tanner bechtel

Social Business Design and social media, at-large has changed the way we communicate with the world.  If there is one baseline principle about great content, on or off-line, its that it all tells a great story.  In the age of email, powerpoint and word documents, we lost that art.  All our communication was one-sided.  We were telling rather than truly communicating with our audience.

I have long believed that powerful content, powerful messaging is truly a story, well-told.  I practice this in a lot of ways, personally and with my family.  I write music to tell a story.  It may not always be my own, but its someone’s.  It resonates with an experience or a time in someone’s life.  It’s what I think, truly, sets compelling, memorable music (and presentations, meetings, etc.) apart from the herd.

The Exercise:

Linked below is an exercise I’ve used with all my children since they’ve been old enough to talk.  At night, instead of (or in addition to) reading a bedtime story, we make up our own.  Most often its set to music (me on an acoustic guitar.)  The reason is; music has boundaries.  It has structure and rhyming forces the brain to think quickly, to tell a story within a defined space–much like our business and social lives (140 characters on Twitter, the Timeline on Facebook or the boundaries of a presentation deck.)  It allows my children to think fast, create immense satisfaction with a good rhyme and tell, what can be (listen to the audio) a very funny story that’s all their own and never the same twice.

Listen to it and give it a shot with your own team, children or group.  It can teach valuable lessons about how to make content powerful, timely and well-formed–plus, it’s a very entertaining way to put children to bed!

MP3 Player: Social Story Telling – Odessa’s Impromptu Bedtime Story (set to music)