Want Meaningful Stories? Find Your Passion
Practical tips
Hello friend,
How are you? I hope you’re doing well and your stories are making inspiring waves.
I often talk about how to make stories more impactful using various techniques from brand strategy, workflows, tools, people, and themes.
True, all these elements are important.
Yet, there is one element, we usually take for granted when telling stories, but is quite a deal breaker.
Your passion!
Regardless of the platform, when you tell stories with passion, they’ll likely convey your message with enthusiasm and conviction, which can help to inspire and motivate your audience.
Why?
Not having a passion for telling the story will show up immediately in the quality.
If you rewind to your childhood, it’s pretty much like when one day for some reason - because of the topic, the assignment, or your mood - you reluctantly did your homework. And boy it showed!
You need passion, emotion, and clarity to research the story, build it, and promote it. Because the message is so important you can’t wait to share it with your audience, appreciate and act upon it.
Only stories you tell from your heart can capture your audience's attention (remember 53% of all media goes unseen), build empathy, grow trust, and drive action.
Just think back at memorable stories that emotionally moved you, chances are, among other things, the storyteller’s passion played a key role.
Where to find passion
The typical sources in the business context:
Rewarding experiences you want to repeat, like releasing a story that got picked up by the media, a project you did and got an award for, or securing funding after an impactful pitch.
Pure interest in a particular topic. My inspiration for visual storytelling - as you may know - stemmed from my pure passion for classic Italian cinema and video art.
Inspiring brand purpose could be a great engine to fuel your storytelling if you work for Patagonia (saving the planet), Red Cross, or any other corporate ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) program like Coca-Cola’s focus on recycling (world without waste).
Superpowers you may have for design, writing, photography, videography, or public speaking - you keep getting compliments for.
Winding road you’re on chasing your goal regardless of the ups and downs. A perfect example is a startup founder who needs to keep the vision of her idea burning despite the pitfalls along the way.
Where to start?
The general wisdom is you want to develop stories you’ve lived through or are deeply familiar with the subject.
That naturally works well with personal stories like when you excitedly share a story with your best friend:
“Are you sitting down? You’re not gonna believe what happened to me yesterday!”
Yet, when we’re talking about brand stories, there are a few tactics you should consider to ensure your passion is coming out strong.
