COM0014 – Blog Post #2: Storytelling and Communication Styles, September 25, 2023

The “information fire-hose” we all get exposed to daily can cause readers to look for their preferred author or content, and miss the story. There is so much data masquerading as knowledge that you need the skill of finding your beginning. That these facts and opinions are gelling into Storytelling that is generating emotion very effectively was an eye opener for me. Compelling stories that are improving their effectiveness only promotes the importance of painting a vision of you or your product that you want public. The attention funnel you want to build to pull in interest and engagement must compete in the marketplace today, an increasingly crowded arena. Any growth will be daunting.
            The methods of how to encourage interaction with your audience brought into focus for me an appropriate set of questions I can now use to capture my random thoughts, so I can review them for clarity and purpose. Previously, interactions and how to increase them was just a set of ideas, constantly changing. This structure will be very helpful to me going forward.

While the communication styles will continue to evolve with society and technology over time, matching the content to the appropriate reader’s level is paramount. It is also worth considering that your content should have something for every kind of reader. Using the inverted pyramid approach may allow the author to draw everyone into the start of the content, then help keep some by matching their continued interest with your additional information. After all, even one click pays today.            

This inverted approach is different than the one I have been using, which starts with introducing a question, building a set of fact or opinions, then closing with a provocative conclusion, hopefully driving some engagements. Considering that many readers could actually skim my opening question, have no interest in the discussion, and leave without even exploring the content is interesting. Have I been building my blogs backwards? Do I need to redo my content stream to reflect reading levels? What do you think? Let me know in the comments below, and I will publish the consensus.