The Power of Digital Storytelling

Most Toastmasters understand the power of telling stories from the stage. Storytelling helps engage audiences, evokes emotion, and makes messages more relatable and memorable than simply using data or statistics to make a point. But as more of the world’s communications and interactions continue to move online, the need for effective storytelling has extended to the computer screen.

The ability to persuade, inform, and educate others through digital storytelling has emerged as a skill Toastmasters across geographic boundaries need to understand and often master for success in their professional and personal lives.

Digital storytelling involves the use of media, including video, audio, text, images, music, animation, and other elements to tell a story in an online setting. The technique is commonly used on platforms like YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, Instagram, company websites, and other online venues to educate or influence viewers, to sell products, to raise money, or simply to create personal narratives to capture life-changing events or experiences.

While speaking in person to audiences will always be a vital communication skill, experts say there are compelling reasons for Toastmasters to become familiar with the art of digital storytelling—even if they don’t work in professions like marketing, corporate communications, journalism, or nonprofit fundraising, fields where learning this technique is often required.

“Digital media is the primary way younger generations consume information and that will only continue to grow in the future,” says Nancy Duarte, chief executive officer of Duarte Inc., an organization that specializes in teaching presentation and communication skills. (Duarte gave a TEDx talk on storytelling that received more than 3 million views.) “To get and keep people’s attention online you have to apply techniques used by the best digital storytellers.”

The Skills to Learn

Aman Chopra, a public speaking coach and comedian in New York City who pioneered the use of artificial intelligence in stand-up comedy, believes Toastmasters of many stripes can benefit from learning digital storytelling skills.

“The people who think they need it the least often need it the most,” Chopra says. “For example, for someone who works in a technical field like information technology, the sciences, or accounting, part of their job is to help make what they do more understandable to coworkers in other departments, to explain complicated matters. Digital storytelling is a good way to do that by communicating messages in more compelling ways.”

Bryan Alexander, author of the book The New Digital Storytelling: Creating Narratives With New Media, cites the example of a chemist who created a 4-minute digital story on the process of lipid separation in fluids. That’s a potentially dry topic to many, but it proved engaging to both non-technical and technical viewers alike. “The voice-over in the story was warm and inviting, and the visuals were interesting and compelling,” Alexander says.

David F. Carr, DTM, the 2014–2015 Area Director for District 47, who is based in Coral Springs, Florida, says digital storytelling also can be used on Toastmasters club websites as a way to market to and recruit new members.

“Digital stories and especially video are a good way to capture the attention of someone learning about Toastmasters for the first time,” Carr notes. “We often need more than just pictures of club members holding certificates to get that attention. Digital stories of members that dramatize the benefits they’ve gained from being in the club, and how certain clubs might be different from others, can be persuasive.”

Strong Online Storytelling

Shifting a storytelling approach from the stage to online platforms doesn’t mean abandoning the time-honored tenets of telling effective stories. But experts say it does require understanding how different media tools best work in harmony to create maximum impact on a viewing audience.

Daniel Weinshenker, a former longtime program director for StoryCenter, a Berkeley, California-based organization that teaches the art of digital storytelling, says it’s important to understand the interplay between the various elements of digital narratives like video, voice-overs, images, and music. Digital storytellers should know, for example, how the layers of visual and audio narratives can work together within the overarching structure of a story.

“We think of digital storytelling as a form of symphony, with different instruments playing in harmony but each of those instruments may take center stage at given times,” says Weinshenker, who is now the director of both EchoStory and Nurstory, international digital-storytelling organizations. “At one point [with music] it might be the violins, the horns, or the drums rising above others. It’s the same process when you’re creating a digital story. In planning a story, it’s important to think through where you want voice-over, visuals, or other media elements to be the ‘loudest’ at certain moments, and how they’ll interact with other multimedia.”

For example, a quality voice-over can do much of the heavy lifting in guiding audiences through a digital story—but there are also times where a well-chosen photograph or infographic can communicate more to viewers than mere words.

“Someone’s voice as well as a soundtrack can be very influential in digital storytelling,” Alexander says. “The voice-over in particular is the linchpin of digital storytelling and helps to organize other media elements.”

But the voice-over also can be the most challenging part of the process to master, Alexander adds—and not for the reasons you might think.

“Technically the process of recording and editing audio is fairly easy to master but can be emotionally challenging for many people,” he says. “People can be embarrassed to hear their own recorded voices. But whenever I do workshops, the same thing happens again and again: Students get nervous about recording their voices, but when everyone else hears it, they typically love it.

“The personal touch in digital stories can make all the difference.”

Sound and Pictures

Ambient sounds connected to important moments in digital stories—such as traffic, the sounds of nature, or voices—can also be powerful in helping to create a sense of place for online audiences.

“Maybe there’s a part of someone’s story about how important it was for them to go on walks in nature with their parents to talk about sensitive topics,” Weinshenker says. “As part of that, a storyteller might play the sound of feet walking on leaves. It transports viewers right there alongside the narrator in the moment.”

Choosing the right visuals also is key. “Visuals can often be their own story without the need for a single word,” Alexander says.

Telling a good digital narrative requires thinking through the relationship between audio and visuals, Weinshenker says. “If you’ll be using a certain photo or image, you need to determine what you don’t need to say in a voice-over to let that visual tell the story,” he says. “It’s about understanding what text or words you need to omit to let the image carry the message.”

The technology platform you choose to deliver a digital story also should influence the use of media tools, Alexander says.

“With use of video, for example, you want a slower pace in voice-overs because those watching are also processing the visuals,” he says. “Speaking quickly can detract from attention spans. Whereas a digital story delivered through a blog or a Facebook post is different because you’re primarily using text.”

Breathing Life Into Digital Stories

Just like stories a Toastmaster tells from the stage, stories told in digital form are more memorable and relatable when they involve personal experiences or real-life challenges, experts say.

“This can be tricky for many people,” Alexander says. “When they approach the digital world it can feel more impersonal, since the audience isn’t sitting right in front of them and can be unknown. There are fears about revealing too much or not being accepted. But it’s those authentic stories that center on overcoming a problem or crisis that often prove most engaging to online audiences.”

Transforming the theoretical or abstract to real-world experiences and emotions makes for more impactful stories, says Weinshenker. “People don’t quit smoking simply because they know it causes cancer,” he says. “They quit after they’ve sat in a hospital next to their aunt who is trying to breathe through a tracheal tube because she is dying of emphysema. Those kinds of personal experiences can carry great weight when expressed in digital stories.”

Disclosing personal information has a cultural component as well. Toastmasters in some cultures may be less inclined to share personal or emotionally honest content in a digital story than those in other cultures. Experts say it’s important for storytellers to be familiar with the codes and clues within their own communities.

Use an Element of Mystery

Alexander says the best digital stories also contain some element of mystery or surprise. In other words, don’t give away too much information all at once.

“I don’t mean mystery just in the sense of a crime thriller, but rather, when you start a digital story there should be something hidden or veiled that the audience doesn’t know,” he says. “If it’s a story about the struggle of someone migrating to the United States, for example, maybe the surprise or mystery is the family they’re reuniting with there isn’t who the migrating person once thought it was.

“If everything is known upfront, an audience often won’t have motivation to stick with it and will click away to something else.”

Demonstrate in Club Meetings

Experts say one good way to introduce digital storytelling in Toastmasters club meetings is to show examples of the technique in action, then ask club members to discuss the story’s impact and the interplay of different media elements like audio, video, images, and music. Good examples of digital stories can be found on the StoryCenter website.

Alexander also stresses that the digital stories you show don’t need to be perfect or of professional quality. “Don’t be afraid to show stories that are clearly done by amateurs but are still effective or powerful.”

He cites the example of a low-budget digital story created by a graduate student at a New York City university. The story is about the challenges faced by students with cognitive disabilities.

“As this student began her research on the project, she was informed her son was diagnosed with autism,” Alexander says. “So she created a digital story on the broader topic that also included him. Some of the images weren’t high quality and at times she spoke too quickly in her voice-over. But the story received a standing ovation after it was presented.

“Her personal narrative, authenticity, and the emotional impact it made overcame any technical flaws.”

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