Karen Dietz

Successful businesses have discovered the power of storytelling and its ability to affect the bottom line. A good way to start building your business stories is to use the time-honored storyboarding technique.There are usually a few ways to tell the same story — the one you choose may depend on the circumstances of the telling, the audience, your intent and goal in telling it, and other factors.

Getting someone to tell you a story that you can use in your business can be a challenge. Story modeling and story triggers are two methods you can use to help people share their experiences. Prime the pump: Story modeling One way to get the full story with your story prompt is to tell a story before you ask for one in return.

What about those tough stories — the ones you may think you should avoid? Often, you should tell them anyways. Do you want to tell stories that aren’t your own? You need to know a few things before you do so. How to make the most of your personal stories Not all of your stories will shake the foundations of the universe.

Storytelling is a creative act. How you craft and embellish a story is all about conveying your experience in imaginative ways. The purpose for practicing a story out loud in a group setting is to get in tune with saying it in front of an audience and experiencing co-creation, as well as learning what works best in the delivery of the story.

Enhancing your storytelling skills involves more than listening, valuing your stories, being vulnerable, and knowing the difference between transactional and transformational storytelling. It’s also about reading your audience and delivering the stories well. Know when to speed up and slow down Rhythm in storytelling occurs through pacing and pausing (for example, fast–pause–slow–pause–fast) and repetition (“around and around they went .

In 2012, Edelman Berland found that consumers want businesses to tell stories. He surveyed 1,250 adults in the U.S, 18 years of age or older (1,000 in the general population, 250 marketing decision-makers), about the state of online advertising. This market research firm asked them to rate 17 statements that included phrases such as “people buy what celebrities wear or like,” “advertising works better on men than women,” and “in-store experiences trump online experiences.

One single story (or meta-story) can never fully reflect all of your business. In fact, a meta-story consists of a whole host of smaller stories. If you work in branding, your role is to first recognize that all these stories coexist side-by-side — and then manage the dynamic and informing that happens between the meta-story and these smaller stories.

Infographics designed as a story or that use many story elements can be quite helpful for your business. So are stories created from a series of photos or images — much like what’s on SlideShare or in a photo collage. These media let your imagination and creativity soar. Technology such as Stipple allows you to take a photo and add text to it to transform it into a story.

Photo novellas and graphic novellas (a type of comic book) have been used with great success to tell stories in public health campaigns in various countries to effect change. Photo novellas are mini-books that tell a story through photos, along with character conversation and thought bubbles. Graphic novellas are similar but use drawn images instead of photos.