For the Love of Storytelling
When my nan discovered I worked ‘with the internet’, she worried for my future.
‘It’s a fad, Tom, you might be out of a job in six months' time.’
She also used to tell my parents I should spend less time with my nose in a book and more time playing outside.
Eight-year-old me loved reading. In fact, stories are something I've loved for as long as I can remember.
So you can imagine what a pleasure it was to chat with a handful of like-minded people last month when I was researching and writing a post on the art of business storytelling for the BabelQuest blog.
I'm a big advocate of diversity in all walks of life. That probably stems from a love of reading too; there's nothing quite like opening a book and living the world through someone else for a couple of hundred pages.
But it's also a special thing when you bump into another person with similar interests, passions — dare I say obsessions — to yours. There’s chemistry. You click. We all need a tribe.
So when it came to putting together an article that helped our readers to tell better stories through their content, I immediately wondered if I could capture some of that chemistry on the page.
What followed was our second most popular article for July, bringing together an eclectic collection of marketers, storytellers, and miscreants with a love of language and a willingness to share what they’ve learned over their years spent editing magazines, developing brand guidelines, and creating worlds.
If you’ve read back through your content lately and thought ‘we can do better’, or if your engagement metrics are leaving you feeling a little underwhelmed — or if you just fancy taking a break, making a coffee, and for three minutes reading about what makes nine passionate storytellers tick — you can dive in here.
Reading and writing are still the bread and butter of my daily routine. I also consume a vast amount of TV and film.
And when I’m not sitting at my desk, or stretched out across the sofa, I try to spend a little more time than I used to playing outside.
Thomas spearheads the content activities at BabelQuest—an agency and consultancy for sales, marketing, and services. Ranked in the top 15 HubSpot Diamond partners globally, we help organisations to drive scalable, predictable growth, supporting their people and processes with strategy, activity and technology. Find out more.