Stories for Work

Chapter 12 Stories that work for newsletters and blogs

The vast majority of stories I have shared so far in this book have been those that were communicated face to face. However, I often get asked if stories are effective in the written format. As you can probably tell from what you’ve read so far, they definitely are!

While speaking is a big part of business these days — whether presenting to an audience of 1 or 1000 — the fact we’re in an age of online global business means way more options exist than that.

Storytelling is applicable in newsletters, blogs, websites and even emails. A growing trend is for senior leaders to write their own newsletters to their team (instead of getting someone else to do it for them). The number of us writing our own blogs has also dramatically increased. This is the perfect opportunity to try out connecting and engaging with your team and audience through a personal story attached to a business message.

Although your style will need to be (very slightly) more formal for written stories versus oral stories, with a bit more focus on sentence structure and avoiding unnecessary repetition, you can still keep the tone very conversational and personal.

All the leaders who share stories in this chapter say that when you apply storytelling techniques to your written words, your communication improves tenfold. The time is right to move away from providing boring information, facts, stats and updates and towards sharing something personal, along with ...