Prompts help your people reflect and structure their stories in a way that’s going to generate the richest insights and provide the most value.
Inviting people to talk to specific prompts and questions also builds their confidence and makes sure you get the on-point results you need. It’s worth spending time on getting them right.
Consider these tips:
1. Aim for 3 prompts per part or less
You can add up to a maximum of 5 prompts per part. This is useful if you want people to choose their way through their story. If you want to force an answer to a specific question then keep the prompts or questions very focused. As a rule-of-thumb allow at least 15 secs per prompt and keep it simple.
2. Ask people how experiences have made them feel
Bringing out the human side supports the reflection process and helps viewers connect. We all tend to mirror language. So, if you want your storytellers to show more emotion and passion use phrases like: "What are you most proud of?", "How did this make you feel?" and "What do you love about XYZ, and why?"
If you want to inspire others to shift mindsets, try something new or change behaviour then building both emotional and cognitive trust is important.
3. Use a mix of sentence starters, questions and requests
You can choose what works best for each prompt. Here are some examples:
Start with what you are going to share.
What’s your story in a sentence?
In this story ...
For the first prompt in each part use an open request such as Tell us, Share, Highlight. This helps people think about what they're going to say and include part of the question in the answer.
4. Aim to capture the ‘learnable’ experience
By helping people share what they’ve learned from an experience, what they do differently and why you’re capturing video stories and reflections that will embed their own learning and help others too.
5. Refer to your audience research and campaign objectives
When writing prompts make sure you’re nudging people to share all the messages you need.
6. Think of StoryTagger as an interview format
How would you structure your questions to get the most valuable output from your interviewee? StoryTagger automates the interview process.
7. Encourage the personal and unexpected (avoid scripting!)
Give people space to share something personal and unexpected as part of their story. In many cases, the questions and prompts are there to give guidance and make sure people share relevant and valuable insights, rather than to be over-prescriptive.