use metaphors to a minimum to keep your content simple and digestible for your audience. Insert a real-life example your audience can understand to make the lesson more interesting.

6. End with a call to action (CTA).

Wrap up your video with a short CTA that will encourage the viewers to apply what they learned in the lesson. You may also provide a YouTube link that contains all the videos they can watch.

7. Be consistent.

Have a consistent narrative style when creating your videos to push your branding. Repeat the key points to improve retention of the lessons and make a better learning experience for your employees.

Partnering with a Video Production Company for Creating Training Videos

The thought of creating training videos alone can be overwhelming yet fulfilling. But if you don’t know where to start and are beating a deadline, a video production company can help you. They can plan your story from scratch and give it life on video. They can simplify all the processes for you, including storyboarding your script and animating it using animation tools. Their expertise in visual storytelling techniques is unparalleled. That’s why they’re the best team to enlist in your video production journey.

Final Words

Storytelling drives your lessons forward in your training video. It makes every second engaging and opens opportunities for learning to every employee. Techniques like the three-act narrative arc and animations help make your videos memorable and easy to understand. Storytelling never goes old, and in the corporate world, good stories have the power to educate and strike a chord with people.