Your Brand Is Your Story Is Your Promise

I've been rummaging through my A Storied Career files, not because I need material (I always have far more than then I know what to do with), but just to make sure I don't overlook some really good stuff, and a piece by Chris Brogan from more than a year ago caught my eye. "Brands can be stories, and thus, you are a living story," Brogan writes. Some of my colleagues who work consistently with branding and storytelling would likely go farther and say not that brands can be stories, but that brands are stories. Brogan says you should "tell the story you told your audience you're going to tell." He means that if you brand yourself with a given story, you must consistently tell that story whether your "audience" is the readers of your online content, people who see your social-media profiles and comments, people you connect with face-to-face, individuals listening to you deliver a presentation, employers considering hiring you, and more. Brogan tells how he brands himself: I tell people daily that I'm here to help you understand how these tools develop community, improve your communications, and do a host of other things better than previous tools were doing them. I promise through my stories that you, too, can figure out how to build influence, develop relationships, and be more useful to your organization (be that a business, a nonprofit, or a circle of friends). "If I let you down, I'm not keeping the promise of my story," he says. Here's where the idea of "promise" comes into branding: My partner, Randall S. Hansen, has written: "Branding is best defined as a promise of the value of the product… a promise that the product is better than all the competing products… a promise that must be delivered to be successful. Branding is the combination of tangible and intangible characteristics that make a brand unique." And Brogan connects "promise" with "story" when he refers back to a piece from three years ago, about The Storyteller's Promise. The piece relates specifically to delivering presentations, but we can relate his concepts to the broader picture of personal branding to a wider audience. First, here's what he says about presenting and storytelling: As a presenter, you are a storyteller. If you don't agree, you've already failed. … if you agree with this premise that you are telling a story via your materials and your presence before an audience, you have some responsibilities. Here, I will adapt some of Brogan's storyteller's responsibilities to the broader idea of personal branding: What is the purpose of your branding? Brogan asks: "What do you want from me?" (meaning what do you want from your audience?). When I was a speechwriter, I learned that a speech should always have a content goal and a feeling goal. What do you want your wider audience to know and what do you want them to feel? Your personal branding story should answer those questions. What concise statement can you use to encapsulate your brand? Brogan talks about titles for presentations: "Give up 'clever.' Go instead for short, impactful titles." The same applies to a branding statement about yourself — a concise, impactful statement supported by a story. See an example here of my partner's pithy, story-supported branding statement. How can you convey enthusiasm for your brand, especially in the first elements of your branding that your audience hears or sees? For example, how might you enthusiastically convey your brand story in a cover letter or in your opening words in a job interview? What explicit promises will you make about yourself? For instance, in the branding I'm currently using about myself on LinkedIn, "Creative, energetic, intuitive wordsmith who helps students, careerists, and organizations tell their stories," I make the promise that I'm creative, energetic, and enthusiastic. How will you stay on track? Brogan talks about avoiding going off on tangents in presentations. When you are focused on your brand/promise/story, be sure you are consistent with your branded message and not wandering off that message. Think about the consistency of your branded message with every piece of communication you put out there — your networking conversations, your Web site, blog, resume, cover letter, job-interview responses, presentations, social-media interactions, and more. While you may want to have both a social brand and a professional brand, be aware that your communications are probably in the public eye more than you realize, and you still need a consistent brand message/promise/story even in social situations.

Why Is Storytelling So Resonant Now?

This is a page to accompany a Worldwide Story Work Teleseminar I'm hosting today, Sept. 9, 4 pm EDST, entitled: The Golden Age of Storytelling: Why Is Story Exploding? What Does It Means for Practitioners? Register for the teleseminar here (you may need to become a member of Worldwide Story Work to register). Or simply call this number on Sept. 9, 4 pm EDST: 1-218-936-4700 — Access Code 710691 For the past year interviewees on A Storied Career have shared their theories about why storytelling resonates now. Let's discuss your speculations. Are we in fact in the Golden Age of Storytelling? Speculations from Practitioners: For the past year in the Q&A series on my blog, A Storied Career, I have asked story practitioners: "The storytelling movement seems to be growing explosively. Why now? What is it about this moment in human history and culture that makes storytelling so resonant with so many people right now?" Here's what they said: As a planet, we are in a place we never imagined and we yearn for comfort, understanding, reason, and most of all HOPE. Stories give us all of that and more, allowing us to reflect on the past, imagine the future, and accept the changes brought about by the challenges of today. — Susan Luke Families are spread across the country; we communicate via email, text messaging, and quick hellos as we pass in halls, shops, or even the home because of busy schedules. All very impersonal, yet as humans we crave and, according to some studies, thrive on contact and interaction with others. Stories connect us and ground us. — Carol Mon The implications of Web 2.0 and technological innovation on humankind are staggering. As I like to describe it, "the means of story production have become democratized". … In a complex, interdependent world where worldviews and value systems collide, we naturally turn to storytelling as our most basic coping mechanism for making sense and meaning of everything around us. — Michael Margolis I think that our feelings of alienation from core human experiences arise from too much "virtual" reality and not enough real reality … Story reintroduces intimacy and emotions to communications between people. … The business interest in storytelling is riding this "crave wave" as well as a parallel realization that designing messages that create emotions like desire, craving, and/or trust toward a product requires that the message tells a story. — Annette Simmons Connections between people [have been] breaking down, and their souls [have been] suffering. I think people are hungry to rebuild this sense of connection, and we are doing this through the medium of stories, whether oral or written. — Sharon Lippincott The development of technologies like PowerPoint has inadvertently pushed the effort to bring back more stories. What seemed like a great communication tool has been overused and abused. — Carol Mon Savvy media gurus have come to realize that storytelling is the quickest and most relevant way to share information… everything is speeding up… In today's faster paced time, storytelling is essential because captures the listener. — Annie Hart As storytelling is already deeply anchored into each of us, it's a relatively low-cost solution to engage [in the] sense[-making] quest. — Stephane Dangel With the advent of so many electronic communications, people are just growing more aware of their need for deeper communication and connectedness. — Sean Buvala Now that we have such powerful communications tools, [storytelling] is still as important, but more massive that we can digest. So, we find those areas that we can relate to. — Katie Snapp It's about finding ways to connect. — Whitney Quesenbery In our world of 24/7 news feeds, social media, etc., we are trying to drink from a firehose of information, and we're finding ourselves bowled over yet still thirsty. … The storytelling movement is about restoring — "re-story-ing" if you will — a more authentic means of learning from each other and drawing meaning from our own experiences. — Sarah White The one thing that everyone can do regardless of where or how they work is create and tell stories. — David Vanadia • We've taken process improvement about as far as it can go. … it is time to seek new tools. And narrative is a perfect tool to help shed light on complex questions. — John Caddell People are inundated with information. … The very good leaders will help people make sense of the information, and story can help them do that. … [Gen Y] … really wants to be inspired, challenged, and motivated and again it is through story you can achieve this … — Gabrielle Dolan • Mostly I think the reason is the control people are exercising over selecting what information they spend their time with. There are more choices than ever before, people are busier with limited time, so why would they choose to spend that time on things that don't meet their needs? The more personalized and relevant information is to the person presented with it, the more engagement is possible. Storytelling is in our genes. — Ardath Albee Story has the wonderful ability to capture [the] great complexity [of 21st century life] into a simple form, allowing listeners to take in the concepts, ideas, challenges, without feeling overwhelmed. … One could also say that story resonates because there has been a confluence of authors (Annette Simmons, Steve Denning, Rick Stone) and others (Karen Dietz, Seth Kahan, Victoria Ward) who have begun to articulate the power of story, offering ways and means of using story. — Madelyn Blair Leaders are looking for new ways to understand what's really happening in their organization. They are looking for better ways to engage and better ways motivate people. Stories are integral to the new ways of working in complex environments. — Shawn Callahan Given the unfathomable sea of information afforded us through the Internet, storytelling is an invaluable resource as it provides the means for delivering substance and meaning in a form that can be readily grasped by the masses. — Jon Hansen I remember sitting in a class and hearing Dr. Joseph Sobol say, "Anthropologists say storytellers arise when the society has lost its way." Wow, that resonated in every part of my body. — Molly Catron Guiding Questions/Food for Thought for Teleseminar Please think about these questions. We probably won't have time to discuss all of them. Which ones interest you most, and what other questions do you have? Are we, in fact, in a Golden Age of Storytelling? Or are we, as story practitioners and "fans" just much more attuned to storytelling than others are? For those who've been involved in storytelling for a significant period — do you feel that you are hearing more now about storytelling then you were a few years ago? Can you identify any single event, publication, person, etc., that seemed to trigger greater interest in storytelling? Do you hear more about people who are starting story-related businesses/practices? Could the perceived explosion in storytelling be because people are more broadly (too broadly?) defining "storytelling?" In April, I asked the question referenced above in a different way: "Are we in the Golden Age of Storytelling? Why or why not?" The respondents answered that we are not (yet) in a golden age — or we don't yet know if we are (see http://astoriedcareer.com/2009/04/survey-says-were-not-in-the-go.html). The comment that most struck me was from Michael Margolis: "To debate when we might enter a so-called 'golden age,' is just another attempt to separate and fragment ourselves from the wholeness that already exists, if we just open our eyes to it. Instead of waiting for some moment to arrive, why not step into that larger story right now?" Your thoughts? To what extent do you think social media contributes to an explosion in storytelling?

Venues Collect and Share Stories for Myriad Purposes

Want to hear stories about Utah? Read inspiring sports stories? Is there a kind of story that can't be shared on the Web? Hard to imagine there is when you see plentiful sites that specialize in every imaginable kind of story. Some offer very open and accessible channels for contributing; others are more selective and complex. Some share but don't collect. Here's something for almost everyone: MyBestPetFriendForever each week features a heartwarming pet story, unique pet relationship, or helpful resource is shared with our pet lover community through a "Sharing with Sydney" video and posted article. MyBestPetFriendForever is part of the larger Celebrations of Life site that helps "individuals and families celebrate their extraordinary lives through: Life stories, Ethical wills, and Meaningful family legacies." The Personality Project is a group blog to "explore why personality matters by inviting 100 top minds from business, best selling authors, popular artists, recognized academics, and global brand builders to talk about the role personality has had in their success. A mix of artwork, stories and interviews, the project is inspired by the theme of the popular new book Personality Not Included by Rohit Bhargava which focuses on helping companies and entrepreneurs to use their personality to make their product or service stand out." And ancillary part of the project is a free e-book, Women of Personality: 20 Inspiring Stories of Success. Nabuur.com provides an internet platform where Villages get effective and trusted assistance from online volunteers (Neighbours). The storytelling aspect of the site is explained here. Storyplanet asks the question: Storyplanet "is designed to be used by individuals like photographers, journalists, artists, activists and others how believe in changing the world through intelligent storytelling. But our Storyplanet can perfectly well be used by organizations and businesses also. We believe that creating great enterprise products starts with creating software and services that excite individuals." Sports Feel Good Stories collects and shares "inspirational sport stories that make you feel good" … "from little leagues to professional teams." AwesomeStories is a gathering place of primary-source information. Its purpose — since the site was first launched in 1999 — is to help educators and individuals find original sources, located at national archives, libraries, universities, museums, historical societies and government-created web sites. … AwesomeStories is about primary sources. The stories exist as a way to place original materials in context and to hold those links together in an interesting, cohesive way (thereby encouraging people to look at them). It is a totally different kind of web site in that its purpose is to place primary sources at the forefront — not the opinions of a writer. Its objective is to take the site's users to places where those primary sources are located. "Sometimes a story is so interesting, so outlandish, or just so plain entertaining that people need to retell it," says "Will" of Secondhand Storytime. "In these cases, the story will start to take on a life of its own as it's passed along by people who had little to no involvement in the actual events being recounted. Here I aim to collect some of these in the form of a weekly podcast." Background Stories "is a concept of visual communication on the back stories of products developed by Arlene Birt . Background Stories is a visual system that engages consumers — sharing in a visceral way the back stories about the food we eat. This one-of-a-kind system promotes corporate transparency and more sustainable purchasing behavior, allowing organizations to communicate their social and environmental objectives and progress to their consumers." Mobi-Blog enables European mobile students to tell their story and read about others' experiences during their exchange program. The collection of stories of students' experiences tell about the great time they had, and what they got up to, as well as helping in the case of any difficulties. Utah Storytelling offers 13 audio storytelling sessions ranging from stories about work, family history and immigration to deer hunting. MakesMeThink "is an online community where people share daily life stories that provoke deep thought and inspire positive change." Once Upon a School (mentioned on A Storied Career before) collects and tells "stories about how all kinds of people — from celebrities to retired journalists — are doing their part to improve their local schools." Story of My Life claims to be "the world's largest online Story collection of the most extraordinary people — you, your parents, grandparents, children, grandchildren."

Stories Matter in the Quest for Social Change

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Marshall Ganz, a lecturer in public policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and a civil-rights activist has written a thought-provoking article, Why Stories Matter: The Art and Craft of Social Change on the site Sojourners Magazine. Ganz notes that it's not effective to simply tell people to follow the values of social change you are hoping to imbue in them. Instead, he writes, "we talk about them in the language of stories because stories are what enable us to communicate these values to one another." Ganz cites three parts of every story: "a plot, a protagonist, and a moral." He writes of plot: "What makes a plot a plot? What gets you interested? Tension. An anomaly. The unexpected. The uncertain and the unknown. … We are all infinitely curious in learning how to be agents of change, how to be people who make good choices under circumstances that are unexpected and unknown to us." The protagonist's choice results in the moral, Ganz writes: The outcome teaches a moral, but because the protagonist is a humanlike character, we are able to identify empathetically, and therefore we are able to feel, not just understand, what is going on. A story communicates fear, hope, and anxiety, and because we can feel it, we get the moral not just as a concept, but as a teaching of our hearts. That's the power of story. That's why most of our faith traditions interpret themselves as stories, because they are teaching our hearts how to live as choiceful human beings capable of embracing hope over fear, self-worth and self-love over self-doubt, and love over isolation and alienation. The key question Ganz raises is: HOW DO WE recapture that power of public narrative and learn the art of leadership storytelling? Ganz asserts that a leader must first tell a story of self: "You don't have any choice if you want to be a leader. You have to claim authorship of your story and learn to tell it to others so they can understand the values that move you to act, because it might move them to act as well." The second story is the story of us, and the third is the story of now, Ganz writes: [The story of us] is an answer to the question, Why are we called? What experiences and values do we share as a community that call us to what we are called to? What is it about our experience of faith, public life, the pain of the world, and the hopefulness of the world? It's putting what we share into words. The fierce urgency of now … is realizing, after the sharing of values and aspirations, that the world out there is not as it ought to be. Instead, it is as it is. And that is a challenge to us. We need to appreciate the challenge and the conflict between the values by which we wish the world lived and the values by which it actually does. The difference between those two creates tension. It forces upon us consideration of a choice. What do we do about that? We're called to answer that question in a spirit of hope. Our goal is to meet this challenge, to seize this hope, and turn it into concrete action. After developing our stories of self, then we work on building relationships, which forms the story of us. Here are individuals and organizations that are telling the story of us and the story of now: "The face and voice of homelessness" (I could not find any other name) explains the vlog Invisible People: For years I've used the lens of a television camera to tell the stories of homelessness and the organizations trying to help. That was part of my job. The reports were produced well and told a story, but the stories you see on this site are much different. These are the real people, telling their own, very real stories… unedited, uncensored and raw. The purpose of this vlog is to make the invisible visible. I hope these people and their stories connect with you and don't let go. I hope their conversations with me will start a conversation in your circle of friends. After you get to know someone by watching their story, please pause for a few moments and write your thoughts in the comments section, or maybe email them to a friend and link back to this vlog. By keeping this dialog open we can help a forgotten people. Fonografia Collective is dedicated to bringing local and international stories about human rights and social issues to a wider audience. By combining traditional approaches with multimedia storytelling, we focus on how important global issues like development, economic trends, the environment, health care, immigration, or poverty affect people's everyday lives. Since 2005, these stories have taken us to the U.S.-Mexico border, Panama, Mexico, Brazil, Bolivia, Venezuela, Peru, Turkey, and Haiti. Mike Best of Georgia Tech collects stories in post-conflict environments, countries recovering from civil war, genocide or other disasters using a tool he and his team developed, called MOSES; i.e., Mobile Story Exchange System (which doesn't seem to have its own Web site but is explained here and here). As Ethan Zuckerman notes, "most of the people Mike works with were forced out of school by war and are illiterate." MOSES "allows participants to record and browse videos using an interface that uses pictures and speech, though no text. The system is portable and was moved throughout the country, tested in different areas. Mike's team uses a model called HDF — heuristic evaluation, diaspora evaluation and field evaluation - to sharpen the designs. This allows a team based in Atlanta, Georgia to try and develop tools that can work in Liberia. … The system has generated hundreds of videos, and thousands of Liberians have participated." PCI-Media Impact "uses creative media to mobilize individual, community and political action in the areas of sexual and reproductive health, HIV/AIDS, environmental conservation and sustainable development, and human rights and democracy." See examples here.

A Dozen Eye-Openers about Telling Stories in Presentations

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This year's SlideShare "Tell a Story" contest underscored the emergence of of storytelling as a significant component in presentations (even if slide shows aren't always compatible with good storytelling). (I had thought the "Tell a Story" contest replaced the more generic contest SlideShare held last year but just learned the World's Best Presentation Contest '09 has begun accepting entries.) In recognition of story's growing role in presentations, I found these 12 interesting bits published recently: Listeners go into a trance when they hear a story. So says professional speaker Andy Dooley in a blog entry that is actually not that much about presentations: "Did you know that when you're listening to a story you go into a trance? Did you know that change happens when you least expect it? Did you know that change happens when you are in a trance?" Gestures that go with your story have a specific effect on brain activity. This observation comes from research reported by Bruce Bower in Science News. In the study conducted by neuoscientist Jeremy Skipper, Weill Medical College, Cornell University, and presented in the academic journal Current Biology: "As volunteers listened to and watched a woman who made descriptive hand gestures while telling a story, activity simultaneously increased in one set of brain areas involved in planning and executing actions and in another set thought to underlie language comprehension, the researchers report … These neural systems form a network that ascertains the meaning of gestures accompanying speech, they suggest." Different brain activity was observed when observers could see a nongesturing woman and when they couldn't see the woman telling the story. You can effectively alter the classic presentation formula by integrating stories. That formula is: Tell 'em what you're gonna tell 'em. Then tell 'em. Then tell 'em what you just told 'em. Koert Bakker learned to turn that formula on its ear after reading Annette Simmons' The Story Factor. "This completely changed the way I write presentations now," Bakker said. "Instead of giving away the key point of the presentation at the beginning, I save it for last. I start with the perspective of the audience, and then take them on a tour of all the aspects that step-by-step convinced me to believe what I believe so they can step-by-step come to believe the same things. And I insert a little drama and tension along the way, to help remember the story and make it easier to pass on." Bullets [probably] can't help you tell a story. I've come to believe bullet points — popularized in presentations by the ubiquitous PowerPoint — serve no real purpose except as memory aids for the presenter. In an article, "The First Five Slides: Unlocking the Story Buried in Your Presentation," that is packed with lots of good advice about presentations, Cliff Atkinson, says: "When the primary way that we communicate is by presenting lists to one another, it is no wonder that the phenomenon of story is gaining momentum, because a story is the opposite of a list. Where a list is dry, fragmented and soulless; a story is juicy, coherent, and full of life. Presented with the choice, any audience will choose life." Want another illustration of this point? About 1 minute and 53 seconds into this little video talk by Shawn Callahan, he tells a story that shows how poorly bullet points work compared to stories. In fact, ditch the slides. Many a tree and many an electron has given its life in "death by PowerPoint" articles that emphasize not only how PowerPoint kills storytelling in presentations, but how it murders presentations themselves. Joining that chorus is José A. Bowen, dean of the Meadows School of the Arts, who, as reported by Jeffrey R. Young in The Chronicle of Higher Education "has challenged his colleagues to 'teach naked' — by which he means, sans machines. More than any thing else, Mr. Bowen wants to discourage professors from using PowerPoint, because they often lean on the slide-display program as a crutch rather using it as a creative tool." As Young characterizes Bowen's view: "When students reflect on their college years later in life, they're going to remember challenging debates and talks with their professors." Yes, and they will remember the stories their professors told. Some see digital storytelling as the cure for death by PowerPoint, as evidenced by this resource list: Digital Storytelling and Reforming PowerPoint Stories stick. In a similar academic vein as the previous point, Joey Asher on his Talking Points blog lamented the terrible presentations he hears at his son's freshman orientation at the University of Michigan: "Over and over college administrators, health professionals, professors, and public safety professionals would stand up to talk to us about what our kids could expect at the University of Michigan," Asher said. "And over and over we'd get a series of bullet points, delivered somewhat randomly." The day was saved by, not an administrator or professor, but a student who described taking an unusual course her freshman year. As Asher writes, quoting the student: "'I had taken German in high school," she explained. 'But when I started looking through the course catalog, I found so many interesting courses, I wanted to take something unusual.'" The something unusual turned out to be Yiddish, and the lesson was that it's a good idea to take some courses simply because you find them interesting. Said a relieved Asher: "Of all the messages I've gotten over the last two days, that message is the one that sticks more than any others. And it's because it came through a story." (Shawn Callahan's story mentioned above under No. 4. also illustrates the stickiness of stories) Stories connect your listeners with your topic on a personal level. Citing "a brief slide show at the Consumer Electronics Show in January 2009," Geoffrey X. Lane wrote that "Palm … put [itself] back into business competition." You can see the portion of Palm's "great slide presentation" that Lane refers to here. Wrote Lane: "… notice how Palm's Jon Rubinstein, like Apple CEO Steve Jobs, treats the presentation like a story. Rather than simply spouting facts about the new phone, he employs narrative (storytelling) to connect listeners to the device on a more personal level — a marvelous marketing strategy involving the audience, and an effective technique you can adopt the next time you appear before the board or your customer." Sequence, unexpected events, and detail can enhance presentation stories. An unnamed blogger at Social Ch@nge cites the "sequence, unexpected events, and detail" in the amusing slideshow below ("An Excellent Boring Presentation" by Ishtiaque Zico). These traits are not exactly applied to a story, but then again, the slideshow can be seen as the story of how to construct a boring presentation. And even if it isn't, sequence, unexpected events, and detail are still good story devices. An Excellent Boring Presentation View more documents from Ishtiaque Zico. Make presentation stories simple enough so that audiences can easily repeat them. "Use the power of simplicity to add to your storytelling skills in presenting your ideas, products and solutions," advises Thomas Sechehaye, who bills himself "The World's #1 Presentation Storyboard Coach." In his blog The Next Meeting, he writes, "Training your audience to recall your message happens when you simplify and make it easy for them to tell your story." Road-test your stories. In an article with lots of other good tips, Corey Sommers advises test out stories with trusted people who fit your audience profile: "The question you want to ask is: 'Does this story resonate with you?'" Tell stories about yourself. Carmine Gallo gives an awesome example of using self-stories in a presentation in a Business Week article: In September 2007, Brad Nierenberg, CEO of RedPeg Marketing in Alexandria, Va., pitched a project to Gaylord National, a massive new resort outside Washington, D.C. He, along with several other members of the team, competed for the account to publicize the hotel's hiring event the following year. … Nierenberg told me the team members told stories about themselves in the first slides of the pitch, connecting those stories to the roles each would play on the account. For example, the account lead showed a photo of herself as a young cheerleader and discussed how her role is to lead with precision and to keep spirits high. Nierenberg brought a picture of himself as a 6-year old in a cowboy outfit. As the "sheriff" in town, he might not be on the account every day, but he would be available to make sure "all was right in the town of Gaylord." Nierenberg knew the stories were making on impact on his audience from the smiles on their faces. "They couldn't wait for the next story," he said. The attendees even asked for copies of the photos to show the other decision makers. RedPeg won the account. On the other hand, tell stories not about yourself but about others. While stories about oneself are great for building trust and connection, Seth Simonds makes a case for telling stories about others, suggesting it may be "possible [to] might find value in telling stories that aren't about you" (in fact, he offers three reasons to tell stories that aren't just about you). Simonds cites a Thai Pantene commercial ("Pantene tells us a compelling story with a message we recognize and connect with the shampoo") and Malcolm Gladwell's 2004 17.5-minute The Story of Spaghetti Sauce on TED Talks ("Gladwell engages us with a story about a man we can model ourselves after.")

Telling New-Venture Stories Paints a Picture for Investors

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The New Prosperity Initiative (NPi) is a Boston-based media organization "that pairs storytelling with new media to publicize the efforts of people and organizations doing socially innovative work to end poverty and build prosperity. NPi stories take the shape of interviews, photo essays, videos, and podcasts and are distributed both in print and online." At the same time that NPi is chronicling those working toward social change, its founders, Jeanne Dasaro and Alexis Schroeder, are maintaining a blog that chronicles the story of their entrepreneurship and how they are attempting to launch, grow, and raise funds for the venture. In a recent entry, Schroeder wrote: "Every now and then someone asks me where I think NPi is in terms of its long-term development. The short answer is: We don't have money yet, but we do have a strong business plan and some pretty fantastic partners. … One question I've been asking myself lately (the answer to which I think we need to communicate better) is, "Why invest in NPi?" NPi's answer to that question is one that reflects deep social concern, but it's a question that every entrepreneur must answer. Last year, my best friend hatched an idea for a Web-based application that will be truly revolutionary. It's not quite as much about social change on a global level as NPi is, but it's something that can truly do wonders for people's personal and career growth. She asked me to partner with her. For almost a year, we've been slowly developing the idea and seeking a way to finance it. We recently applied for venture capital support that is more than just money. If we're chosen, we will get intensive expert guidance and personnel to bring our venture to fruition. Interestingly, part of the application process asked for stories of how our idea would work and what it would look like in action. I had a lot of fun developing those stories. And I wouldn't be surprised to see those stories play a key role in our success. If you want people to invest in your idea, you must be able to present a storied vision that enables investors to picture how it will work and why it's a great idea. I love the circularity of NPi's discussion of storytelling: Storytelling is at the core of the venture's purpose. The founders must show why storytelling is so important (see quote below). And at the same time, they tell their own story of launching the venture From Schroeder's blog entry: So why invest in a media organization that tells stories? Because millions of people in America and across the globe are missing more than a few of these key pieces of the puzzle necessary for living a prosperous life. … Everyone deserves a fair shot at living a healthful, prosperous life. In cities and towns all across the country, in major international cities and rural villages, people are doing incredible work to make sure everyone gets one. These are stories that must be told.

Q&A with a Story Guru: Melissa Wells: Narrative Can Persuade, Influence, Soothe

Melissa Wells, who is, I believe, another one of my discoveries through Twitter, is one of those rare breeds kind of like me who combines fascinations with career development/management with storytelling. In addition, she's a nature videographer who has adventures in Africa and other places. I'm delighted to bring you this Q&A with her. Bio: Melissa Wells is a career consultant who works with individual and corporate clients at the cutting edge of their fields whether business, science, or the arts. Blending inspired travel with experience as a consultant, she guides clients through the process of precisely defining and creating success, defined their way. A world-traveler and videographer, her video work is currently featured at Smithsonian Natural History Museum in Washington, DC, as part of the "Farmers, Warriors, Builders" exhibit. Prior to career coaching, Melissa was a director at Huron Consulting Group and also consulted with PricewaterhouseCoopers and Accenture, in the US and overseas. Melissa hold a B.A. from Smith College in psychology. She can be found at mwells@amazoncoaching.com or through her take on career through an explorer's lens, Amazon Coaching. Q&A with Melissa Wells: Q: When you say "Your Career, Your Story,"" as your tagline, or more specifically, "It's your career, write your own story," and "creating a narrative that makes you distinctive," can you explain a little about what you mean by that and how that process works? A: The heart of my work is helping people clearly articulate what they want and why. I chose "Your Career, Your Story" as a way to inspire and encourage clients to choose their work. In short, if you cannot articulate what you want, why, and how you are different from others in your field, then finding a satisfying job or anything else in life, becomes less likely. Clients find I make the process fun by letting them express what brings them happiness and what experiences make their skin crawl, and building from there. When someone is enthusiastic, or shares their worst experiences, I get a vivid picture of who they are and the role of work in their life. Once I've established trust, I'm able to guide them to craft a narrative they can use to persuade, influence, or soothe.

When All Is Said and Done on [Personal] Branding: Try Storytelling

Jim Knutsen claims "there is literally nothing left to say on branding. With all those words, you'd think the discipline would be clearly defined and understood. And yet there is still massive confusion. I've had a hundred conversations that center around client questions like, "What's the difference between positioning and branding? Is this my business strategy or my brand strategy? Is my brand promise the same thing as my elevator pitch?" "Nearly every brand consultancy answers those questions with their own 'proprietary' version of a branding model," Knutsen notes. The same is true about personal branding. Though one of the hottest trend in career management in the past few years, personal branding is confusing because every expert has a different model and approach for identifying one's personal brand. Knutsen thinks perhaps consultants have overcomplicated branding and that all organizations need to do is tell their stories. He poses these three questions, which I've adapted for the careerist individual rather than the organization: What is your [individual career] story? Your differentiating DNA… clear, focused and compelling. How can you use that story to align your team, resources and strategies to create a consistent … experience [for prospective employers] and achieve common business goals? What are the words and symbols that point back to the substance of your story, and how will you present them consistently? The words are the tools for presenting your brand to prospective employers in such media as resumes, cover letters, interviews, portfolios, and networking situations. The symbols are things like fonts, colors, design, and images that tie your written career-management documents (resumes, cover letters, and more) together and present as consistent, branded image, as well as the way you brand your own appearance/attire — your distinctive look when you network and interview.

Storytelling for Self-Knowledge that Leads to Career Advancement

• "MFK" describes herself as a "thirtysomething gal with a good old-fashioned writing degree and a bloated, shiny, sexy MBA." She works for a Fortune 50 Company and blogs at Open-Source Career Back in the spring, she wrote a guest blog entry for Blog@Work, a blog that unfortunately seems to be "suspended," so I can't provide the link to it. The thrust of the entry was MFK's formula for success: "The key to taking things to the next level … is to look back after a time. Do a post-mortem, a personal performance review, a personal brand assessment, storytelling — whatever you want to call it. MFK suggests looking for patterns and consistent behaviors in your success story. Look for things you hated and things you failed at. Seek out consistent patterns of what people said about your work. Consider what got you excited and eager to go to work each day. MFK particularly had to engage the storytelling method when she sought her first job after grad school because she had no traditional business experience before her MBA: I took an objective look at the prior six years and started storytelling to myself, looking for patterns of behavior and experiences that were harmonious with the type of corporate work I was trying to do. … At each job, increasing leeway to act independently and be put in charge of work and of people — because I had demonstrated I could drive results. She notes that "healthy … self-reflection will show you the hidden patterns … Can you repeat the patterns again? Can you use those patterns to help you take it to the next level?" Yes. Use the successful, fulfilling parts of your past story to build your future story.

Q&A with a Story Guru: Annie Hart: Story Has the Power to Effect Change

I believe it was through Twitter that I learned of Annie Hart, and I was immediately intrigued by her "stories change the world" philosophy. She is likely one of the very last Q&A practitioners who will make it into my upcoming free e-book, Storied Careers: 40+ Story Practitioners Talk About Applied Storytelling. I'm also excited about her upcoming radio show. This Q&A will appear over the next five days. Bio: [from her Web site, where she tells about herself with more storytelling verve than is presented here] Annie has brought her work to the fields of business, education, healthcare, non-profit, youth at risk, and community organizations. Her training and certification includes NLP Trainer, Eriksonian Hypnotherapy Trainer, Expressive Arts Training, non-violent communication, ISVOR Dilts Leadership Training, where she was personally selected as one of the first 32 trainers from around the world and is one of only 50 Book Yourself Solid Certified Marketing Coaches. Annie has developed several bodies of original work including a Heart-Centered Communication model; DreamBuilders, a group coaching model; Stories From the Heart of the Cosmos, a story performance workshop; and her current work Skills of Excellence, a compilation of skills of the masters. She has also created several large-scale community events, including a world peace council of 90 indigenous elders from around the world and Artists for the World in which she organized a team to create and display the collective artwork of Philadelphia school children. Annie's personal ethic is to embody the principles of human kindness, generosity and collaboration as a basic business model. She believes that relationships are the most important factor of all. Annie loves knitting, is passionate about yoga, enjoys drinking good tea and reading and studying from the mystics. She lives in beautiful Chestnut Hill, PA, with her little dog Miss Sweetie. Her goal is to live an ordinary life in an extraordinary way and to be a kind, happy and loving person. Annie is launching a radio show, "Inspiring Change Through Story," the first week in September 2009, on Fridays at 12:30 PM. Check her Web site for how to find the show. Q&A with Annie Hart: Q: You have a section of your Web site called story performance and tell a fascinating story about how you got involved in story performance. In what kinds of contexts are you a story performer, and how does this work relate to the training/consulting work you do with story? A: My main interest for using story is in the context of training and consulting. I love its power for effecting change quickly. I also enjoy performing for fun, and I use my storytelling around town to help promote local businesses and events. You can inspire people much more easily through carefully chosen stories and what is so much fun is that most of the time people don't even realize that they are changing. The stories are so entertaining that people are enjoying themselves. They think they're just having fun but something deeper is happening. It isn't until later that all of this change surfaces. I receive a lot of great feedback from individuals, groups and businesses describing the many amazing changes that have come about.

Applying Online Storytelling Techniques to the Job Search

Time once again for one of my favorite pastimes, looking at ways to apply material about storytelling to the job search. Today's target is a posting about Donnie Claudino, TechSoup Canada's marketing manager, who spoke at a conference about teaching charities about using online technology to improve their fundraising and marketing about how to use storytelling in online media. The post was written by "Andrew" on TechSoup.org. Claudino used storytelling to land a job when he, as an American, wanted to immigrate to Canada. Key to his storytelling message was the exhortation to know your audience. In the job-search, you must know as much as possible about your audience, the employer. Claudino notes you must "determine what action you want these people to take;" in the job search, you want you audience to invite you to the next step in the hiring process — whether interview, next interview, or job offer. The "questions to ask yourself about your story" that Claudino proposes can easily be applied to job-search stories: Is the story transformative? Does your story have "heart-fire?" Does it have emotional pull? Is it believable and honest? [A story that shows your passion and enables the employer to become emotionally invested in you as a person and prospective employee will go a long way toward getting you the job.] Does it make [the employer] want to do something? Is the story inspirational and [can it] move [the employer]? More importantly, is there a clear course of action? [Hire me!] Can the story be repurposed? [In your cover letter, can you expand on a story you told in a clipped bullet point in your resume, and in your interview, can you expand on the same story even further? Can you re-purpose the story in networking situations, your career portfolio, and in a personal branding statement?] Suggesting that stories can "live" online, Claudino says, "The best strategy is to have a connected and consistent message in as many places as possible but which ultimately drives visitors back to a site to take a specific action." That's why it's a great idea for job-seekers to tell their stories on a personal Web page with their name as the domain name (like my katharinehansenphd.com). The Web site can introduce an online portfolio, full of stories of accomplishments and results. In addition to — or instead of — his or her own Web site, the job-seeker can have story-rich profiles on sites like LinkedIn. Contact information should be readily available so the employer or recruiter can take the specific action of getting in touch.

Do These Videos Pass Test for 'Compelling, Inspiring, Radically Simple' Storytelling?

Video is everywhere these days … it's more and more ubiquitous. Often I'll see an interesting Twitter tweet or other storytelling reference that when I click on it, turns out to be a video. Nothing wrong with that except that I have zero patience and often am too restless to sit through a video. Back in the spring, my friend, video storyteller Thomas Clifford wrote a blog entry, "Is This The Future Of Video Storytelling For Organizations?" He was talking about a particular video series on the online Washington Post site, On Being, "video portraits that take you into the musings, passions and quirks of all sorts of people," but perhaps Clifford's characterization of these short videos should be used as criteria to evaluate any piece of video that claims to be storytelling: Compelling Inspiring Radically simple Clifford then asks these questions: Can organizations use video narratives as a way to learn from one another? Are video narratives an effective way to genuinely engage employees and its customers? In a time of information saturation, should organizations integrate narratives into their communications efforts? If so, how? Can our individual stories be part of a larger brand's story? All great questions that I would like to apply in a broader way to the videos I'm listing here. I'll return to those presently. A bit earlier than Clifford's post, Amanda Hirsch quoted Tom Kennedy from 2002 (who built the award-winning multimedia unit at Washingtonpost.com): "I believe we're just beginning to scratch the surface of the Web 's potential as a story-telling device." Hirsch's followup: "Seven years later, I believe we're still just scratching the surface." So, as you review the videos listed here, ask yourself if they demonstrate we are still just scratching the surface in Web-based storytelling, or have we gone beyond? Do these videos pass Clifford's test of compelling, inspiring, and radically simple? And, now returning to a broader view of Clifford's questions: Can people use video narratives as a way to learn from one another? Are video narratives an effective way to genuinely engage Web users? In a time of information saturation, should organizations, individuals, and brands integrate narratives into their communications efforts? If so, how? Can our individual stories be part of a larger brand's story, the larger human story, the online content story? Finally, and perhaps most importantly, do these videos indeed represent storytelling? In Passion for the Land, Ranchers and Cooperative Extension agents partner with media artists and UC-Davis university scholars to produce and present digital stories on current challenges to agricultural viability and rural community life in the Sierra Valley. The one I watched, "Is Sustainable Attainable?" was well-done and definitely a story, although I thought the narrator/protagonist was a bit sing-songy in his delivery. Ohio State University has developed a reputation as a hub for digital storytelling, and among its impressive set of resources, OSU's Web site has a section that describes the OSU Digital Storytelling Program's mission this way: "to help the academic community communicate their passion for teaching, research, and outreach through personal, engaging storytelling." A collection of "Academic Story Examples" is offered here. I enjoyed The Human Connection. The site also offers a nice set of resources. My Facebook friend, Evelyn Van Tyl, who is also connected with Ohio State — she's an academic and career coach there — just today sent me the video, "Happiness" (embedded at the bottom of this post), the story of her personal journey to discover that "happiness is created in the daily practice of choosing to see the positive." The storytelling philosophy of MediaStorm, writes Carrie Brown-Smith at The Changing Newsroom (quoting MediaStorm's Brian Storm), "is to let the subjects speak in their own words. They use on-screen text to connect the dots and drive the narrative, but the audio is in their sources' own words. They combine stills and video to great effect and always incorporate some kind of surprise for the audience." This is pretty close to the style Clifford spoke of with the Washington Post's On Being series. Defying my personal impatience with watching videos online, Brown-Smith reports that on MediaStorm, 65 percent of those that start watching stick with the site's 21-minute videos to the end. In explaining why, Brown-Smith perhaps adds three more criteria to what we should be looking for in online storytelling: high quality, easily shareable on social media, and defiant of audience expectations for short-attention-span stuff. I watched Intended Consequences (pictured), about sexual violence during the Rwandan genocide, which was actually just under 15 minutes. I was not impatient. Also rather long (just over 9 minutes) but absolutely stunning is a piece excepted from the TV show "Ukraine's Got Talent." Highly touted in the Twitterverse, the video features the show's winner, Kseniya Simonova, creating a jaw-dropping sand animation that clearly makes a huge emotional impact of every member of the audience. As you watch the video, you can tell the artist is depicting wartime, but the reason for the audience's outpouring of emotion is unclear until you learn the background, as I did on Associated Content. It is: The Great Patriotic War, or as we call it in America, WWII. Ukraine was probably the area most devastated in the war, even more than Germany. It was a conflict that saw nearly one in four Ukrainians killed. A population of almost 42 million lost between 8 and 11 million people, depending on which estimate one references. Ukraine represented almost 20 percent of all the causalities suffered during WWII. And that was after Stalin had killed millions during the manufactured famines before the war. It to this day touches every Ukrainian. Three entertaining and sometimes touching videos are commercials (all re-tweeted many times on Twitter): "Prized Possession" equating home insurance with "a worried dog search[ing] for and ultimately find[ing] the smartest way to protect his most prized-possession;" [Levi's] "Watch pocket created 1873 … and abused ever since" in which a young man uses his jeans' watch pocket to stow a condom; and Olympus [Camera]: The PEN Story, "A 50-year journey in stop-motion." In a bit of a different vein is "The Terrible Thing of Alpha-9!", which is animated. Even though the main character is not human, the story told is very human and tragic. Finally, a collection of videos for a good cause: the Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA) presents Stories from the Field: A Multimedia Collection of Stories from All Over the World (I didn't have the right plug-in to watch these). All the videos I saw passed Clifford's basic tests of compelling, inspiring, and radically simple (some were more compelling than others, and some may not have been quite "radically" simple). I'm not video-savvy enough to answer whether these demonstrate whether we are still just scratching the surface in Web-based storytelling, or whether we've broken new ground. What do you think? What's lacking in video storytelling? What's the next step?

Storied Food and Changing Eating Habits

My 22-year-old son works as a produce specialist in a health-food store and has become quite an evangelist for natural foods. He has been campaigning to change his parents' eating habits and urged me to read The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan. So I've been reading it — or rather listening to the audiobook because I'm a super-slow reader, and listening to audiobooks is a productive thing to do as I work on outdoor chores on our Washington land. Pollan talks about "storied food," food presented in natural-foods stores with brochures about how the beef cattle "living in beautiful places" ranging from "plant-diverse high-mountain meadows to miles of Aspen groves and think sagebrush flats." He notes that he, like many consumers are inclined to pay higher prices for such meat. Not only only do we perceive that the meat tastes better, but we also love a good story. The chapter from which those quotes come from is full of discussion and examples of storied food. But previous chapters told a grim story of factory farms, a narrative that would never be told at a natural-food store or any other retailer. This is the story of cattle crammed into feedlots, mired in manure lagoons, cattle that are fed a mush of corn (which they were never meant to eat), supplements, chemicals, and antibiotics (in part because their unnatural corn diet renders them susceptible to disease). I don't eat a lot of red meat, but we do have a weekly tradition of a steak cooked on the grill. It's yummy, and I look forward to it. Hearing the story of the factory farms does indeed have me seriously questioning this habit. Of course, I tell myself that my boycotting factory-farmed beef will do nothing to stop the practice. But then I think of "storied food" that is close to home. A few miles from our home here is a farm with a couple of horses and the most fabulous specimen of bovine you've ever laid eyes on. We just call him Bovine because we were unsure of his gender at first. Pretty sure Bovine's not a girl cow — no udder. And probably not a bull because — ahem — something seems to be missing down there. So he's probably a steer. We feed him apples, which he absolutely loves and gobbles up. And I worry about him. Is he destined to be steak dinner? Is he the family pet? Is he a child's 4H project (which doesn't mean he still couldn't be steak dinner)? I've noticed steer manure is popular here; maybe his function is to produce manure. As I think about changing my eating habits away from factory-farmed beef, I think of our Bovine, the protagonist of a potential food story. It would still be tragic for me — or anyone — to eat our magnificent Bovine. But if someone does, they could at least take comfort that he had a happy grass-fed and apple-chomping life while he was here — not a miserable life of suffering that the factory-farmed cattle lead. I mean, just look at him … the hero of a pastoral story of the vanishing small American family farm (his farm is for sale, by the way). Read more of Pollan's discussion of "storied foods" here. To what extent are you influenced by "storied food?"

Cautionary Tales for Business

Sometimes storytelling that teaches a lesson is inadvertent. It's not intended as "business narrative" or one of Steve Denning's springboard stories meant to spark change. It's just good reporting and writing that tells a story that provides a lesson businesses can learn from.

Want to convey the lesson that you should be careful who acquires your business because it may lose everything that made it great and eventually go under? Then read the sad story of gardening-tool importer Smith & Hawken by Jim Welte at marinij.com. Current owner, Scotts Miracle-Gro Co., intended to sell Smith & Hawken but decided to liquidate it when it couldn't sell the subsidiary. As Welte reports, original partner Dave Smith said, "When Scotts bought it and Smith & Hawken was owned by the largest pesticide seller in the U.S., I suggested people boycott it. It had completely lost its roots." Further:

Both Smith and Hawken said the company that bears their name had long since veered away from being a gardening company and was unable to take advantage of the recent surge in interest in gardening because of that.

"How could you possibly have a gardening store in this economy and go wrong?" Hawken said. "I'll tell you why. This wasn't a gardening store anymore."

Smith and Hawken had not originally sold their company to Scotts. It had gone though several owners before it ended up with Scotts. But perhaps the lesson of this well-written story is that when you sell your business, especially if it bears your name, you may have to be prepared for it to lose its character and even its very existence. Perhaps there are terms of sale that can keep your good name from getting sullied.

How about communicating the message that if you want to sell products, you should probably respond enthusiastically to those who buy those products? A column by Neal Rubin in The Detroit News makes one wonder if indifferent salespeople might be one reason GM is where it is today. Are they really all so demoralized they can't sell anymore? Rubin asked a salesperson at a Buick dealership about a redesigned model, the Buick LaCrosse, he'd seen on the highway. The response:

He said I'd probably seen a GM executive on a test drive. If I'd been on the other end of that call, I'd like to think I'd have sensed a potential sale. I probably would have asked for a name and phone number, and promised to get in touch the instant a LaCrosse graced the premises. But nope; that was pretty much the end of our relationship.

Later at another dealership, he asked three questions, including one about the LaCrosse. The response was even worse:

I'd come through his door. I'd asked questions about two vehicles. He didn't introduce himself, he didn't offer to show me a [name of the other model Rubin asked about], he didn't ask if I'd ever driven one.

Keep in mind, this story takes place in Detroit. "We've learned in these last months that we're all in the auto business," Rubin writes, "and we need it to work better. And I'm tired of asking myself the same question: In our alleged service economy, where the heck is the service?"

Eventually Rubin finds a dealer — referred to him by the National Auto Dealers Association, who offers him encouragement.

Read any stories recently that offer valuable business lessons?

Cautionary Tales for Business

Sometimes storytelling that teaches a lesson is inadvertent. It's not intended as "business narrative" or one of Steve Denning's springboard stories meant to spark change. It's just good reporting and writing that tells a story that provides a lesson businesses can learn from. Want to convey the lesson that you should be careful who acquires your business because it may lose everything that made it great and eventually go under? Then read the sad story of gardening-tool importer Smith & Hawken by Jim Welte at marinij.com. Current owner, Scotts Miracle-Gro Co., intended to sell Smith & Hawken but decided to liquidate it when it couldn't sell the subsidiary. As Welte reports, original partner Dave Smith said, "When Scotts bought it and Smith & Hawken was owned by the largest pesticide seller in the U.S., I suggested people boycott it. It had completely lost its roots." Further: Both Smith and Hawken said the company that bears their name had long since veered away from being a gardening company and was unable to take advantage of the recent surge in interest in gardening because of that. "How could you possibly have a gardening store in this economy and go wrong?" Hawken said. "I'll tell you why. This wasn't a gardening store anymore." Smith and Hawken had not originally sold their company to Scotts. It had gone though several owners before it ended up with Scotts. But perhaps the lesson of this well-written story is that when you sell your business, especially if it bears your name, you may have to be prepared for it to lose its character and even its very existence. Perhaps there are terms of sale that can keep your good name from getting sullied. How about communicating the message that if you want to sell products, you should probably respond enthusiastically to those who buy those products? A column by Neal Rubin in The Detroit News makes one wonder if indifferent salespeople might be one reason GM is where it is today. Are they really all so demoralized they can't sell anymore? Rubin asked a salesperson at a Buick dealership about a redesigned model, the Buick LaCrosse, he'd seen on the highway. The response: He said I'd probably seen a GM executive on a test drive. If I'd been on the other end of that call, I'd like to think I'd have sensed a potential sale. I probably would have asked for a name and phone number, and promised to get in touch the instant a LaCrosse graced the premises. But nope; that was pretty much the end of our relationship. Later at another dealership, he asked three questions, including one about the LaCrosse. The response was even worse: I'd come through his door. I'd asked questions about two vehicles. He didn't introduce himself, he didn't offer to show me a [name of the other model Rubin asked about], he didn't ask if I'd ever driven one. Keep in mind, this story takes place in Detroit. "We've learned in these last months that we're all in the auto business," Rubin writes, "and we need it to work better. And I'm tired of asking myself the same question: In our alleged service economy, where the heck is the service?" Eventually Rubin finds a dealer — referred to him by the National Auto Dealers Association, who offers him encouragement. Read any stories recently that offer valuable business lessons?

10 Ways to Support Charity Through Social Media

Blogger's Note: A Storied Career is participating in a project to publish the same blog entry — this one — across many blogs simultaneously today. An accompanying entry, Storytelling Edition: Ways to Support Charity Through Social Media, looks at ways to use storytelling in social media to support charity. This post is a collaboration between Mashable's Summer of Social Good charitable fundraiser and Max Gladwell's "10 Ways" series. The post is being simultaneously published across more than 300 blogs. Social media is about connecting people and providing the tools necessary to have a conversation. That global conversation is an extremely powerful platform for spreading information and awareness about social causes and issues. That's one of the reasons charities can benefit so greatly from being active on social media channels. But you can also do a lot to help your favorite charity or causes you are passionate about through social media. Below is a list of 10 ways you can use social media to show your support for issues that are important to you. If you can think of any other ways to help charities via social web tools, please add them in the comments. If you'd like to retweet this post or take the conversation to Twitter or FriendFeed, please use the hashtag #10Ways. 1. Write a Blog Post Blogging is one of the easiest ways you can help a charity or cause you feel passionate about. Almost everyone has an outlet for blogging these days — whether that means a site running WordPress, an account at LiveJournal, or a blog on MySpace or Facebook. By writing about issues you're passionate about, you're helping to spread awareness among your social circle. Because your friends or readers already trust you, what you say is influential. Recently, a group of green bloggers banded together to raise individual $1 donations from their readers. The beneficiaries included Sustainable Harvest, Kiva, Healthy Child, Healthy World, Environmental Working Group, and Water for People. The blog-driven campaign included voting to determine how the funds would be distributed between the charities. You can read about the results here. You should also consider taking part in Blog Action Day, a once a year event in which thousands of blogs pledge to write at least one post about a specific social cause (last year it was fighting poverty). Blog Action Day will be on October 15 this year. 2. Share Stories with Friends Another way to spread awareness among your social graph is to share links to blog posts and news articles via sites like Twitter, Facebook, Delicious, Digg, and even through email. Your network of friends is likely interested in what you have to say, so you have influence wherever you've gathered a social network. You'll be doing charities you support a great service when you share links to their campaigns, or to articles about causes you care about. 3. Follow Charities on Social Networks In addition to sharing links to articles about issues you come across, you should also follow charities you support on the social networks where they are active. By increasing the size of their social graph, you're increasing the size of their reach. When your charities tweet or post information about a campaign or a cause, statistics or a link to a good article, consider retweeting that post on Twitter, liking it on Facebook, or blogging about it. Following charities on social media sites is a great way to keep in the loop and get updates, and it's a great way to help the charity increase its reach by spreading information to your friends and followers. You can follow the Summer of Social Good Charities: Oxfam America (Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, YouTube) The Humane Society (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, Flickr) LIVESTRONG (Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr) WWF (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr) 4. Support Causes on Awareness Hubs Another way you can show your support for the charities you care about is to rally around them on awareness hubs like Change.org, Care2, or the Facebook Causes application. These are social networks or applications specifically built with non-profits in mind. They offer special tools and opportunities for charities to spread awareness of issues, take action, and raise money. It's important to follow and support organizations on these sites because they're another point of access for you to gather information about a charity or cause, and because by supporting your charity you'll be increasing their overall reach. The more people they have following them and receiving their updates, the greater the chance that information they put out will spread virally. 5. Find Volunteer Opportunities Using social media online can help connect you with volunteer opportunities offline, and according to web analytics firm Compete, traffic to volunteering sites is actually up sharply in 2009. Two of the biggest sites for locating volunteer opportunities are VolunteerMatch, which has almost 60,000 opportunities listed, and Idealist.org, which also lists paying jobs in the non-profit sector, in addition to maintaining databases of both volunteer jobs and willing volunteers. For those who are interested in helping out when volunteers are urgently needed in crisis situations, check out HelpInDisaster.org, a site which helps register and educate those who want to help during disasters so that local resources are not tied up directing the calls of eager volunteers. Teenagers, meanwhile, should check out DoSomething.org, a site targeted at young adults seeking volunteer opportunities in their communities. 6. Embed a Widget on Your Site Many charities offer embeddable widgets or badges that you can use on your social networking profiles or blogs to show your support. These badges generally serve one of two purposes (or both). They raise awareness of an issue and offer up a link or links to additional information. And very often they are used to raise money. Mashable's Summer of Social Good campaign, for example, has a widget that does both. The embeddable widget, which was custom built using Sprout (the creators of ChipIn), can both collect funds and offer information about the four charities the campaign supports. 7. Organize a Tweetup You can use online social media tools to organize offline events, which are a great way to gather together like-minded people to raise awareness, raise money, or just discuss an issue that's important to you. Getting people together offline to learn about an important issue can really kick start the conversation and make supporting the cause seem more real. Be sure to check out Mashable's guide to organizing a tweetup to make sure yours goes off without a hitch, or check to see if there are any tweetups in your area to attend that are already organized. 8. Express Yourself Using Video As mentioned, blog posts are great, but a picture really says a thousand words. The web has become a lot more visual in recent years and there are now a large number of social tools to help you express yourself using video. When you record a video plea or call to action about your issue or charity, you can make your message sound more authentic and real. You can use sites like 12seconds.tv, Vimeo, and YouTube to easily record and spread your video message. Last week, the Summer of Social Good campaign encouraged people to use video to show support for charity. The #12forGood campaign challenged people to submit a 12 second video of themselves doing something for the Summer of Social Good. That could be anything, from singing a song to reciting a poem to just dancing around like a maniac — the idea was to use the power of video to spread awareness about the campaign and the charities it supports. If you're more into watching videos than recording them, Givzy.com enables you to raise funds for charities like Unicef and St. Jude's Children's Hospital by sharing viral videos by e-mail. 9. Sign or Start a Petition There aren't many more powerful ways to support a cause than to sign your name to a petition. Petitions spread awareness and, when successfully carried out, can demonstrate massive support for an issue. By making petitions viral, the social web has arguably made them even more powerful tools for social change. There are a large number of petition creation and hosting web sites out there. One of the biggest is The Petition Site, which is operated by the social awareness network Care2, or PetitionOnline.com, which has collected more than 79 million signatures over the years. Petitions are extremely powerful, because they can strike a chord, spread virally, and serve as a visual demonstration of the support that an issue has gathered. Social media fans will want to check out a fairly new option for creating and spreading petitions: Twitition, an application that allows people to create, spread, and sign petitions via Twitter. 10. Organize an Online Event Social media is a great way to organize offline, but you can also use online tools to organize effective online events. That can mean free form fund raising drives, like the Twitter-and-blog-powered campaign to raise money for a crisis center in Illinois last month that took in over $130,000 in just two weeks. Or it could mean an organized "tweet-a-thon" like the ones run by the 12for12k group, which aims to raise $12,000 each month for a different charity. In March, 12for12k ran a 12-hour tweet-a-thon, in which any donation of at least $12 over a 12 hour period gained the person donating an entry into a drawing for prizes like an iPod Touch or a Nintendo Wii Fit. Last month, 12for12k took a different approach to an online event by holding a more ambitious 24-hour live video-a-thon, which included video interviews, music and sketch comedy performances, call-ins, and drawings for a large number of prizes given out to anyone who donated $12 or more. Bonus: Think Outside the Box Social media provides almost limitless opportunity for being creative. You can think outside the box to come up with all sorts of innovative ways to raise money or awareness for a charity or cause. When Drew Olanoff was diagnosed with cancer, for example, he created Blame Drew's Cancer, a campaign that encourages people to blow off steam by blaming his cancer for bad things in their lives using the Twitter hashtag #BlameDrewsCancer. Over 16,000 things have been blamed on Drew's cancer, and he intends to find sponsors to turn those tweets into donations to LIVESTRONG once he beats the disease. Or check out Nathan Winters, who is biking across the United States and documenting the entire trip using social media tools, in order to raise money and awareness for The Nature Conservancy. The number of innovative things you can do using social media to support a charity or spread information about an issue is nearly endless. Can you think of any others? Please share them in the comments. Special thanks to VPS.net A special thanks to VPS.net, who are donating $100 to the Summer of Social Good for every signup they receive this week. Sign up at VPS.net and use the coupon code "SOSG"to receive 3 Months of FREE hosting on top of your purchased term. VPS.net honors a 30 day no questions asked money back guarantee so there's no risk. About the "10 Ways" Series The "10 Ways" Series was originated by Max Gladwell. This is the second simultaneous blog post in the series. The first ran on more than 80 blogs, including Mashable. Among other things, it is a social media experiment and the exploration of a new content distribution model. You can follow Max Gladwell on Twitter. This content was originally written by Mashable's Josh Catone.