Problogger on blogging as a story
We live in a world where we’re literally bombarded with information all day every day. There’s nothing wrong with information, or having a blog that is ‘informational’ in nature - but if you want to make an impression on people, be the type of blog that people tell their friends about, that people want to ‘journey’ with - you need something more and ’story’ is one element that can bring this.
In her introduction Annette introduces six types of stories that help if you want to influence others:
* “Who I Am” Stories
* “Why I Am Here” Stories
* “The Vision” Story
* “Teaching” Stories
* “Values-in-Action” Stories
* “I Know What You Are Thinking” Stories
Stories engage people in a completely different way to any other form of communication that I’ve come across and on blogs I find that they can be particularly powerful.
Rather than blogs degenerating into ’spin’ machines I encouraged people to think about injecting personality into them by sharing stories on a number of levels:
# Company or Business Story - every company has their own story. How it started, it’s evolution, it’s successes and failures, it’s lessons learnt and how it’s interacted within it’s industry.
# Product Stories - in a similar way, each product or service within a company has a story. How the idea was born, what needs it was designed to meet, what versions and evolutions it’s been through and how customers are using it.
# Employee Stories - a business is only ever as good as it’s employees and every one of them has their own story. These stories are important as they illustrate what the employees bring to the job that they do (experiences, passions, skills etc) but they also empower the employee and give a personal face to a company.
# Customer Stories - telling the stories of customers (with permission of course) can be a very powerful thing both internally and externally for a business. The interactions a company and customer have are great for learning and education of staff, they help to illustrate the values of a company and if done well can be incredibly empowering for a customer.
http://www.problogger.net/archives/2008/08/25/the-power-of-story-on-blogs/
http://www.problogger.net/archives/2006/08/29/using-stories-in-blogging/
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