Coaching at Work road tests StoryTagger, a video learning app to enhance communication strategies
What is it?
Designed by LearnerLab, StoryTagger is a guided video learning tool for capturing real experiences – your own, and those of clients, employees, students and fans, for example.
According to StoryTagger, what makes it different to most other video apps is that it focuses on helping people translate their ‘in-head’ reflections into short, insightful and confident selfie videos delivering value on a range of topics, rather than helping people film what’s in front of them.
There are many possibilities for how you use it: you can capture soundbites, 60-second snapshots or longer form content. You can create story structures using templates from its topic library or design your own.
The tool can also be used to launch a campaign and to nudge contributors with email templates and smart automated messages. And you can manage videos and share to your existing platforms or publish to a private space on the StoryTagger app for specific audience groups.
How it works
StoryTagger uses structured storytelling techniques to guide users to reflect and share short, focused video stories.
Each story topic is split into bite-sized parts or scenes so people can create a compelling response within a narrative framework, which is set up like an interview. Having handy prompts and a defined structure means people never lose their train of thought.
It suggests a time limit to keep people concise, punchy and on track. No editing or technical skills required as StoryTagger combines individual scenes into a single overall video.
Smart recording provides real-time video analysis, eye tracking, background noise detection and other tools to allow perfect face-framing to free space for captions and subtitles, clear audio even in noisy environments, video stabilisation to reduce shake and light detection to ensure a well-lit video every time.
An annual licence for 50 active users costs £3,995 plus VAT, for 100 active users £4,995 plus VAT and for 500 active users, £6,995 plus VAT.
Users can create, curate and upload as much content as they wish, and there are no limits on functionality.
The user’s experience
I first came across StoryTagger through the Association for Coaching and Institute of Coaching. As a presenter at Coaching in the Workplace 2020, I was invited to record a two-minute promotional video for my session, ‘The power of feeling safe’, using StoryTagger.
I’m a bit of a technophobe so I’d never done anything like this before. But since it was a global digital conference and with Covid-19 increasing the profile of digital/virtual working it seemed a natural thing to experiment with. I’m pleased to say I had a really positive experience from start to finish.
After downloading the app to my iPhone I watched a few of the example videos to get a feel for what was involved. I then inputted the story pack code for the conference which gave me a simple structure to follow. Each of the three sections of the video recording were time-bound (30-40 seconds) and had helpful prompt questions. I wrote a brief script for each section and added this to the notes section of the app. This enabled me to read it like a teleprompter while recording the footage on my iPhone.
I’m not a natural to camera so a few takes were required but since each section was only 30-40 seconds it was simple to iterate recordings. This enabled me to experiment with different backgrounds, camera angles, pacing and even script changes. As there were two evocative images I wanted to use I even experimented with pointing my iPhone towards my laptop while recording a voiceover.
I completed the recording in less than an hour, and when I was happy with each section the app spliced them together into one clip. Within a few days StoryTagger had edited the video further by adding conference branding, subtitles and even inserting graphics to highlight key quotes. The finished article was very professionally put together and was ideal for posting on LinkedIn. I’m pleased to say between the conference organisers and my post, the recording received more than 1,800 views.
Soon after this I was asked to record a short video for Coaching Through Covid to put on our LinkedIn page.
Given my previous experience I had no hesitation in reaching for StoryTagger. I used the demo function in the app and again within a couple of days we had a great video that communicated key messages far more powerfully than a written post. And again there was a great response with more than 1,800 views.
We’ve since used StoryTagger to record our organisational sponsor at the Royal Free Hospital, London, which has given us insight into the power of the app in capturing authentic feedback. We now plan to use the app further to hear from other members of our eco-system, including coachees, coaches, supervisors, focal points and other organisational sponsors from other NHS Trusts.
I can’t recommend the app highly enough. If you want to use powerful, authentic selfies to drive your communication strategy StoryTagger is easy to use and delivers great results.
- Mark McMordie is CEO of The Conscious Leader www.consciousleader.co.uk
Upside
- No editing or technological skills are required
- Offers prompts and suggested time limits
- Available on iOS and Android and can work with older devices, running on iOS devices from iPhone 6, 6+, 6s,6e, SE, 7, 7+, 8, 8+ to the latest iPhone X family. It also runs on iPads as an iPhone app. On Android phones it’s a little trickier to pinpoint devices as the family is so broad, but to provide an idea, the 2016 Samsung Galaxy 7, 2016 Nokia 6 and 2015 Samsung J5 will run StoryTagger 2.0 perfectly
- Makes it easy to transfer large video files to secure corporate networks, and is fully GDPR compliant
Downside
- Sometimes people can feel daunted by having to get to grips with the technology and format, although it’s actually easy once they get going