Storytelling through Social Media

Have you ever thought about what you’re doing when you update your Facebook page, change your LinkedIn profile, or tweet? You’re telling a story. With simple phrases and pictures, you’re presenting to the world your opinion on world events, or your favorite restaurant.

With the explosion of social media and mobile devices, the impact of these presentations has the potential to be felt far beyond the board rooms and conference halls for which they were originally designed. However, your audience has access to–and is bombarded by–thousands of sources of information, which means your message needs to work harder to stand out from the rest.

Presentations have existed for thousands of years, starting at least as early as humans began gathering around campfires. And though presentations have drifted from this intimate, expressive environment, their roots are firmly planted in story. Modern presentations tend to value information over inspiration, and often eliminate the story to make room for bullet points and statistics.

Utilizing humans’ natural penchant for storytelling is an easy way to increase the effectiveness of your message. Presentations were made to be passed on from meeting to meeting, stories were made to be passed down from generation to generation.

Recently, I heard a quote that beautifully illustrates the relationship between presentations and the digital movement:

“Technology is the campfire around which we tell our stories.”

–Laurie Anderson

Come join Nancy Duarte at ad:tech SF on April 21st, as she speaks about transforming ideas into action through storytelling and amplification via social media.

Storytelling through social media is just one of the topics us Duartians are exploring for 2010, and we want to hear your thoughts! Join the conversation by posting to our blog, or Twitter Nancy at #nancyduarte.

And as a small token of appreciation for your social media support… Register for the Full Conference or Premium pass as Duarte’s special guest with code: SPKRGUEST and get 25% off the online price.

http://www.anecdote.com Shawn Callahan

In 1944 two psychologists, Fritz Heider and Marianne Simmel, created a simple experiment (http://www.anecdote.com.au/archives/2009/08/explaining_the.html) that demonstrated that we make sense of most things as a story, even when there is no story to be told. So while you could say that updating your social software sites is storytelling it would be equally true that tracking where people walk is also telling a story. I think there is a danger that we overuse the term ‘storytelling’ and it begins to lose its meaning.

I suspect that all the many updates from a person’s or group’s social software sites might be the raw data from which a story could be told. A story that has a time and place, and most importantly something anticipated happening to someone.
http://www.anecdote.com Shawn Callahan

I meant to say “something unanticipated”
Jude Rathburn

I am intrigued by the notion of storytelling through social media. I currently teach large lecture classes in management and organizational behavior. Recently I began using social media (blog and facebook) to encourage my students to reflect and share their thoughts about how course concepts (e.g. leadership, power, conflict, trust, ethics, etc.) play out in their daily lives. I am looking forward to seeing how sharing their stories might increase engagement, motivation and satisfaction – as well as inject some fun into the learning process.

Using social media in a more directed way such as this, might lead to more storytelling, as opposed to the undirected updates on one’s current status or activities that most people post on facebook or twitter.
Jeremy Fuksa: Creative Generalist

I’m glad to see this post and to see that it’s something your team is exploring this year. Thoughts very similar to this are what I took away from my time at SXSW this year. You can see a video of my thoughts at http://vimeo.com/10573668

Personally, as a presentation designer, I want to stop making so many slides and start training presenters in the art of reintroducing conversation and storytelling into their toolboxes so that they can get back to coming across more naturally.
http://www.nosweatpublicspeaking.com Fred E. Miller

Great points here.

I really like your verbiage about presentations being passed meeting to meeting / stories from generation to generation.

Thanks!
http://www.no-fear-public-speaking.com/howtostartaspeech.html Brian Clough

I recently made a quick study of 11 great presentations (TED top 10 plus Steve Jobs Stanford 05). My purpose was specifically to see how these great talks were started.

The importance of storytelling shone through big-time!

In fact there were 3 interesting lessons to come from it which are of practical use to speakers.
1. Start with a story.
2. Get a laugh inside 30 seconds.
3. How you start is important, but not THAT important.

The full article is on the site.

Cheers
3.
http://www.oneminutepresenter.com Warwick John Fahy

Story telling is one of the core skills that a successful business presenter needs today. A great example of telling a story through simple technology can be found at Girl Effect : http://www.girleffect.org/

It combines several aspects of story telling – more importantly engaging the audience right from the start.

Warwick John Fahy
Author, The One Minute Presenter