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Why Storytelling Matters

BY MATT WILLIAMS | 4 min read

In his seminal book, Tell to Win, author and businessman Peter Guber talks about the power that storytelling has in human affairs, particularly business. Contending that human beings are not moved by spreadsheets, "data dumps" and figures, he ventures that the real key to motivating people is to appeal to their emotions. And nothing compels an emotional connection more than putting information in the context of a story.

Scientifically speaking, what he other business strategists argue is not without merit. Over the past several decades, psychology has begun a serious study of how storytelling affects the human mind. What they have found is that people's attitudes, hopes, fears, and values are strongly influenced through this ancient art. In fact, fiction seems to be more effective at changing beliefs than writing that deals strictly with argument and evidence.

And with to the rise of social media, it is easier to do this now more than ever. In short, platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, LinkedIn and Reddit, have effectively made storytellers out of us all. Through pictures, videos, and text, people are able to construct narratives about their their own lives and share their experiences with the world in a way never before possible.

The advent of social media has empowered storytelling, and effected the way people do it. Credit: Forbes

Whereas a simple rundown of a person's life would offer little more than dry facts (place of birth, education, work history, etc.), storytelling offers an emotionally-charged, personalized perspective on things. When people tell their stories via social media, they are not only offering a highly subjective interpretation of events, they are also appealing to viewers emotions through visual media, which elicits a much more powerful response than words alone.

This offers people the ability to control how their experiences are perceived by others, but also offers an opportunity to preserve those experiences. For instance, accounts on Facebook and Twitter now offer the Timeline feature, which places key events in a user's life into a chronological context, beginning with when they joined and listing all the major developments in their online behavior since.

This works not only for individuals, but for companies and brand names as well. In these cases, social media offers businesses the opportunity to build up a more complete history of their organization and relate to people on a more personal level.

For example, in February of 2012, the global soft-drink giant Fanta ran a game through Facebook Timeline where a series of Fanta characters - Gigi, Lola, Floyd and Tristan - had been brought into the past and hidden in the company's own timeline. Users were then given clues to identify the year they were in, and then had to 'like' an image a certain number of times in order to bring them back to the present

Timeline features, like those offered by Facebook and Twitter, have become integral to social media. Credit: stackoverflow.com

In the first round, the character Gigi was brought back to the year 1956, and so users had to like the photo 1,956 times in order to rescue her. This game not only familiarized customers with the history of the company, it also allowed the company to significantly increase its engagement rate, drawing millions of new likes on Facebook. In short, it was a successful media campaign that let the company tell customers more about itself.

This is merely one example of marketing in the digital age. In fact, social media marketing has become of such importance that businesses have gone so far as to craft a set of guidelines detailing what should be involved. According to Hubspot, a platform that seeks to help businesses take advantage of "inbound marketing" - i.e. promoting business through social media - there are six basic rules behind a successful social media campaign.

First, a business must know how to filter content, acting as a sort of guide through the sea of user-generated content and information that has exploded in recent years. The proliferation of content from so many sources has, in many ways, caused people to become more reliant on experts. As such, a brand must be able to show that they know the difference between relevant content and background noise.

Social media marketing, aka. inbound marketing, is of growing importance to businesses looking to succeed in the age of social media. Credit: mindjumpers.com

Two, businesses must be willing to talk about their mistakes. Allowing people to hear about how a company made mistakes in the past and learned from them not only shows competence and adaptability, but endears them to their readers by letting them know that they too are human. Three, content must be personal and not generic. The readers should be made aware of why the content is being related and why they should care.

Four, businesses should respond to news content that affects their audience, offering their own spin on it that is specific to their industry. Five, when relating a story, companies should use real-life examples in order to illustrate that what is being proffered is not merely abstract data, but the result of actual experiences. In the end, bringing content into real-life scenarios has a bigger impact on readers that leads to more sharing.

Six, businesses must speak to their audiences like human beings. Not only should the stories themselves be relatable and personal, they should be conveyed in such a way that is not dry, boring or pedantic. At no point should readers feel like they are being talked down to or bombarded by a source who has "superior knowledge" on the subject.

The power of storytelling is well-documented. It is for this reason that the Rockefeller Foundation, the New York-based philanthropic organization and private foundation created by the Rockefeller family, created the Rockefeller Foundation Storytelling Challenge. With a total of $100,000 available in prizes, the challenge is soliciting the Rockefeller Foundation's non-profit grantee organizations to submit their best stories for consideration. These can take the form of written, audio/visual or multi-media presentations.

The only real qualification is that they be stories that help generate awareness, explain complex issues, demonstrate valuable models for change, or inspire others to join a specific cause. Two awards of $50,000 USD will be granted - the first for submissions that demonstrate how an organization made an impact in the past with a story, the second for submissions that can demonstrate how a story will be used to make an impact in the future.

The competition launched on February 17th of 2015 and will remain open until May 19th, 2015, with the two grants of $50,000 USD being awarded on June 23rd. Those who are eligible to compete, or just to wish to keep informed about the Challenge's progress, should head on over to the competition home page to register or begin following.

In the meantime, be sure to enjoy this video entitled "The Storytelling Animal" by Prof. Jonathan Gottschall:

And this video of the Rockefeller Storytelling Challenge:

Top image courtesy of the Rockefeller Foundation.

Sources:

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