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How to Tell a Great Story

We tell stories to our coworkers and peers all the time — to persuade someone to support our project, to explain to an employee how he might improve, or to inspire a team that is facing challenges. It’s an essential skill, but what makes a compelling story in a business context? And how can you improve your ability to tell stories that persuade? What the Experts Say In our information-saturated age, business leaders “won’t be heard unless they’re telling stories,” says Nick Morgan, author of Power Cues and president and founder of Public Words, a communications consulting firm. Start with a message Every storytelling exercise should begin by asking: Who is my audience and what is the message I want to share with them? Mine your own experiences The best storytellers look to their own memories and life experiences for ways to illustrate their message. Don’t make yourself the hero That said, don’t make yourself the star of your own story. Principles to Remember Do: Don’t: Related:  Storytelling

27 Best Copywriting Formulas: How to Tell a Captivating Story Online You’ve heard it said that storytelling is an essential element to drawing the reader into your content and driving more engagement. So how can you add this element to the blogposts you write? Can you fit a captivating story into a social media update, even one that’s 140 characters long? Here’s the great news: There’s a formula for that. Here are 27 of the best ones I’ve heard. 27 Copywriting Formulas That Grab Readers’ Attention Why might you trot out a copywriting formula each time you need compelling copy? I think one of my favorite perspectives on it, from someone who knows copywriting better than anyone, comes from Copyblogger’s Demian Farnworth. This is what it means to be an efficient writer: keeping your tools handy. Finding a great formula that works for you—whether it’s a storytelling formula, a headline formula, or any other—can be a big-time productivity boost. Take a few of these for a spin and see how they might improve your social media posts and content. 1. Example: 2. 3. 4.

Right Question Institute - A Catalyst for Microdemocracy The Secret Behind How The New York Times Creates Viral Articles This guest post is written by Robby Smith. Robby is on the Science of People Team and is working toward his certification as a Certified Body Language Trainer and Coach. You can connect with him on LinkedIn. Have you ever wondered what makes a story so compelling? At the Science of People, we were curious and wanted to know the true ingredient of a powerful story. One of the Largest The New York Times is a media giant. And digitally, they have it dialed in. (statistic numbers from Statista) Most Emailed Ok, NYT is huge—how can we learn from them? The Most Popular list includes: Most EmailedMost Shared on FacebookMost Searched on the webMost Tweeted You can also view which top articles have been trending over the ‘Last 24 hours’, ‘Last 7 days’, and the ‘Last 30 days’. So Vanessa asked me back in October of 2015 if I could archive NYT’s ‘Most Emailed’ on a spreadsheet and see which articles are trending every week. Promise The promise of each headline is what the article promises the reader.

How can we teach kids to question? ~ A More Beautiful Question by Warren Berger While working on A More Beautiful Question, I got to know the folks at a fascinating nonprofit called The Right Question Institute. Dan Rothstein and Luz Santana, the RQI’s co-directors, have spent many years studying how kids (and adults, too) form questions. In developing their own “Question Formulation Technique,” they’ve found that it is, indeed, possible to teach kids to be better questioners—and in the process, help them become better thinkers. “People think of questioning as simple,” Rothstein told me, but when done right, “it’s a very sophisticated, high-level form of thinking.” Sounds pretty important, right? Shifting the balance of power in the classroom Rothstein and Santana hope to shift the balance of power in classrooms by putting students more in charge of their own questions. A workshop moment In a nutshell, here’s how the RQI process works in classrooms: Teachers design a “Question Focus.” Students produce questions. Students improve their questions. Great feedback

Moonlite - A Bedtime Story Projector For Your Mobile Phone by Natalie Rebot Kickstarter Collections Projects We Love Saved Trending Nearly Funded Just Launched Everything Categories On Our Radar Building Community and Creating Relevance in the Online Classroom Remember feeling nervous before starting your first day on the job? You may have experienced butterflies in your stomach, had questions about expectations, or concerns about learning the rules and finding information. Students feel the same way with a new professor, regardless if the class is face-to-face or online. According to José Antonio Bowen, author of Teaching Naked: How Moving Technology Out of your College Classroom Will Improve Student Learning, students are comfortable (and even expect) constant e-communication. Recording weekly video announcements To begin, create a weekly video announcement that best suits your students. Prime each weekly announcement by describing the objectives of the current week in a minute or less and highlights the location of the current week’s assignments along with relevant resources. If a student did outstanding work in the previous week’s assignment, ask the student for permission to share the work with the class in the upcoming announcement.

The Science of Storytelling You’ve heard that storytelling is important in business, and in life. That it’s a powerful tool that has lasting impact. But why is that? And how can you become better at it? Below, we’ll explain the effect of storytelling on our brain, and then give you five tips on how to become a better storyteller. Have you ever been in an audience when someone is telling a story on stage? It’s not magic. If we were to put you in an MRI machine and tell you facts (like this one!) But in a study at Princeton University, scientists found that, when you listen to a well-told story, the parts of your brain that respond are those that would if you were inside the story. Even more impressive: this effect also happens to the person telling the story. One explanation for this is mirror neurons. When someone is telling a story and our brains respond as if we are inside the story ourselves, we feel a powerful connection to the storyteller. So, what’s the best way to elicit that connection when you tell stories?

Social Media Storytelling Formulas: 11 Quick-Fire Ways to Create Your Stories Legendary marketer, Seth Godin, describes marketing as “the art of telling a story that resonates with your audience and then spreads.” If you look at some of the biggest brands around, you might notice that they are often amazing storytellers. Apple tells stories of people challenging the normsNike tells stories of people doing the impossibleAirbnb tells stories of travelers living in homes around the world and belonging anywhere. But how do you tell compelling stories? While researching on the topic of storytelling, I discovered several tested-and-proven storytelling formulas — formulas used by companies like Pixar, Apple, and more. These formulas can be applied to your company’s overall marketing, content you produce, social media updates, copy on your website, and more. Ready to jump in? 11 storytelling formulas to supercharge your social media marketing 1. Setup — Set the scene and introduce the character(s) Confrontation or “Rising action” — Present a problem and build up the tension 2.

Best Story Wins · Collaborative Fund A truth that applies to many fields, which can frustrate some as much as it energizes others, is that the person who tells the most compelling story wins. Not who has the best idea, or the right answer. Just whoever tells a story that catches people’s attention and gets them to nod their heads. C. R. It would be fair to say that whenever his facts are broadly correct they are not new, and whenever he tries to strike out on his own he often gets things wrong, sometimes seriously … [It is not] a contribution to knowledge. Two things are notable here. One is that the book’s author doesn’t seem to disagree with the assessment. Another is that the author, Yuval Noah Harari, has sold over 27 million books, making him one of the bestselling contemporary authors in any field, and his book Sapiens – which Hallpike was reviewing – the most successful anthropology book of all time. Harari recently said about writing Sapiens: I thought, ‘This is so banal!’ What Sapiens does have is excellent writing.

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