As human beings, we love stories. We look for them everywhere because stories are the bridges that connect us, person to person, brand to customer, artist to audience. As a communications professional, I can enrich your story with today’s multi-faceted language: words enhanced with media that catch the reader’s eye, enhancing the message with sound and visual elements.
Why tell stories? Where to tell them? Who leads in this field and serves as a guiding light?
A brief article entitled, “The Unfortunate Decline of Blogging Among the Fortune 500: The Downside of Adopting Substitute Innovations”, written by Stephanie Jacobsen and Nora Ganim Barnes, begins with a concise analysis of the key benefits of social media for companies: introduction of new products, connection with customers, and development of brand; followed by an examination of the life cycle of innovations, specifically social media platforms, which typically remain relevant for approximately four years. The researchers make a case that despite their time and labor intensiveness, blogs offer a unique opportunity for thought leadership as well as SEO; corporate blogs also remain under the control of the company so that issues like length, word count, media use, etc. are in the purview of the company and its blogging staff.
In her comprehensive volume, Digital Storytelling, Carolyn Handler Miller not only provides a history of storytelling ranging from the ancient Aristotle to the modern AR, she addresses methodologies both creative and practical in usage, each of which is a skill set I am able to bring to a company:
- New Technologies Birth New Creative Opportunities
- Creating Story-Rich Projects
- Harnessing Digital Storytelling for Pragmatic Goals
- Media and Models: Under the Hood
- Immersive Media
As a practitioner, I find Miller’s nuts-and-bolts guidance on creating a digital story project, data that can be instrumental in targeting stories, and extensive opportunities for contextualizing and modernizing the ancient practice of sharing stories a valuable resource for developing stories for creative businesses.
Kimberly Bryant, MA 