What are the latest storytelling trends for thought leaders?

When sharing personal stories, it's helps to share successes as well as vulnerable moments. It's the latter that allows audiences to feel connected to you and positions you as an authentic thought leader.

People love a good story, and there's no better social proof than being able to use a personal experience as a case study and narrate this in a way that conveys the feelings, circumstances, struggles, failures, and successes accordingly. Knowing your audience is key, but use your own voice and style, and your stories should be a reflection of your personality and values. Finally, deliver a strong message and CTA at the end and use analogies where possible to enhance your message further.

I often love creating analogies that really hit home for my audience so that the content I'm presenting lands for them more deeply. I consider myself a storyteller, and I hone in on my craft by guiding my viewers and audience through a visual and audible journey!

1) Finding meaningful relatable examples and analogues that people can easily relate to is critical. - A story is only useful if it can help simplify a complex topic or perspective for people and connect with people more easily and on a more personal emotional level. 2) Brevity is king! - Keep it simple and succinct. - Cheers!

Beyond traditional multimedia, explore AR and VR to create immersive experiences. These technologies can transport your audience into the story, offering a first-hand experience of the narrative. Complex data can be made accessible and engaging through creative visualization. Interactive charts and infographics allow your audience to explore data at their own pace, making connections that resonate with them personally. Social media platforms offer various interactive features like polls, quizzes, and interactive stories. Use these to engage your audience and make them a part of your storytelling process.

Effectively using multimedia can add a new layer to your thought leadership efforts. While your go-to may be written text, some audience segments may enjoy hearing your voice in audio or seeing your face on video. For some, this may deepen the relationship and create more demand for your base written product. It's best to experiment with different formats and see what sticks. Don't be driven by what others are doing. If a popular format doesn't work for you, try something different. It must feel authentic, and if you don't enjoy the format, you won't be good at it.

People learn and remember in different ways, be it books, blogs, audio, video, practical exercises, images, graphics, peer groups, podcasts, etc. To this end, diversifying your message outreach could hit a larger number of readers and help establish trust. Using a combined approach (text + video, text + infographic) can help your audience with better comprehension. If you could also add some interactive element into the mix where you seek their input and feedback, this further enhances the learning experience.

Data make useful proof points, but they only speak to the head. You must also incorporate relatable stories that speak to the heart. Your audience should feel themselves or their own experience in the story. Tools like Canva and Lumen5 can help bring the data to life in interesting ways. You can make a factoid pop visually and then tell an interesting story about it.

Doing Google searches is great but to really engage your audiences, you have to go beyond basic searches. Deep-diving into the literature and staying current with the latest research are excellent strategies. Attending conferences provides a front-row seat to emerging trends and the opportunity to gather unique insights directly from experts. Incorporating quotes from speeches adds a layer of authority to your narrative. Additionally, using examples in your writing are powerful tools for illustrating points and making abstract data relatable to your audience. By blending rigorous data with relatable storytelling, you're not just informing but also engaging your audience on a deeper level.

Transform data into a narrative form. People relate to stories more than raw numbers. Craft a story around your data; present a problem, show how data leads to a solution, and end with a resolution. This narrative arc helps in making data relatable and memorable. Use data to tell stories that resonate with your audience's experiences or aspirations. Personalization makes data more relatable. While data can be complex, your presentation should not be. Simplify your data to the most crucial points and present them clearly. Be ethical in your data representation. Avoid manipulating data to mislead your audience. Represent data accurately and provide sources to enhance credibility.

Being able to back up a story with facts and figures significantly helps create "buy-in" and establishes credibility and trust from your audience. This is the alternative to providing evidence of something you are claiming is either right or wrong. A combination of effective storytelling, data and fact inclusion, connecting with your audiences' emotions, and asking for input and feedback creates a fine balance between the elements required for elevated thought leadership efforts.

Try different content formats on different platforms to learn where your audience is and how they like getting their information. Live streaming can create a sense of immediacy and intimacy, making your storytelling more engaging and dynamic. E-books and magazines can include embedded videos, audio clips, and interactive elements, providing a rich, multi-layered storytelling experience. Platforms like Twitter are excellent for concise, impactful storytelling. Create a series of posts to tell a story over time or leverage threads to elaborate on a topic in a more connected and engaging way. Find where your audience likes to spend their time and understand how they like their information to be shown to them.

There is a great variety of tools available to help you build engaging digital content. Podcasts are very effective these days, especially since it allows you to share recurrent bite-size content (for easy consumption) in a very authentic fashion (your voice expressing your own thoughts or you can share engaging conversations with guests), without the hassle of the "showtime" like lightning, camera quality etc. There are design-oriented tools like Canva or Genialy that allow you to make the content you shar emore engaging by adding infographs, dynamic slides, ebooks, clickthroughs. Irrespective of the tool or platform (medium) you leverage, you must never forget the essential: the content has to be relevant and authentic.

Podcasts continue to be a growing trend for thought leaders -- since research shows audio is the most trust medium and podcasts help build trust and brand affinity. Being the host of a podcast now garners clout, similar to being the author of a book. Creating a podcast can allow you to share your ideas, run shoulders with other respected thought leaders and expand your reach.

One tip I would offer here is to practice this to see which one works for you. Regardless of the trend out there, for example, if you have a knack for writing, improve that, or if you are comfortable speaking on video, work on message delivery through video/audio. Although it's prudent to use various formats at the same time, to ensure this is sustainable and you feel good doing this, pick one or two to start and add the rest later on.

Meet your audience where they already are. The same message can be repurposed multiple times, depending on platform and audience. Both the way to transmit the message and the way to present it (visuals) might change. Hooks are very important, and also differ from platform to platform.

I agree that collaborating with thought leaders is invaluable for amplifying our storytelling, but I'd like to propose an additional tactic: interviewing the executives who are in the trenches of their industries. These are the individuals grappling with the everyday challenges and driving the business forward. Their hands-on experiences often yield stories that deeply resonate with our audience, offering a tangible connection to the real-world implications of our shared vision. By including both thought leaders and these pivotal executives in our collaborative efforts, we can create a richer, more relatable tapestry of narratives that truly speaks to our community.

Collaboration over competition always. Connect with other people in similar fields or even spark connections and conversations with other industry thought leaders to further educate, inform, or entertain. Podcasts, Lives, or just getting together to talk concepts can play a huge part in diversifying and reaching a wider audience.

This can significantly help both of you expand your relative networks, increase exposure to a larger audience, and improve credibility. Leverage technology here and look into tools like BuzzSumo or SparkToro to help you find thought leaders in your niche and reach out to them. It's important to build trust here and to add value, as this is a two-way relationship (unless you make it very clear that this is an interview). The possibilities of collaboration are endless, whether it's a podcast, video, interview, co-creating a blog, training course, webinar, etc.

Collaboration can be useful. But studies show that collaboration actually produces a worse final product. The results showed that better outputs were created when one person came up w strategy. But collab to co-promote? Sure.

In my experience in working with thought leaders, I find that the more a leader can link their subject matter expertise to different niches and fields in interdisciplinary ways the more engaging, original, and useful your perspective becomes. For instance, consider a thought leader in Sustainability. Traditionally, this field focuses on ecology and environmental policies. However, when this expert starts to integrate concepts from behavioral economics, they begin to offer unique insights. For example, they might explore how economic incentives encourage sustainable practices among consumers. This approach not only broadens the scope of their expertise but also offers fresh, practical insights into sustainability.

As a storyteller, if I have to pick one thing that intrigues me the most, it’s our new collaborator, Gen AI. Why would humans do what a machine can do faster and cheaper by mimicking what has already been done? As I experiment with LLMs such as GPT and Midjourney, I can see that tools like these will change how we communicate and create. The jury is out on when and how much