Speaker 1: What's up beautiful people, I'm Erin and this is Erin On Demand and today we are talking all about storytelling techniques that will help you go viral. And I know this sounds very buzzy and very click-baity, but I promise you, I've been studying some of the top creators and really analyzing their content to see what is making their content pop. And I have even tried some of these in my own content and have seen my content explode over the last probably month or two. And so I just want to share what I found with you guys, particularly with storytelling. I feel like so much of content we are looking at, you know, content advice and it's about gear, it's about the best apps to use, it's about, you know, all of these different things which are very important in the content process. But above all else, if you don't know how to edit, if you don't know how to, you know, set the camera up perfectly and record with all of this fancy equipment, if you don't know how to do any of that stuff, but you know how to tell a great story, then I promise you, you have the potential to explode on social media. If you pay attention to a lot of the top content creators, you will see that it's not about how perfect their stuff looks, it's not about any of that, it's about the stories that they are telling. They are not master content creators necessarily, they are master storytellers. And if you think about Keith Lee, if you think about Tabitha Brown, if you think about Mr. Beast, all of them are masterful storytellers. They are really masterful at telling stories in a very short amount of time. And if you can apply these storytelling components, then I promise you, you will start to see an uptick in your social media numbers, in the engagement that your community is having with you, and your overall confidence when it comes to creating content for yourself. So let's set the foundation. The first type of story that I want you to know is just a standard storytelling format, which would be beginning, middle, and end, okay? Most of the time when we're hearing about creating captivating content, we just hear hook the audience. In the first five seconds of the video, you need to hook the audience. And I think that that is really sound advice, however, if you don't know how to keep the audience's attention, then the hook is not going to do much for you. You have to know how to carry them beyond the hook. And that is where all of these storytelling techniques are going to come into play. So in the beginning, the first thing you do when you're doing just a standard beginning, middle, end, which is chef's kiss, you'd be surprised at how many people do not do this. You either get stuck in the beginning, you get stuck in the middle, or there's no end, or you share the end, but there's no beginning, so you don't really even know that the end is the end. I know it sounds very remedial, and it is, but you'd be surprised. So in the beginning, you need to set the scene, which is establishing the setting or where you are. You can introduce the character, the main character, which is helping us understand who this story is about, and or you can set a very clear goal or intention. Now, for most short form content, especially if you're the content creator, you're the brand and you're creating a personal brand, then you're going to most of the time be the character, or your scene is going to mostly probably be your personal space, your home. Now, if you were doing a home renovation, setting the scene would be showing us what your office looked like before it was done, and then you share the process a little bit in the middle, and then you share the result at the end. This is why transformations are extremely powerful storytelling techniques because it shows the beginning, you know the process, and then you show the end result. And it's just a tried and true way, okay? If you see somebody and their method works, or people use this to sell a lot because you know that in the middle was their program, their weight loss program, and you see somebody's beginning and ending, you're like, okay, I got to get those results too. So beginning, middle, and end is an incredibly powerful storytelling technique. It is very simple, but as long as you take the beginning, set the scene, introduce a character, or set a goal and intention, the middle is where you are going to execute on that goal or intention, and then the end is where you're going to share the result. Now, we will get into what the result can or cannot be in the next storytelling technique, but if you want more information on just the standard beginning, middle, end, a little bit more detail, examples, I have a whole nother video about that. Now, method number two is taking it up a notch. Now, this is the unexpected ending. Now, we hear so many people telling us, make sure your hook is amazing. You need to hook people in the first three seconds of the video, and I agree with that. However, you can also hook someone at the end. It wouldn't necessarily be considered an end. This is why I call this the unexpected ending, because you can have all this buildup, and people, the way that our brains work when it comes to storytelling is we think the whole time we're hearing a story, we're trying to predict the end. You ever read a book or watched a movie, and then you're just like, let me just fast forward to the end so I can see what happened, and then I'll go back and rewatch it, or let me just read a few pages forward. It's like our brains can't fathom not knowing what's going to happen, and so when you are telling a really compelling story, people are naturally trying to predict what is going to happen based off of the information that they currently have, and when you just completely derail that thought process, then that makes the story that much more interesting, and it pulls the person in even more. I have an example of this. I'm going to share it right now on the screen, and then regroup with you right after. Okay, so that reel was more of the hook was setting the scene, so that was what I did in the beginning. I set the scene. It was about my workspace evolution, and year one, I was in my parents' home. Year two, I was in my own home office. Year three, I had bought this beautiful office space, and then year four, I returned back to my home office. We got rid of our office space, and I basically said, it's okay to go back to the drawing board at the end, and better doesn't always mean bigger, and I think that this really resonated with people because according to the trajectory of the story, year four would have been like this grand office with all these people working for me based on the trajectory of the video, but it went back, and it was an unexpected ending, and that really was the part that related the most to people. I think that a lot of times we even as the creator go into a piece of content with the expectation that the end has to be exactly how we envisioned it, and it's okay if it's not that way. The unexpected ending is one of my favorite ways to tell stories because it can give people ... It can engage them in a deeper way, and it also entices them to continue to watch to the end of your videos, and that reel was actually one of my bigger reels over the last couple of months. It got almost 200,000 views, got hundreds of comments, tons of shares. I had lots of publications asking if they could also share it on their channels, and it was just one of those things that allowed the vulnerability to come through. I would highly encourage this storytelling technique for whatever type of story you want to tell. Now, this third method is quite honestly the opposite of the last one where it is a bit more repetitive and formulaic. When you have a piece of content that has gone viral, let's take Keith Lee for an example. He is a king at this formulaic storytelling technique where he starts every video when he's doing a food review. He starts every video the same way. His method, his rating system is the same. He chews and rolls his eyes up when something is really good the same way. He uses the same sound effects. He ends the videos the same way, getting out of his daughter's Paw Patrol chair. It's very formulaic, and it worked once. When something works once, that means it has the potential to continue to work over and over and over again. You can plug in a different restaurant and use that same method every single time, and it's going to work. That is his method. He found one that works for him. His videos are not super hooky. They're not like, 10 reasons why you should try this restaurant in Las Vegas. It's not like that. It's very chilled. I've tried this restaurant. I'm going to rate it one through 10, and then he's really masterful at introducing the owner and folding in all of these storytelling techniques. I actually did a deep dive on Keith Lee in my Ditch Your Niche Storytelling Masterclass. If you guys are interested in that, we did lots of audits of huge content creators, Tabitha Brown, Jackie Aina, Keith Lee. I even audited myself on just different storytelling techniques that they use that are super powerful that you can apply. I'm sharing some with you now, but I give a lot deeper of an analysis in that masterclass. I will link that down below. This formulaic storytelling method works really well for extremely simple storylines. Something like a food review, or my husband's reaction to, or if you are a home designer and you have a specific way that you shoot your transformations of a house, or if you're a workout coach, or if you're a fitness coach and you have a formula of how you present your workouts, or it's just, this is a really great way. If you find that one video that pops, then you can just dive into that method and plug and chug those different scenarios, or restaurants, or whatever into that formula. Someone else who does this really, really well is Christy Sarah and her husband. I did a whole deep dive on them on my YouTube channel, but one thing that she does is gets her husband's reaction to a lot of stuff. They've really mastered this because her husband has this very high-pitched, funny laugh and she'll do the most absurd, craziest stuff and get her husband's reaction to it. He just bursts out laughing every single time. I think that they have really mastered this whole short-form, content style of setting a goal, like, I'm going to put this Beyonce costume on and get my husband's reaction, and then she goes to him and he just has this huge outburst. That's the payoff, you guys. Please know that when you have these types of formulaic storytelling techniques, the payoff, you have to, in the end, pay people off for watching to the end. That is the same thing as the unexpected ending. When the ending is unexpected, that's a payoff because it's like, oh my gosh, that's so cool. This is so relatable. It makes you feel something. When you have this formulaic method, like how Keith Lee, he rolls his eyes back, that's a payoff. It makes you chuckle. It's like, oh my gosh, is that good? I want to try this too. That's paying off for watching it. When he gets up from that Paw Patrol chair and says a few lines while he's walking off camera, people want to stay to hear what he's going to say and see that Paw Patrol chair every time. People want to hear Christy Sarah's husband laugh at the end of every video. It's like, it works, so you keep doing it and you keep plugging your storylines into this formula. This is not for you to go back and to have your husband go ahead and start bursting out laughing like Christy's husband, Desmond. This is for you to understand that trying different things, not feeling like you have to constantly do get ready with me's or constantly do come spend the day with me videos, and you can start mixing it up. Start creating your own vibe, your own formula, and testing out different methods of how you want to tell a story, and if one pops, then you can use that as a guiding light for more content that you can kind of plug and chug into a similar fashion. I want you to start thinking outside of the box. Start thinking about your content as many stories. Start thinking about your platform as a series or a television show that you can then break up into little episodes, little bits that all kind of play up toward one main story that you want to tell with your life, and I promise you, as you start thinking about your content as a story and not as just one post, then you will start to see a shift in how your audience engages with you, how you engage with your own content, and also just the overall impact that your content is able to have on a greater scale. You will also start to see some deals start to come in because brands want to be attached to somebody or a platform with purpose. They want to be attached to people who are bringing something different to the table that they themselves are not able to do as this huge corporation. You have to be a human on social media and tell stories that are interesting, that are fun, that are going to push your content toward the overall goal that you want it to. I hope this video was helpful. Number one, beginning, middle, end. Number two is the unexpected ending, and number three is the formulaic storytelling method where you can just plug and chug your story into the same formula every single time. If these three tips helped you, these three methods, please try them out. If you want to know more about storytelling, about how to fold in all of these different aspects of yourself while still having some type of focus with your content, then I highly recommend you check out my Ditch Your Niche Storytelling Masterclass because we go over so much of this stuff in so much more depth. I love you guys, and I will see you on the next one. Bye for now.