5 Ideas for Telling Familiar Stories in New Ways

When you communicate on behalf of an organization, it’s easy to fall into patterns in how you tell stories.

We find something that works – and then we repeat it.

This happens with big projects, like annual reports. It occurs with small ones, too – like your blog, your social media posts, and your (ahem) email newsletters.

But, now and then, it helps to mix things up.

When all of your content follows the same, predictable patterns, the process of creating it will start to feel stale. And when you start feeling bored when you’re writing a story or putting together a video package, your lack of passion will ultimately start showing up in your work.

And if you tell all of your stories in the same ways, you also miss opportunities to capture the attention of audiences who might not respond to certain storytelling formats.

Thankfully, there are a lot of ways to tell a story.

Here are five ideas for alternative storytelling formats to help you freshen up your approach.

1. The format: Q & A

AN ALTERNATIVE TO: PROFILES

Many organizations use profiles to help put a face on their work. Education nonprofits often profile graduates or teachers. Foundations profile grantees.

And while profiles can humanize your work and provide readers with an easy way to see your organization’s impact, you don’t always have to rely on a narrative structure to tell these stories.

Consider instead a Q & A (or question-and-answer) format. Q & A’s offer readers an accessible way to learn about a person and his or her opinions.

Paired with a strong photograph, they can help you tell a story quickly — and they are often easier to put together than a long narrative.

This can help you cover more ground — all while giving your readers something easy to digest.
 

2. The format: Timeline

AN ALTERNATIVE TO: ABOUT US/HISTORY

Your nonprofit or company likely devotes a page on its website and a section of its annual report to share information about its history. And, often, you need to tell stories about the evolution of a program or idea.

Rather than telling that (sometimes long) story in a narrative, share it in a timeline.

You can find a number of easy-to-use timeline creation tools online if you don’t have a designer at the ready — and you’ll make it much easier for your key audiences to digest and understand your story.
 

3. The format: Case Study

AN ALTERNATIVE TO: ARTICLES

When it’s time to celebrate an accomplishment — or discuss how you overcame an important challenge — consider doing it as a case study rather than as a simple article.

Case studies can be presented as short, bite-sized pieces or long, downloadable whitepapers. But however you decide to present them, they offer a great alternative to an article or blog post — and they make it easy for readers to understand the impact of your work.

We decided to take a fresh approach to presenting client case studies on our website recently – and we’ve heard from a number of visitors that they love the format.
 

4. The format: Checklists

AN ALTERNATIVE TO: ARTICLES

A checklist gives readers of informational content something to do. Rather than simply writing about how to prepare for or accomplish something, break it into a list and present it as something readers can use.
 

5. The format: Alternative Listicles

AN ALTERNATIVE TO: LISTICLES

Buzzfeed — the purveyor of online gems such as 10 Important Life Lessons You Can Learn from Cats — has spawned a form of content commonly referred to as the listicle.

Listicles are essentially articles that are repackaged as lists.

The problem is that listicles are now so common that they have become a bit trite (even though we all know you’re dying to click on that link about cats and life lessons).

Consider instead the alternative listicle. This is a listicle that doesn’t just present a list, it offers an alternative to each item on that list.

This piece is actually an example of an alternative listicle, since each item on the list is actually an alternative to something else.
 

Be Creative

And that brings me to my final point — which is simply to be creative when you think about your content.

It’s easy to revert to traditional styles and approaches when you’re presenting information. But take some time to think about how you can present that story in another format — or even how you might twist a popular format for your own devices.

Your readers will thank you for it.