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"Leaders and managers are great ‘Big Story’ tellers: the annual staff day where the CEO delivers an upbeat PowerPoint about the great opportunities ahead, the monthly sales meeting, the annual appraisal, the staff newsletter and more! But most times leaders and managers don’t do small stories; they don’t like small stories. They get dismissed as ‘rumour or ‘gossip’. They’re seen as viral and uncontrollable, needing to be suppressed. You can spend a whole lot of energy trying to eradicate Small Stories but you’ve got no chance! Give up trying to kill your organization Small Stories and embrace them instead!" Small Stories don’t all need to be negative, there are great Small Stories too. What’s important is the balance between positive and negative. Read the full article to find out more about: - How to get into the Small Story business - Be careful what your Small Stories are saying
This is an introduction to storytelling in business and fresher communication paradigms.
Bitstrips is a popular website and Facebook app that has people making their own cartoons. It lets Facebook users create cartoon avatars of themselves and their Facebook friends, and place those characters into customized comic strips. Using templates they can modify, users can tell stories or jokes online and share them with friends.
Suggestions for how you can use storytelling to enhance your hotel’s reputation. Social media provides exceptional platforms for sharing stories. Read the full article to learn ways for you and your guests to use the following social media sites to tell your story: - Facebook - Twitter - YouTube - Pinterest
Employees are more than brand ambassadors; they're promise keepers. Why should a customer do business with a company when even its own employees can’t explain what makes it different? And if the experience that customers have when interacting with your employees doesn’t match up with the stories you are telling, it won’t matter how much you invest in external marketing efforts to project a positive brand image.
Creating alignment is hard work, and it’s time consuming. But it’s critical that we get employees excited about our story. They have to believe it because, ultimately, they’re the ones who will be sharing it.
Read the full article to learn why we need to alter our recruiting processes to enable our internal teams to help tell our brand stories.
We all love a good story. Especially if they’re true.
Here are a few of the elements from a movie based on a true story that kept me engaged: - Conflict (or characters at odds with each other) - A setting that engages the senses - Three-dimensional characters - The element of surprise - A new reality
As travellers in the digital age, with every image we share, with every post we write, we’re adding to the larger narrative of how travel and place are described around the world. We become, by default, storytellers. A final note: As so much of travel media and the Internet is image-driven, or ‘visual storytelling’, the following points take ideas from image-based work and draw parallels with writing / journalism, or vice-versa. Whether you just want to share your travels with friends and family, or you want to develop writing, photography, or video as part of your career (or even pursue a career in travel journalism), these simple tips can help supercharge your work. Read the full article to find out about: 1. Good things happen at sunrise 2. Don’t just write when it’s convenient to your schedule 3. Simplify your composition 4. Focus on the key events or “windows” into your overall journey 5. Always put a subject in your images 6. People are what make a travel story 7. Carry a tripod 8. Imagine your narrative as a camera 9. Expect to lose or break something 10. People are just waiting to tell you their stories
The critical role of storytelling in the digital marketing efforts for any brand. Read the full article for five takeaways from the session "How Dr. Seuss Can Help You Rock Digital Storytelling" at Dig South: 1. We live in a conceptual age where people look for meaning and purpose in absolutely everything they buy. 2. Every story follows the same basic dramatic structure. 3. Always give your audience the chance to participate in your story and be the hero. 4. Different characters can be introduced to tell new stories. 5. Brand stories are never-ending.
A good story tugs at heartstrings, or gets the audience to do or feel something. Read the full article to find out more about these tips to tell better ones: 1. Make a logical point 2. Learn how to transition 3. Be honest 4. Get your “pathy’s” straight 5. Value yourself 6. Tell a vision 7. Put a Stake in It 8. Create adversaries 9. The devil is in the details 10. Think long-term
You'll find that many of the memory blasts you jot down in a list can be fleshed out into full stories. The list can become a database of story-starters. Read the full article to find out how to get started using these easy steps: 1) Designate a special notebook for your own memory blasts. 2) Jot down as many random memories as you can in 10 minutes. 3) Include things that were part of your early life. 4) Try to include how you felt. 5) Keep this list going for as long as you can. 6) You can refer to this list for details when writing stories from your life. 7) You can sprinkle these little memory blasts throughout your book.
Telling a good story is more challenging than you think. Read the full article to find out about these resources, tips and tools we’ve collected over the years to help you improve your online storytelling strategy: Step 1: Getting Started - Knowing The Heart Of What You Do Step 2: Making Your Story Strategic Step 3: Make It Visual And - Other Resources, Tools And Tips - Great Books On Storytelling - Low Cost Or Free Storytelling Tools We LOVE!
Read the full article to find out more about these ways to tell a business story that proves engaging and informative: - know your audience - find a 'hero' - have a point - ...be newsworthy - add value - use the right media
Cowbird has released a new feature that allows you to embed a single story into a blog post or news story. Cowbird is a storytelling tool which allows users to create multimedia stories with audio, images, text and other features. It has been used by organization's like National Geographic who used it to tell a reservation’s whole story.
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"Stories are a great tool in content marketing. Still, understanding the power of stories is one thing; knowing how to craft them... is another. So let's delve into some practical applications of story."
Read the full article to find out more about: - Case Studies: Story Power in Action - Start With Your Objectives - The Client Interview Is the Key to a Great Story - Story Genres - Crafting the Story - Your Annual Report as Story - Video: Seconds to Launch Complex Ideas
Disney has created a branded tool called Story that allows any of us (well, anyone with an iPhone) to effortlessly tell and share annotated narratives. Think of it like creating a mini scrapbook with a pulse. What it does: Story allows you to organize new or existing photos and videos from your iPhone into sharable digital flip books. You can also add captions, text, and play with various themes and layouts. (But no filters. Guessing that’ll come later.) The album is private until you share it (via Facebook or email for now — I’m guessing more sharing platforms will come later as well). Your Story is also saved in iCloud — allowing you to sync it to other Apple devices. Read the full article to see Ann's example.
Write your own manifesto. It is a great way to define yourself, or your business, or your goals. And it's easy. Check out the tutorial video and steps in this blog post.
Whether you’re crafting a pitch, creating copy for a website, or offering fresh ideas for a blog, approach all of these outlets as different ways to tell a good story. Look for the story behind the brand. Read the full article to find 5 ways to tell a story that stands out. 1. Action 2. Emotion 3. Theme 4. Soul 5. Artwork
"GlobalGiving is merely a data curator, steward of stories and protector of storytellers' privacy, and builder of analysis tools for everyone to share. So how is an organization to know which questions work for their evaluations Today I designed a card game version of our flexible storytelling forms that allows people to try out question-combinations and choose the best questions for their version of the storytelling project. All questions will work with all stories, but only some NGOs care about mapping the social conflict in a story, while others care more about crowdsourcing community solutions to social problems, and so on. This way everybody gets what they want answered in the margins because they agree to keep the core (prompting question) the same." Find the rules & a downloadable set of the storytelling design game cards in the articles. The goal: To win, be able to summarize another player’s secret story solely from the questions you have asked him from a minimal set of cards.
Want to understand and share the incidents of your life in ways that make them meaningful to others? Nothing rings more real than sharing the stories that mark turning points in your life. From what we share out loud, we can learn what matters to us and to each other. Read the full article to discover more about these three ways for finding meaning, and self-understanding through pivotal life moments and connecting more deeply with others as you do: - First, literally see what makes a great story stick - Spontaneously act out scenes - Bring out others’ humanity at work apt vignettes
Did you know Twitter is a great storytelling tool? Read the full article to find out more about five examples from storytellers who have embraced twitter as either a standalone story platform or as part of a wider story world. - Crimer Show - Titanic Voyage - @BettyDraper - The Lizzie Bennet Diaries - and reader's suggestions
A voice is about being human, displaying a personality and willing to be vulnerable. Writing and creating from the “real” you is your voice. That can be daunting and exposing. Your persona and humanity is multi-dimensional and many faceted. It is a jumble of experience, thoughts, expression and passions. Read the full article to find out more about these tips to find your voice: 1. Show your personality 2. Display your humor 3. Put yourself in your audience's shoes 4. Expose your imperfections 5. Reveal your passion 6. Tell your stories 7. Develop brand "you"
Our kids are natural storytellers.Use their enthusiasm and sense of adventure to your advantage. Not only can they share their own stories, but they can collect the stories of their family. Use stories that elicit familiar memories of their own experiences: food, vacation, school field trips, etc. Next, give them a challenge. Not only should they share their own stories, but they need collect the stories of their family. They will be your family’s Story Superhero!
Each of us has an unlimited amount of great story material locked in our memories. Kindra Hall, author of Finding Your Story, offers these focused strategies for uncovering valuable stories.
Read the full article to find out more about the following prompts. Your answers to the questions at the end of each tip will help determine whether or not you have a good story. - think about firsts - best friends - take a photo journey - if you're not the kind of person who...
Whether it’s a how-to, documentary, theme, or concept, a photographic story captures our attention, and maintains our interest. Once you learn how to create these visual narratives, your slideshows, albums, scrapbooks and even your memories will be enhanced.
Read the full article to find out how to begin by: - visualizing - contrasting images - using multiple images - using one image
A collection of some of the best blog posts, presentations, research papers, and other resources that take on this topic.
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