Most of the time when we communicate our work, we do so using some form of electronic writing - an email, Word doc, Powerpoint presentation or even via captions on a video.

And when we creating this message, we have a crucial decision to make: how the text should look. Smart typeface and font choices can mean the difference between someone resonating with, liking, and sharing our message, content or factual story.

But do you know the difference between a typeface and font?

The terms are often used interchangeably, but knowing the difference can help remind you about the rules of good typography.

Typefaces are the uniquely designed sets of letters and characters, with each typeface having a name such as Arial, Helvetica or Times Roman.

A font is a subset of a typeface. Each font has a specific weight, style and size, as well as italic versions. So Arial is a typeface. Arial 16 point bold is a font.

It’s important to limit your choice of typeface and font. If you use too many, your design appears visually chaotic. Also your audience won’t immediately know which is the most important, and therefore where to look.

Also remember to  introduce a clear hierarchy of text; otherwise your readers won’t be able to quickly identify important pieces of information within your overall design.

You should always try to pair fonts, choosing two different typefaces, and font sizes, that complement each other to establish visual hierarchy. The challenge with font pairing is to avoid using two contradictory fonts or two very similar fonts.

These two fonts help direct the audience’s eye to what you wish them to first see.

For example, you may use a bold large font for a heading, and a lighter, smaller font from a different typeface for the subheading.

See our Factual Storytelling Course lesson Lead The Eye.

You can successfully pair two fonts from the same typeface or font family, such as light and bold fonts in different sizes. Chunky fonts pair well with skinnier fonts, and serif fonts pair well with sans serif fonts.

In general, you should only use a maximum of three fonts per design: to cover the title, the subheading, and the body of the text. However, you should also limit yourself to just two typefaces, which are paired together to contrast with and complement each other.

So you could pair the two typefaces Effra and Bryant, but limit yourself to using three fonts, such as Effra Heavy and Effra Medium, and Bryant Regular.

Enrol in our Factual Storytelling Course, or commission a workshop, to find out much more.

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One of the biggest mistakes people make when communicating with others, is that they forget to properly say who they are.

Who you are may seem obvious to you, but it won’t be to your audience. Your name is not enough. Don’t just presume your audience will know you, or see you as a credible person worth listening to. You need to spell it out to them.

Even within small professional networks, such as an office environment, your audience will lack detailed, relevant knowledge about your skills, experience and the value you bring as an author of a factual story. They will certainly know less about your credentials than you do, so you need to share them.

That’s even more pertinent when publishing your content to a public forum, as most of your audience will know little about you.

This highlights the importance of authorship.

So before you even begin crafting your message, take time to think about how you present yourself as the author, and why your experience and credentials makes you someone credible to listen to. And be sure to state them somehow.

Related to who you are, is what is your point of view?

By that, we mean, from which perspective are you telling your story?

For example, a report into insurance fraud will read very differently if written by the perpetrator of the fraud compared to the victim. Or if authored by someone from within the insurance industry, compared to a champion of consumers who pay the premiums.

Being clear about who you are, your qualifications to tell your story, and the perspective from which you are telling it, engages audiences.

On the contrary, being vague about who you are as an author will confuse your readers and viewers, who will subsequently lack confidence in you and your content.

Remember too, that we are not just defined by our professional status.

Beyond our roles, we are colleagues of others. We are also children and friends of others. We may be parents, partners or spouses to others. We may be patients, victims, activists, curators, motivators, fund-raisers, leaders, followers, hobbyists, pet or property owners.

The list will go on, but the point is that each provides a status, insight, experience and qualification to author a factual story.

When you start to craft your story, set yourself up to succeed by thinking hard about how and why you are qualified to tell it. And share that with your audience, who will respect you for it, and be more willing to listen to you.

If you state at the beginning of your presentation or report that you have an intimate involvement with the story to follow, what you subsequently have to say will impact and convince much more.

And as for who is now talking to you?

My name is Matt Walker: Head of the Factual Storytelling School. And you can find out all about me in the video below:

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We hope you like the newsletter which regularly shares tips, techniques and insights to help you better find stories in your work and professionally communicate with others.

You are receiving The Factual Storyteller newsletter because you will have either have directly signed up to receive new editions, followed us on the Substack platform, or you have recently enrolled in the Factual Storytelling Course. The newsletter is free, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Organisations shouldn’t just create and build things, and then focus on how to best communicate those things to prospective users.

In addition to that, they should also embrace the opportunity to communicate about things they are going to do, before they even do them.

Before, not after products, services, infrastructures, technologies, policies and programmes have been created, designed and even planned.

It’s a fascinating idea: and one that isn’t as obvious as it sounds.

Because most organisations almost never talk about what they are going to do.

Certainly not externally, to actual end users. They come up with ideas, internally plan new projects, and discuss how to optimally execute these plans. Then they launch, unveil or begin whatever they are working on. And then start to communicate about it.

But they rarely engage in an active dialogue with their users about what they hope to do. And whether their plans are the right ones. Or any good. Or even what their users, customers, clients and collaborators actually want.

And that’s a mistake, because talking to the consumers of your prospective new service, product, policy or other can reap huge benefits.

Allow your audience to not only become the users and end beneficiaries of your work, but also the architects of your work.

By communicating early, you learn what people actually want from you and what you are working hard to make. You will then build something that is far more usable.

That means if you work in the public sector, you will build public services that do what they are supposed to: better serve the public. Private companies will sell more products, or be able to charge more for services. Staff will better meet performance targets. Corporate reputations will be enhanced.

New research just published reveals how important it can be to engage in dialogue early, and allow your audience to not only become the users and end beneficiaries of your work, but also allow your audience to become the architects of your work.

Researcher Alexander Wilson of the School of Architecture, Planning & Landscape at Newcastle University in the UK and colleagues were engaged as part of Metro Futures, an initiative to upgrade a public transport system serving northeast England, specifically the Tyne and Wear Metro light railway system.

They wanted to find out what users of the Metro actually wanted from their trains, so they could create a proposal for how the aging train fleet should be replaced. That involved trying to engage with as many of the 2.7 million residents as possible.

They did so using a series of real-world meetings, including workshops and pop-up labs to talk to passers-by, school activities and digital tools including social media polls, live video webinars, online workshops and creating virtual 3D visualisations of the new Metro trains.

But less important than the methodology, is the approach they took engaging with Metro users, and when they did so.

Rather than ask their audience to all contribute equally, they allowed people to scale their involvement depending on their level of interest, amount of time, and opinions of the new train.

They recruited co-researchers to help them gain an understanding of the diverse perspectives they gathered, including several disabled participants, including three with visual impairments, and one with a hearing impairment. The majority of the audience initially speaking up were men, so the researchers specifically sought the views of women and children.

They also encouraged people to contribute creatively to the discussion. For example, to draw the trains they wanted, to design the Metro’s layout, even add other passengers, wheelchair users, luggage, pushchairs and bicycles etc.

The result was impressive. By communicating ahead of the project, they discovered many things that would later inform the design of the new transport system.

Enabling people to communicate their complex experiences in novel ways helped generate a series of pragmatic design proposals, while raising new issues and sometimes unforeseen concerns.

For example, people engaging with wheelchair areas on trains through the physical mock-up discovered that handrails were poorly sited, and that the location of the passenger information screen directly above them was not visible.

Participants reported having to regularly ask people standing in the wheelchair areas to vacate the space, and highlighted how while this is a rare experience for many passengers, it was an everyday experience for them. They suggested that, to discourage this, perch seats in the wheelchair space should be removed.

People expressed how they can feel unsafe on transport systems due to antisocial behaviour, and they were then encouraged to explore how design decisions might influence similar positive and negative experiences that are part of everyday life.

This deep engagement raised many other issues; such as the layout of the trains’ interiors and seating plans.

Crucially, it also allowed the audience to consider other people’s experiences and to better appreciate some of the decisions and trade-offs that would need to be taken, making them better understand and appreciate how the final Metro system would be formulated.

The researchers conclude that understanding people’s experiences in greater depth ahead of the project’s implementation allowed them “to not only understand the issues people were raising but also to solicit their suggestions for how these might be overcome.”

Their approach is applicable way beyond building new transport systems.

As the researchers say in their paper published last month, the way that people talk about how they live in places, their feelings and aspirations, are often very different to the way places are governed - which is dominated by technical, abstract conversations, where professionals creating spaces often seek to measure plans and outcomes.

Predictably, it’s easy to see how these two groups, the people that live in spaces, and the people that plan, create and service these spaces, will struggle to have a meaningful dialogue. And any dialogue is rendered almost completely useless if people are asked about how they feel living in a certain place or space, long after all the important decisions have already been taken about how that place should be created and run.

Notice too how the researchers engaged on an emotional level with their audience - seeking out their feelings and aspirations as much as gleaning factual information from them. Crucially, as well as talking to people about the prospective transport system, they also listened to what those people had to say, and what they felt.

It’s a message we repeatedly reinforce, because engaging on an emotional and personal level is so important to effective communications, and because it’s one area of communications that organisations, corporations and companies are particularly bad at, or don’t even realise is required.

Most important perhaps, is to reflect on when the researchers began communicating with their audience.

It’s true that many companies attempt to communicate with their users about their products and services, including organising focus groups, public consultations and various other forms of audience and market research.

But these are often cursory communication efforts; isolated attempts to conduct a survey, ask for a form to be completed or have a brief conversation to gauge opinions. Rarely are they attempts at forming deeper, ongoing dialogues with prospective users, soliciting critical and constructive comments on what they are planning to do.

UXD experts do this. Accessibility experts often do this. They know they need to talk to users and understand their behaviours and needs before designing any product. But most professionals in most professional contexts do not.

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And most companies put more effort into creating a dialogue about a new product or service AFTER it has been launched, not before.

Think of the ubiquitous automated feedback form you are asked to complete by almost every company you have bought something from, which arrives almost immediately after you’ve made your purchase or paid your bill.

In theory, any feedback you give is listened to, and acted on. But that’s the theory.

Most often your response is simply collated with thousands of others, with senior managers scouring the data, if at all, for some insight, that may never be acted on.

And if it is, it’s usually too late - as they’ve already created, built and launched the very thing you’re discussing.

So when most organisations communicate with their audience, they do so at the wrong time.

The best time to talk to your users is before, not after, your work begins or is completed.

Reference: Public engagement, digital technology and transport: engaging through open, early and experience-centred perspectives at scale, by Alexander Wilson et al. Contemporary Social Science , published online May 2024.

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You are receiving The Factual Storyteller newsletter because you will have either have directly signed up to receive new editions, followed us on the Substack platform, or you have recently enrolled in the Factual Storytelling Course. The newsletter is free, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

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Do you think about what age they are? Where they live? What are their political leanings, or levels of education?

Do you consider their hopes, and what they want or need from life, and their fears, such as what bothers or scares them?

As much as you can, you should. Because understanding your target audience better enables you to reach, impact and influence them.

I spoke about this principle of good communication last week at Fusion24, an excellent conference based at the UK’s national Science Museum in London, which brought together everyone working to fulfil the promise of fusion energy - an exciting, emerging technology that has the potential to transform how energy is created and harnessed worldwide.

Serendipitously, it is also backed by new research just published into how people perceive fusion energy.

Common themes emerge from both the conference discussions and research.

These should not only help those working to understand how people feel and react to the prospect of fusion energy, but any organisation considering how to understand and shape public perceptions of its own work.

At the event, I spoke with fellow communications specialists and policy makers, regulators, commercial operators, scientists and engineers working on fusion.

I highlighted how, when considering what people think and will think of fusion energy, it’s important to frame any discussion towards the actual, particular audience being communicated with.

So fusion technology will have many different audiences, in terms of demographic, geography and at different times in the technology and industry’s life cycle.

For example: an audience may be people interested in the technology. Or those funding it. Or those utilising it. Or living near a power plant.

Those audiences are then going to interested in different things, for example:

People advancing the technology will want to know about the research and science.

Organisations funding it, will want to know about their prospective return on investment.

Communities utilising it will want to know the risks and benefits.

That view is backed by a very timely piece of aforementioned research that explores public views on fusion energy across five European countries (Belgium, Hungary, Italy, Slovenia and Spain).

First, a quick summary of the issues surrounding fusion energy, concisely explained by Christopher R. Jones and colleagues in their paper “The clock is ticking: Understanding the ‘mixed feelings’ about fusion energy in Europe,” published in Energy Research & Social Science, Volume 113, July 2024.

As they state: 

Contact us for storytelling workshops.

Now let’s jump to what Jones and his colleagues discovered about what people in Europe think of the prospect of living with fusion energy reactors.

First, they highlight that “research into public attitudes towards fusion has been sporadic, with only a handful of rigorous studies being conducted into the topic, supplemented by periodic national polls of public opinion.”

In summary, not much has been done to answer the important communication principle of understanding the target audiences for fusion energy, and therefore gaining deeper insights into not only what they think about the technology, but why they think it.

Second, the researchers then highlighted how four factors tend to shape how people perceive and form attitudes towards energy technologies, summarised as:

Technology, people, process and place.

• Technology factors relate to the perceived social, economic and environmental risks and benefits of the technology.

• People factors are the socio-demographic factors, such as the audience’s gender, age, and ethnicity that shape how they perceive the risks and benefits of any technology.

• Process factors reflect the characteristics of the decision-making process, i.e. is information about the technology being transparently shared with them, are they being consulted, and can they collaborate to help shape any decisions taken?

• Place factors are the local characteristics of where the audience lives, i.e. is it a place of high or low population, with a distinct social or geographical culture?

Put more simply, an audience’s reaction to any prospective energy technology will be rooted in who they are (people), where they live (place), their perception of the risks and benefits to them (technology), and the degree to which they will be involved (process).

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Third, the researchers then discovered that the reaction of people across all five countries to the prospect of fusion technology was broadly similar.

Participants in all groups were generally positive about nuclear fusion, relating to the status of fusion as a prospective, abundant, clean and secure energy source. They were enthused by the extent of the international collaboration that is driving fusion research and development.

Scepticism about fusion stemmed primarily from either participants’ self-claimed lack of familiarity and knowledge about the technology (e.g. its objective risks and benefits), and a recognition that fusion remains experimental and commercially unproven.

However, when scratching beneath the surface of people’s headline attitudes towards fusion, the researchers discovered that people consistently raise “a plethora of logical, thoughtful and widely shared questions about the role that it could and/or should play in a future decarbonised energy system in mainland Europe.”

But, again highlighting the need to know your audience when communicating with them, differing audiences did react differently to other issues relating to fusion energy.

The high financial costs of investing in the research and development of fusion were perceived as a key disadvantage of the technology. But attitudes to what fusion will cost and who pays varied by country.

In Spain, in particular, people debated whether the state should invest in unproven technologies such as fusion that equally have such potential.

In Belgium and Italy, people worried that investing in fusion may detract from investments in more mature, proven low-carbon, renewable energy technologies.

When asked about the perceived safety of fusion energy, people in Slovenia reacted strongly, questioning whether the technology could lead to catastrophic accidents or explosions as caused by nuclear fission reactors at Chernobyl in Ukraine and Fukushima in Japan.

That reaction was likely stimulated, say the researchers, by ongoing national discussions about the safety of an existing nuclear fission reactor in Slovenia at Krško.

The researchers reveals a host of further insights about the public perception of, and receptiveness to, fusion energy.

Perhaps even more important though, it confirms much that we already know about audiences listen to messages and content communicated to them.

That is, their reaction will depend on who they are, where they live, what they know, what interests them, what they believe in, and what is their self-interest.

Though that may sound obvious, it’s a principle many people, and whole sectors and industries, can forget or ignore as they seek to understand and shape the public perception of their progress and work.

Reference: The clock is ticking: Understanding the ‘mixed feelings’ about fusion energy in Europe. By Christopher R. Jones et al. Energy Research & Social Science, Volume 113, July 2024.

Why am I receiving The Factual Storyteller?

We hope you like the newsletter which regularly shares tips, techniques and insights to help you better find stories in your work and professionally communicate with others.

You are receiving The Factual Storyteller newsletter because you will have either have directly signed up to receive new editions, followed us on the Substack platform, or you have recently enrolled in the Factual Storytelling Course. The newsletter is free, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Do you believe that?

More important, are you more likely to believe that statement if it is shown alongside an image of a dog?

Or alongside an image of a cat?

Research reveals there is a difference - and it is due to something known as the “Truthiness effect’.

Not only that, it offers some intriguing insights you should bear in mind whenever you use images to communicate about your work.

Because the images you choose can have a huge impact on how people perceive what you say.

Not only can they help increase the impact and comprehension of your message, they can also, in quite subtle ways, impair the understanding of your message, damage trust in your brand or organisation, and even create false or misleading memories of what you say.

To answer our initial question, people are more likely to believe the statement “Dogs have better memory than cats” when placed next to an image of a dog, than when placed next to cat.

That’s because the image of a dog helps our brains process the claim that dogs have better memories.

Whereas an image of a cat intrudes on our brains’ ability to process the same statement, which only starts to make sense when the word cat finally appears.

In short, the “Truthiness effect’ means that when a photo facilitates the processing of a claim, we are more likely to judge it as true.

When a photo impairs the processing of a claim, we are more likely to judge the claim as false.

So you can use this to your advantage when communicating about your work; by using photographs and graphics that accurately reflect and support your message, you will better help your audience understand, remember and believe what you are saying.

But there is a darker side to the “Truthiness effect’, you should be aware of…

Adding images that are semantically linked to your message, i.e. that are similar in meaning, will encourage people to believe what you say - whether the image actually adds any more evidence to support the truth of your message, or not.

For example, people will rate the claim that a celebrity is alive as more likely to be true when also presented with a photo of the celebrity.

But they will be more likely to believe the opposite claim - that the celebrity is dead - if also published alongside an image of the same photo.

That’s because people don’t really view images as evidence.

Instead they use images to help them better understand the content they sit alongside.

According to researchers: “When information feels easy to process, and people can readily understand and imagine elements of a claim, they are more inclined to conclude claims are true.”

The work is published by Eryn Newman and Norbert Schwarz from The Australian National University in Canberra, and the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, US in a recent issue of the scientific journal Current Opinion in Psychology.

Worse, the “Truthiness effect’ means that images that are linked in meaning to a statement, can lead to people over-believing what they read alongside the image.

For example, after seeing a related but uninformative photo of a rainbow, people will claim they know more about how rainbows form. Despite there being no other information present that can help them better understand this complex process.

So the “Truthiness effect’ can inadvertently, or intentionally, be exploited to create misinformation.

False or misleading images can also create false memories.

According to the researchers, photos that depict information that goes beyond the text, for instance, by portraying possible conclusions to a story, can lead people to misremember having read those conclusions in the text.

For example, photos that provide a slanted representation of an event, such as amplifying danger, can lead people to misremember an event as having been worse than it was.

Reference: Misinformed by images: How images influence perceptions of truth and what can be done about it, by Eryn Newman and Norbert Schwarz. Current Opinion in Psychology 2024, 56:101778.

Mistakes to avoid when using charts or graphs

If you need to use charts of graphs at work, such as in presentations or reports, try to avoid this common mistake.

Avoid tilting and angling your graphs or charts.

Where possible, make sure any text placed on a chart or graph reads horizontally, left to right when using the English language and other Latin, Cyrillic, Indic or Southeast Asian languages.

A common mistake is to write y axis information vertically, or tilt axis labels or units, to make them fit the space.

When you do that, you’ve immediately made your information difficult to read, putting up a barrier to your audience accessing, engaging with and understanding the information you are trying to communicate.

For more insights, see our Factual Storytelling Course lesson When To Use Charts And Graphs.

Why am I receiving The Factual Storyteller?

We hope you like the newsletter which regularly shares tips, techniques and insights to help you better find stories in your work and professionally communicate with others.

You are receiving The Factual Storyteller newsletter because you will have either have directly signed up to receive new editions, followed us on the Substack platform, or you have recently enrolled in the Factual Storytelling Course. The newsletter is free, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

If you have, read on, because academic research is revealing that using humour as a communication strategy is actually a very risky thing to do.

First, it’s worth highlighting that although people often use humour at work, there is actually very little research into why people do so, particularly why leaders choose to try to be funny in front of their often subordinate colleagues.

Some studies suggest they do so as a way to encourage more equality between them and their colleagues.

That rings true - a leader or manager that jokes with their team may appear less formal, more approachable and may be subconsciously using jokes to project the idea they are not above, or separate from their wider team.

Other research shows that humour can be an effective way to improve colleagues’ perceptions of the joke-teller. Especially if the joke-teller has something negative to say.

For example, if you attend a job interview, you may be asked to name your greatest weakness. If you respond by saying “I am not good at maths”, your interviewees may be inclined to question your competency.

If you pair your admission with a joke, by replying “I am not good at maths. Geometry is where I draw the line,” your interviewer is likely to accept the answer, but not be as inclined to accept you are poor at maths.

That’s because studies show humour can reduce the perceived veracity of negative statements.

But, and this is an important but, using humour when communicating at work is risky, especially for leaders.

It’s true that successful leaders often use humour to motivate, inspire and lead.

But research suggests that there is an in-built dynamic to joke-telling that means it may not be appropriate to use humour at work.

In short, a joke cannot be both funny and innocuous.

For a joke to be perceived as funny, it has to transgress in some way, often being disparaging, and challenging, even incrementally, another’s sense of morality. 

Studies repeatedly show that more disparaging jokes are rated as funnier than less disparaging jokes. And that the more disparaging and funnier a joke is, the less ethical it is perceived to be.

That places colleagues and leaders who like or want to use humour at work on the horns of a dilemma.

Because workers and especially leaders are expected to set ethical and moral standards of behaviour within their organisation.

Yet joke-telling intrinsically challenges these standards.

Research has found that leaders that use humour at work may therefore undermine an organisation’s moral and ethical standards by, even in a small way, telling jokes that inherently disparage others and their morality. And that leads to greater so-called ‘deviant’ or unethical behaviour and standards, by both the leader and their colleagues.

Other research has also found that a leader’s use of humour can discourage subordinates from engaging in constructive conversations with them.

That’s because a leader trying to be funny, can often be perceived as a leader intentionally using humour to disparage and dominate others - i.e. it can be considered a form of social aggression. Subordinates often view a joke-telling leader as a hostile leader. And suspect that their senior is exploiting and abusing their senior status to demean others.

As a result, a leader’s team members often react by avoiding the leader completely, and disengaging from constructive dialogue with them.

As is often the case, the situation isn’t black and white.

Saying something unexpectedly funny to your audience is one legitimate way to get their attention, exploiting a phenomenon known as the Von Restorff effect, which suggests the more unusual something is, the more we notice, pay attention to and remember it.

Read more at: How can you make people remember you?

We’ve also previously talked about how using emoticons and emojis in your messages can potentially compromise how your audience views and respects you.

Adding in expressive emoticons, such as happy or hesitant faces, kisses and cute animals, helps you appear chatty, personal and funny. And they can engender warmth from your audience.

However, they often lead to those people receiving your message feeling that you are less assertive, and less competent.  

Read more at: Should you use emoticons and emojis at work?

So trying to appear humorous in an email or text message, by including emojis and emoticons, can backfire. 

And finally, it’s worth bearing in mind that, as in life, humorous conversations at work aren’t always a one way street. 

Most research into the use of humour when communicating at work tends to focus on organisations’ leaders, and the impact of their humour on their teams. 

But many humorous conversations are dynamic, with both parties contributing. Bosses may joke with their colleagues, but colleagues may also joke with their bosses. And team members can also strategically use humour as a communication strategy when conversing with their seniors at work. 

One recent study published in 2021 shows that followers can exploit humour to indirectly convey dissent.

For example, making a joke may be a subtle and effective way to communicate unhappiness about a leader’s decisions or actions, and may help hold leaders to account in the process.

Being heard in a noisy world

Time for a quick, and vitally important reminder. Far too often, when we try to communicate with other people, either personally, when we are trying to share progress at work, or tell an organisation’s story, we assume people are waiting to hear what we have to say.

And we forget how many other people, colleagues and companies are competing with us to also be heard.

When you communicate, bear in mind you are always competing for someone’s attention. You are competing for their time. For their interest. You are competing to have your message be remembered by them.

You may not be aware just how noisy the world is. And how easy it is for others to ignore you. Because you are competing against a universe of factual content and information that is expanding every second.

• If you speak in a meeting, you are competing to be heard among the other attendees.

• If you send an email, your message is competing for attention with 3 million emails that are sent, around the world, every second.

• When you send that most important message, it’s worth remembering the millions of other emails others are sending at the exact same time.

• The recipient of your message won’t receive all those, but on average, they will receive more than 100 other emails that day. That doesn’t include spam.

• When you tweet, your 140+ characters join 10,000 tweets (Xs) sent that same second.

• Your Instagram post is vying with more than 1000 others sent each second.

• Your blog post is competing to be read with more than 2000 posts to Tumblr each second.

• When you post to Youtube, bear in mind more than 95,000 other Youtube videos have just been viewed, in that same second.

• When you craft that company strategy or report, and post it online, will anyone discover and read it, given that 2 billion web pages exist, with more than 80% of them not being seen by anyone?

Those statistics may appear a little overwhelming. We share them not to discourage you from promoting your story and message, but as a reminder that to be heard amongst the noise, you need to learn and apply the principles of effective communication that we help coach at the Factual Storytelling School.

Enrol in the Factual Storytelling School: Special offer 

On that note, a quick promotion: that for a limited time you and your colleagues can enrol in the Factual Storytelling School, and receive full access to over 13 hours of tuition and a 450 page Factual Storytelling Handbook, for just £49.50.

Go to the Factual Storytelling School checkout here, enter the code enrolnow, and gain a 50% discount on the enrolment fee.

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If you’re thinking of joining for yourself, you’ll learn how to advance your work and career and become a much more effective communicator. You’ll learn how to produce a range of professional content formats, including news, feature and opinion articles, as well as produce engaging reports, presentations, videos and podcasts.

If you’re thinking of enroling colleagues, your team will learn how to find and identify stories in their work, and better share them inside your organisation and externally with customers, clients and collaborators.

The course can be accessed online, from anywhere, including by office and home workers, and completed at your employees’ pace.

When you think that poor communication costs organisations an average of $12,506, each year, per employee (The State of Business Communication 2023 report. Grammarly), enroling in the Factual Storytelling School is perhaps the most cost-effective step you can take to boost your organisation’s performance.

Enrol now, skill up and help boost your corporate effectiveness, impact, reputation and employee engagement.

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Which of the following insights are you more likely to notice, and remember, from the four images shown here?

Cats have four legs

Dogs have four legs

Jellyfish have 64 anuses

Bears have four legs

?

It’s likely to have been the insight about the jellyfish.

You may have noticed it because jellyfish are unusual animals relative to the more familiar cats and dogs often kept as pets, and bears.

You may have noticed it because the insight mentioned anuses - a much more unusual, provocative and challenging organ to mention than legs.

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Or because it was written on the bold yellow background below, rather than the same blue used for the others.

Or because the font used was different.

Either way, you likely paid attention to the jellyfish insight (which is true by the way: Box jellyfish have four brains and 64 anuses), and will better remember it, due to what is known as the Von Restorff effect, which suggests that the weirder something seems, the more we remember it.

Behavioural scientist Hedwig Von Restorff discovered this tendency back in 1933, when conducting a series of experiments on how people recall words.

She found that people more easily recall usual words in any list, either because the word in question is longer than the rest, in a different typeface or language, emboldened, contains a number, or is in a different font etc.

It may seem obvious that the jellyfish insight is the most memorable, especially given it’s obviously unique design and presentation. Just as it may seem obvious you’ll notice and recall the presence of a red apple among a bowl of green apples.

But when communicating about themselves or their work, many organisations and people ignore the Von Restorff effect - in that they fail to understand the advantage they gain by saying something unique, that stands out from the crowd or competition.

In our Factual Storytelling Course, which you can currently enrol in for just £49.50, we dedicate a module of 10 lessons to tips and techniques for How To Create Engaging Content.

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Within that module are lessons coaching Why You Need A Good Hook, and the Different Types of Engaging Introduction.

And a core teaching within both, is that one way to create engaging content, is to share unusual, unknown or fascinating insights, or reveal novel information that is shocking, mystifying or bizarre, - in short, to harness and exploit the Von Restorff effect by communicating something unusual about your work.

Something that stands outside the norm or your daily business or the communications of your competitors.

Do that, and your message will be better noticed by your audience. And it will be better recalled, giving you that all important competitive edge.

It’s a fantastic way to get people to remember you.

Don’t be afraid to shock your audience

Following our recommendation that you exploit the Von Restorff effect, is the related suggestion that you shouldn’t be afraid to shock your audience when communicating about your work.

One of the most important principles when communicating, is that your first task is to actually win the attention of your audience. If you fail to do that, everything else you do will be pointless, as you will be talking to no-one.

One of the best ways to get other’s attention, is to begin your factual story with an engaging introduction. And one of the most engaging types of introductions, are those that shock.

You can shock your audience in a light-hearted way. By unexpectedly, and knowingly mocking yourself or your organisation. Or by intentionally saying something outrageous, or funny. Before then adding context that makes sense of, and brings meaning to these unexpected first words.

Or you can shock in a serious way.

For example, many organisations work to achieve good, but that often means reporting the challenges they are working to overcome.

Global and public health agencies, charities and organisations seeking to improve human welfare often create powerful introductions that highlight a disparity or injustice, such as the number of children who live without access to fresh water, or can’t yet read, or how many people may die each year from preventable diseases.

They do so because it shocks the audience, and helps solicit an emotional reaction.

When done with care, and appropriately, shocking your audience is a valid way to attract their attention towards an issue, campaign or a just cause.

New video tool from Google

Startling new advances in AI-generated video just keep coming.

And we’ll keep sharing them, as they will almost certainly become a part of the future toolkit you can use to create videos to communicate and market your work.

The latest from Google is called Veo, which promises to be the company’s most capable generative video AI yet.

According to the company’s own marketing material, Veo “can create high-quality, 1080p clips that can go beyond 60 seconds.

From photorealism to surrealism and animation, it can tackle all kinds of visual styles, and even captures the nuance and tone of prompts - offering an unprecedented level of creative control.”

Sign up to try some of Veo’s features in VideoFX, a part of Labs.Google.

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Enrol in the Factual Storytelling School: 50% discount special offer

We’ve briefly mentioned this above, but for a limited time you and your colleagues can enrol in the Factual Storytelling School, and receive full access to over 13 hours of tuition and a 450 page Factual Storytelling Handbook, for just £49.50.

Go to the Factual Storytelling School checkout here, enter the code enrolnow, and gain a 50% discount on the enrolment fee.

If you’re thinking of joining for yourself, you’ll learn how to advance your work, career and become a much more effective communicator. You’ll learn how to produce a range of professional content formats, including news, feature and opinion articles, as well as produce engaging reports, presentations, videos and podcasts.

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If you’re thinking of enroling colleagues, your team will learn how to find and identify stories in their work, and better share them inside your organisation and externally with customers, clients and collaborators.

The course can be accessed online, from anywhere, including by office and home workers, and completed at your employees’ pace.

When you consider that poor communication costs organisations an average of $12,506, each year, per employee (The State of Business Communication 2023 report. Grammarly), enroling in The Factual Storytelling School is perhaps the most cost-effective step you can take to supercharge your organisation’s performance.

Enrol now, skill up and help boost your corporate effectiveness, impact, reputation and employee engagement.

Stories add value to your factual content in at least three ways:

• We understand stories, we are naturally drawn to them and are open to finding out what they have to say.

• We naturally connect to and become emotionally engaged with stories that we hear.

• And because of those things, stories make us care.

That’s why you and your organisation should learn to embrace factual storytelling as a vital communications tool.

If you can learn to tell stories about your business, company and work, you’ll have a much greater impact on collaborators, partners, clients, consumers and customers, and become more successful as a result.

Instead of just reciting facts about your business, making factual statements about what you do, how you do it, and how you are a worthwhile partner or better than the competition, instead craft narratives about yourself, the challenges you overcome and the progress and achievements you’ve earned.

Stories can help you create better, more impactful factual content in four ways.

Stories are memorable

Scientific research has repeatedly shown that stories are remembered more than facts.

So people will better recall your organisation if you share stories about your progress, rather than make factual statements.

Stories are persuasive

Facts presented in story form lead to greater changes in beliefs and liking, research shows. which in turn leads to changes in attitudes, intentions, and behaviours.

So the more you use stories to communicate your organisation’s progress, the more you will positively impact others.

Stories also help prevent others arguing with you and your organisation.

Studies show that stories are particularly effective when there are strong prior beliefs and counter-arguing is likely.

Put another way, if you are about to publish content, or communicate a message that you know will be contentious, then tell it as a story. Your audience will be far more receptive to what you have to say.

Stories attract attention

Stories are more likely to attract and hold the attention of audiences than facts or information.

This is by design, as stories follow structures that grab audiences and lead them through a crafted narrative structure.

Stories are shared

Academic research by evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar, based at the University of Liverpool, UK, has found that 65% of all human conversation in public places is about social topics - essentially they are about people.

Source: Dunbar et al, Human Nature, Vol. 8, No. 3, pages 231-246

Basically, that means two-thirds of our entire conversational lives is spent telling stories about people, to people.

Stories fit this model, generally being based on characters that we emotionally care about.

Stories are therefore inherently shareable. In fact, stories only exist to be told.

Storytelling has become integral to the branding of any product, and it should become an integral part of all your factual content creation and communications.

See our lesson How Stories Create Impact.

The impact of sonic branding

When you create content and publish your message to the world, it can be useful to think not just about how it looks, but how it sounds.

For example, we tend to think of video as a visual media, and forget it is also an auditory format. What we hear can be as important as what we see.

Yet sound is a common afterthought of many filmmakers. Don’t make this mistake.

For example, in our lesson Crafting Videos People Will Watch,  we advise you should spend as much time, money and energy capturing good sound when filming, as capturing good visual footage.

When it comes to branding, also think about how you can exploit sound, and well as visual media.

The art and inspiration publication Creative Blog has a good article on its importance and potential to improve your messaging.

Read it here, as it includes great examples of how brands such as McDonalds and Apple use sound to bolster their brand impact and recognition.

New kinetic typography tool

News of another update that may be useful for those creating motion graphics to place on their websites, and tell their stories within videos etc.

You can now create kinetic typography, that is text that animates on and off, using the Lottie Creator tool. Kinetic type is a great way to catch the eye, and draw attention to your media.

As a reminder, Lottie is an open-source animation file format, that can also be integrated into motion graphics software such as Adobe’s After Effects.

As we’ve said before, Lottie files can be used to incorporate complex factual animations, infographics and graphics into websites and mobile apps. Lotite files are much smaller than Gif files, so usually load and display better.

Many of today’s most popular websites and apps use Lottie to make their products stand out, look good, and engage users.

See our previous update about Lottie Creator, to learn more about how you can also now create Lottie animations directly in a web browser.

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Engagement officer job alert

The world’s oldest active society devoted to ‘the cultivation of the science of natural history in all its branches’ is seeking someone skilled in factual storytelling.

The Linnean Society of London, based in Piccadilly, England is recruiting an Engagement Officer to develop its Education programme and Events and Communications programme.

The Linnean Society of London delivers a wide range of education, public engagement and heritage programmes to support its vision of a world where nature is understood, valued and protected.

Its Education programme runs school workshops and family activities to help young people connect with nature, while its Local Nature Grants support youth-led projects to protect nature in communities.

Its Events and Communications programme runs its social media platforms and events for nature-lovers of all ages, with a range of lectures and debates online and in-person, as well as special workshops, open days, tours and nature walks.

See full details of the position on LinkedIn here.

Does this following sentence make sense to you?

“James while John had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher”.

That sentence repeats the word ‘had’ eleven times. Yet is still makes grammatical sense (we think).

If you don’t believe us, check out this Wikipedia page that describes the sentence, and how it is often used as an example of how adding punctuation to a sentence gives it meaning.

We’re citing it here though, for a different reason - as a light-heart reminder to understand the powerful role that repetition can play in your factual communications.

Repetition can negatively impact your message. Editing your content to avoid unnecessary repetition of ideas and words is one of the key skills you can use to improve your factual storytelling.

But repetition can, if used well, also enhance how you communicate.

It’s important you learn how to use signposting in your content, a form of repetition where you tell your audience what you are about to tell them, then tell them again.

See our lesson The Art Of Signposting.

Alliteration is another powerful technique you can use to create engaging content.

Alliteration is the repetition of the same letter sound across the start of several words in a line of text. It’s synchronising sounds in a sentence. And it helps when crafting compelling content.

It’s often considered a poetic device. But factual content creators working in advertising and journalism, especially headline writers, love to use alliteration.

Why? Because Alliteration Attracts Attention!

It can also help add rhythm and flow to your content, adding to its pleasing, almost musical qualities.

Alliterations will also Make your Media More Memorable.

See our lesson Techniques For Creating Engaging Content.

Content that reads well tends to follow repeatable structures that you can learn, such as news, feature and opinion article structures.

How your content looks can be as important as what it says, and repetition is also a very powerful component of good design.

See our lesson Why Layout Matters, within Factual Storytelling Course module Good Design And Why It Matters.

Visually impressive and easy to navigate and understand content consists of repeatable elements, such as logos, motifs, and design elements that continue throughout, giving your communications an identity and coherence that impacts audiences.

Elegant digital storytelling

We like to promote original factual storytelling, and a great example we can all learn something from is the web interactive “This is a teenager”, published on the digital publication The Pudding.

It takes the form of a scrolling web page, telling the factual story of how childhood trauma can drastically affect the outcomes and prospects of young people.

Be informed by what it says, but also pay attention to how it says it. And see if it can somehow inspire aspects of your own storytelling. Many companies, corporations and even media companies and publishers could learn from this animation a thing of two about how to tell their own story.

The story makes particularly good use of data, and using elegant animations to communicate numbers and weave them into a narrative.

It’s compelling. Being original, elegant, simple to understand, yet effective and impactful. Traits shared by most good factual storytelling.

Enjoyable data visualisation tools

Speaking of data - also check out this impressive article about the most enjoyable tools you can use to visualise data. That’s an important facet of factual storytelling, and it’s important you are comfortable with the tools you work with.

The article was created and published by Ihar Yanouski, a data visualization designer and developer who helps media, think tanks and businesses to communicate data in a clear, visual way. Maybe consider hiring them to help with your work.

Microsoft Powerpoint, Adobe Illustrator and Figma are the visualisation tools most people found enjoyable to use when creating Graphics.

Tableau, Microsoft Power BI and Flourish are preferred when generating Charts.

And Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets when visualising Data.

You’ll find further insights about other data visualisation tools, including those preferred to make Maps and visualise Code.

Also see our lesson Embrace Visual Storytelling.

Why are motifs important?

What is a motif, and help can they help you tell your story?

Earlier we referenced the use of motifs in effective factual storytelling, and how they can help you better communicate.

Many people aren’t clear on what a motif is, or how or when to use them. So we thought we’d offer a little reminder.

Motifs are visual elements that keep reappearing within your content. Motifs can take almost any form. They could be something simple, such as a repeating shape or colour. Subtle, such as a repeating use of circles in a presentation design. Complex, such as the intentional use of asymmetric design. Or more obvious, such as a brash, boldly-coloured swoosh used on pages and video transitions.

Your factual story should focus on, promote and reinforce a single main message, that is your story’s key point.

Similarly, logos and particularly motifs help provide your content with a singular visual feel, reminding your audience of your content’s visual identity.

Audiences are also likely to remember logos and motifs, and therefore recall aspects of your story that used them.

See our lesson The Power of Logos and Motifs.

And when they do, their reputation is at stake. Failing to take responsibility for a mistake, or apologising badly, can damage reputations and relationships.

Given how important it is that when we apologise, we do it well, there is little objective evidence showing how best to do it.

Yet, knowing how to best apologise is a crucial skill when communicating, and particularly during any crisis communications.

A quick review reveals there is relatively little objective evidence as to how best apologise in a professional or corporate situation. We will run through that evidence now, as it suggests a few tips that may benefit you.

But keep reading, as we’ll also get to why embracing the act of apologising can actually be an immensely powerful tool for you and your organisation.

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First, to the evidence:

A study published in 2022 showed how a company apologised to customers for messing up, in this case losing their data in a cybersecurity breach, made no difference to the way their customers reacted.

In fact, the researchers found only one difference - that audiences from one country, in this case Belgium, responded more positively to news of the cybersecurity breach, being more likely to still recommend the company, than customers did from another country, which was the US.

That at least suggests that you must account for your audience’s culture when thinking about how to apologise. However, you should always consider your audience’s culture whenever you’re communicating any factual news, event or story, as we coach in our lesson Why Audience Culture Matters.

And it doesn’t reach teach us much else we can apply to future scenarios where we need to apologise.

Another study published in 2022, showed that, in work emails at least, women tend to use the phrase “I apologise”, whereas men prefer to say, “I’m sorry”. It’s unclear why, but the researchers conclude it may be due to women being more formal in their email correspondence compared to men.

The study was conducted by researchers trawling emails of the failed US corporation Enron, an energy, commodities, and services company that in 2001 collapsed due to financial scandal.

At the Factual Storytelling School, we also use the example of Enron to show how a logo can negatively impact factual storytelling.

See The Power Of Logos And Motifs, which is part of our course module Embrace Visual Storytelling.

What that study didn’t do, was ascertain whether certain types of apology are more effective. So again, it’s not that useful.

The study ‘How sorry are you? Intensified apologies and the mediating role of perceived remorse in corporate crisis communication,’ was recently published in the journal Public Relations Review by Effrosyni Georgiadou at Zayed University, United Arab Emirates.

It found that apologies that included adverbials were better received. An adverbial is a word or a group of words that modifies or more closely defines the sentence or the verb. So saying you are sincerely sorry, or you really are sorry, works better then just saying sorry.

Other studies have investigated how corporate apologies can relieve the level of public anger during a crisis situation. They have shown that statements of apology where the apologist actively takes responsibility for their actions are more likely to relieve anger, compared to passive statements of apology.

Another study examined a relatively new media phenomenon known as the YouTube apology video - a new approach to crisis communication where prominent YouTubers, from beauty influencers to gamers, offer a public apology for their offense or scandal through their YouTube channel.

The research paper, ‘So sorry, now please watch: Identifying image repair strategies, sincerity and forgiveness in YouTubers’ apology videos’ lists celebrities, such as Paula Deen, Chris Brown, Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, who have made such videos in an attempt to recover from wrongdoings, and also influential YouTubers like James Charles, PewDiePie, Laura Lee, Logan Paul, and Jaclyn Hill.

Many of these apology videos have reached audiences in the tens of millions.

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Perhaps unsurprisingly, prior connections with the YouTuber increased viewers’ chance of forgiveness, and perceived sincerity was the predictor of forgiveness.

Yet another study takes things a step further, finding that it’s better to say thank you and show some appreciation of your audience and their complaint, than it is to just say sorry. Although it may sound obvious, often companies don’t think about the self esteem of their audience, and take steps to acknowledge and boost their self esteem by thanking them at the same time as addressing their issue.

Research published in 2021 titled ‘“Just Say You’re Sorry”: Avoidance and Revenge Behavior in Response to Organizations Apologizing for Fraud’ also suggests how you say sorry can affect your audience’s reaction.

In this case, the research simulated a fraud conducted on investors. And specifically how an apology for that fraud influenced whether the defrauded investors would then try to avoid future exposure to the company, by selling their shares, or go further and seek revenge on the company, by starting litigation.

The research found that apologies can backfire: when management apologised for the fraud, investors tended to seek revenge by litigating. An apology didn’t change whether they wanted to distance themselves by selling their shares.

And being more sincere in the apology didn’t necessarily help; with results show that apology sincerity is positively associated with revenge behaviour.

Despite the lack of evidence about how best to apologise, we at the Factual Storytelling School coach that saying sorry actually offers an incredibly valuable opportunity to tell a unique and powerful factual story, that can really benefit the person or organisation telling it.

That’s because there is a unique story plot structure, known as ‘the tragic event’ that can be used to articulate the story of a personal or organisational mistake, and how you’ve worked hard to fix the issue.

This admission can actually lift or improve your reputation.

See our lesson ‘A Tragic Event’ in our module Stories You Can Tell.

Rather than shying away from having made a mistake, turn it into an opportunity and use the power of a narrative story to convince your audience of your redemption.

This scenario happens to businesses far more often than they or their staff, clients or customers would like.

For example, companies routinely make mistakes or missteps in customer service. Often these are ad hoc mistakes that don’t represent any greater malaise in how the company operates. But they still matter to the customer affected.

Rather than just say sorry, it is more convincing if a company at fault admits their mistake, is honest about why it happened, and then outlines how it will take steps to reach the goal of satisfying the customer.

The implication of this story, is that the company is willing to transform itself, and do things differently, to better serve its once aggrieved customer.

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Occasionally, companies are called to account for inappropriate corporate behaviour or polices. Here too, it is better to pro-actively tell the story of how this flaw has been recognised, and work is now being done by the organisation to reach the goal of betterment.

Audiences recognise that we all make mistakes. Yet people and corporations regularly make the further mistake of not admitting it, or worse, trying to hide it.

However, admitting a failing can lead to a very positive story to tell, one that can leave a lasting favourable impression on audiences.

If you have cause to tell such a story, remember that to audiences, the change in status quo is naturally interesting, and they are willing to embrace people and organisations going on a journey of redemption. They will respect that you have made a difficult decision to resolve an issue, overcome that challenge, and share your experience.

Another reason to tell such a story, is because audiences view people and organisations that admit failings as authentic. To fail or make a mistake is to be human, and people also view such stories as inherently personal.

Though some among your audience will judge, many will actually empathise with the error that was made, and particularly the honesty and transparency shown in admitting to it. And the work then undertaken to fix the issue, and overcome any difficulties it has caused, particularly to others, such as clients, or customers.

What the chocolate industry can teach us about strategic communications

Well the truth is that we can glean a few tasty morsels from a new research paper titled ‘Corporate social responsibility communication from multinational chocolate companies’ published by Antonina Sparacino from the University of Turin, Italy and colleagues in the journal Sustainable Futures.

This study analysed the largest chocolate and cocoa producers in 2021, focusing on their communication strategies. According to the research, its “objective was to identify how these companies communicate their sustainable practices.”

What the paper revealed is how each company placed a different focus on which sustainability practices to communicate to its customers.

Did they prioritise promoting the environmental credentials of their chocolate, or that they embraced and supported Fair Trade practices, for example?

Each can be a challenge for chocolate producers. The supply chain for cocoa, from which chocolate is made, is one of the longest in the agricultural business, where cultivating and manufacturing chocolate and delivering it worldwide consumes forests, water and energy. Most cocoa-producing countries worldwide are located in the equatorial zone, with poor working conditions and a risk of exploiting local populations.

The research covered the world’s biggest chocolate makers, including Ferrero, Hershey Co, Lindt, Mars, Nestle and others, and whether they strategically communicated about the environment, people, community or Fair Trade.

One company, Glico, stands out from the crowd, by focusing the majority of its communications on promoting its support for Fair Trade, whereas for almost every other company, Fair Trade was the third or fourth of the four priorities, with some, such as Pladis, barely speaking of it at all.

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Ferrero and Hershey Co both prioritised communicating about how their chocolate products helped support communities, using their communications to highlight issues supporting women, sports, culture, charities, education and child nutrition.

About half the companies preferentially communicated about how their chocolate products helped support the environment.

Each company is therefore taking a different strategic approach in how they communicate their sustainable practices, trying to empower their reputations in the process.

And that, rather than the focus on what they say, or the fact they are chocolate companies, is the point.

Because it highlights the importance of looking at your competition, and developing a communication strategy that makes you stand out.

That’s something many companies and individuals forget to do. Instead, they simply communicate their objectives and achievements without considering how those messages sit relative to similar messages being promoted by others.

Examine your own communications and think about whether you have a strategy in place, what that strategy is, and how your communications strategy, and its focus, may lift you or your organisation above the competition.

Adobe integrates AI into video-editing

We share news of yet another AI advance that may help or challenge content creators, depending on your perspective. But this one is a biggy.

Adobe produces one of the most comprehensive sets of software tools to help people and companies produce content and tell their factual stories.

From InCopy and InDesign used to produce text-based publications, to Illustrator and Photoshop for imagery, Audition for audio, and After Effects and Premiere Pro for video editing.

Adobe integrates a product called Adobe Firefly into this Creative suite, which is a form of AI that can help turn text-generated prompts into language and visual material.

Now Adobe has announced that it is bringing generative AI to video editing workflows within Adobe Premiere Pro.

You can read more about it here.

Adobe is promising ‘professional editors will be able to do things they’ve never been able to before,’ using the technology, including:

• Generating entirely new frames at the beginning or end of a clip.

• Easily select and replace moving objects within a shot.

• Generate b-roll, for example, scenes that illustrate difficult-to-shoot or fantastical concepts.

Each of these should make creating videos easier, more cost effective and facilitate more creativity in film-making.

So if you make videos to promote or tell the story of your organisation or business, or for yourself and your social media channels, pay attention as Adobe continues to develop this new functionality.

Here are some excellent tips on how to avoid doing just that.

This isn’t our advice. It’s taken from the book Communicating in the 21st Century, 4th edition by Baden Eunson, based at Monash University, Australia, which you can purchase via the publisher Wiley here, or direct on Amazon here.

In Chapter 7, Gender and Communication, Eunson highlights more than 10 techniques you can use to ensure your language is gender neutral, in Eunson’s words: “ensuring we have a language for humans, not just men.”

For example, let’s consider the following, but commonly used male-skewed version of the sentence:

A manager needs to know what his project budget is going to be.

Instead of crafting this sentence this way, Eunson recommends considering doing the following:

Use a pair of pronouns

A manager needs to know what his or her budget is going to be.

Use the slash/combined form

A manager needs to know what his/her project budget is going to be.

Recast the sentence to omit the gender-specific pronoun/s

A manager needs to know what the project budget is going to be.

Replace third person pronouns

A manager needs to know what their project budget is going to be.

Use plurals

Managers need to know what their project budget is going to be.

Other tips include reworking gender-skewed sentences, such as:

He or she can determine the project’s budget.

And instead use the imperative mood of verbs:

Determine the project’s budget.

Replace third-person pronouns with second-person pronouns:

You can determine the project’s budget.

and

Change if . . . when clauses to on/upon phrases, or modifiers without expressed subjects, for example, altering the sentence:

When the manager has completed this budget, he should have the spreadsheet approved by his senior executive.

To:

Upon completing this budget, the manager should have the spreadsheet approved by a senior executive.

Using gender inappropriate language is not the only way that communication often fails to be effective because the sender of any message fails to properly account for their audience.

One of our key pieces of advice is:

Another is:

And yet another:

Make sure whenever you communicate your work, be respectful of your audience, and their expectations. When it comes to factual storytelling, if in doubt, use a neutral, inclusive voice.

We have a whole module covering this called Know Who You Are Talking To’, which includes the following pertinent lessons:

How Will Your Audience React?

Learn to Listen to Your Audience

Why Audience Culture Matters

A new way to edit video

Well that’s the claim at least of Descript, an online video and podcasting tool that also helps with recording and transcribing videos and podcasts over the internet. Oh, and it can also supply AI-generated voice-overs if you need them.

Many factual storytellers aren’t skilled in video or audio production, so Descript’s features may come in handy. The software automatically transcribes recordings so you can edit them like a documentary. Then ‘you can arrange visuals like you would on a slide’ according to Descript’s website.

The product also promises to help improve poor sound quality of online recordings.

And it includes a very useful eye-contact feature, that uses AI to correct the view of people speaking to screen. In basic terms, this ensures the subject that is speaking online to you is always looking at the camera, which is very useful when recording interviews with inexperienced subjects.

Plans range from free, to Pro at $288 a month, with an Enterprise level above that.

We don’t yet use Descript, so have no skin in the game. But we do like to highlight new factual storytelling tools that may benefit individuals and organisations. And this may be one of them.

Minimalism and negative space

Time for another reminder about the power of good design in factual storytelling.

Check out these images used to promote and celebrate the new BBC natural history documentary Mammals, produced by BBC Studios.

Note the exceptional use of a minimalistic design, and crucially the use of negative space that focuses attention on the subject of each poster.

The creative dual-view, seeing the animal from the side, and above.

And the great colour palette, with hues suggestive of each animal’s environment, that are in contrast to each other.

To develop your and your team’s design skills, sign up to our Factual Storytelling Course, which includes the module ‘Good Design And Why It Matters’.

Job alert

The incredibly worthwhile charity Macmillan Cancer Support is recruiting for a Senior Communications Manager, specialising in Stories and Voices.

See the job ad here on LinkedIn.

It’s a 12 month position, split between home-working and the organisation’s London office.

The advert description is as follows:

“We are looking for a senior manager to lead our team of six people responsible for both engaging with people affected by cancer who want to share their stories, and with celebrities and influencers looking to support our cause.”

“We are looking for someone with relationship-building skills and a background in leading strategies to engage ambassadors, celebrities and/or people with lived experience who want to share their stories publicly.”

Hurry, as the application deadline is next week: 16 April 2024.

So even if you’re not creating a piece of advertising, you can still draw on what works for the industry. Not only may it help you create content that better catches the eye, you should be promoting any content you create. And promotion is a form of advertising!

See our lesson ‘The Art, Science And Technology Of Publishing’.

Advertisers condense copy down to the basic story elements. Adverts contain very few words, that convey a direct, concise message. You can learn from both - whatever the factual content you are creating, it will generally benefit from being reduced closer to your fundamental message.

See our lesson ‘Learn How To Improve Your Content’.

Adverts focus on benefits, and how their products solve problems. Your factual story may not explicitly do that. But all true stories contain an inherently similar structure, involving the surmounting of complications and reaching a resolution.

See our lesson ‘The Secret Power of Stories’.

By taking a cue from advertisers, and shaping your narrative in a similar way, you will both appeal to your audience and harness one of the most powerful known communication techniques. Brands compete to get your attention and influence your decisions. Which clothes you wear, food you eat, hotels you book, products you buy, services you use. So it’s worth considering how they do it. And what you can learn from it, and apply to your own factual storytelling.

A brand is essentially a distillation of much more, usually a business and its associated operations. So how might you distil your story to its most basic form? If asked to pitch your story to another in just a few words, what would you say? And then how would you best present this idea to catch your audience’s eye and influence them?

See our lessons ‘Finding Stories In Your Work’ and ‘Good Design And Why It Matters’.

As well as using powerful, punchy copy, both adverts and brands exploit good design. You should too.

If you are crafting a report, presentation, newsletter or other longer format, try to make it look more like an advert than a library book. Don’t be afraid to create a bold first impression. Do your initial words and design attract attention like an advert might? If they don’t, you’re missing an opportunity to hook people.

When to not add your name

Counter-intuitive though it may first sound, quite often when you’re communicating factual content, you may intentionally wish to remove yourself as the author. 

You craft a piece of factual content, but you don’t add your name to it. You don’t give yourself a credit or byline, for example.

This routinely happens within many genres. Professionals don’t name themselves as authors of press releases, web copy, marketing blurbs, or marketing or advertising messages. But even here, it’s still important to convey a strong sense of authorship, and let your audience know who is speaking to them.

That’s why you should be aware of, and in these instances use, a form of institutional authorship.

Institutional authorship is when a story is presented by an organisation or publication.

Newspaper editorials, newsletters and corporate social media posts are usually published under the name of the company, organisation or brand, without a byline.

When you do this, it’s important to speak in a consistent, institutional voice.

Again, this could be serious or professional-sounding. But many brands and companies try to develop some sense of institutional personality. As an organisation, they take a particular world view, guiding their stance on future developments.

The more organisations appear to speak as people, the warmer and more emotive and engaging they are, often engendering stronger partnerships, and member, customer and brand loyalty.

If you create content for an organisation you work for, check that you really know how it speaks to the world? Does your organisation have a tone of voice? If it does, you need to match and develop it.

Does your company have a style guide you should consult before authoring content on its behalf?

See our lesson ‘Style Guides Matter’.

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Looking for inspiration?

It can be hard to be creative - especially when you’re seeking new, fresh ways to engage audiences and tell your story, whether that be sharing corporate news, communicating your work with colleagues or clients, or promoting your own business.

So much so, that we have a lesson devoted to how you or your organisation can become more creative in communicating your factual story.

See our lesson ‘Learn To Be Creative’.    

One way, is simply to seek out inspiration in the work of others - and there’s no better place right now than at the Webby Awards, which have just announced the nominees for 2024.

The Webby Awards contains examples of some of the best, most original and successful digital content posted in the last year - much of which is in the factual space. We know the Webby Awards, having won three awards over our career. Now that humble-brag is over, it really is worth checking out the websites, podcasts, apps, educational content, social media, ads and PR, and more that are competing to win this year.

Have a look around the excellent work at The Webby Awards 2024, and vote for those nominees that impressed you.

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A powerful introduction

Last year ,for example, the Webbys honoured Discoveries magazine, published by the University of California San Diego Health Sciences Department. 

The website hosting this online magazine is an excellent example of how you should always front-load your message, and begin your story with a powerful summary or introduction. 

For more on how to do so, see our previous newsletter article How To Start Your Factual Story.

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They are now almost ubiquitous on some platforms, such as text messaging and WhatsApp, and extremely popular. But does that means their use is appropriate?

The short answer is that it depends on the context.

Research shows using emoticons (which can be typed on a keyboard) and emojis (which are unchanging graphic icons) at the right time can dramatically improve your communications. But they can also significantly compromise your efforts to be heard and listened to.

So it’s important to know when and how to use them.

Understanding that not only will help you decide when to add emoticons and emojis to your message, but it will also remind you of many of the principles of effective communication; such as reinforcing the importance of tailoring your communications depending on audience, format and platform, genre or sector, the trust you want to engender and the authority you want to convey.

Before you add an emoticon or emoji to your message, the first thing you should do is know your audience - a principle that holds for all communications.

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For example, at work, you write professional, carefully- edited impactful emails and reports that impress your colleagues and organisation’s leaders. But over time, you increasingly want your colleagues, your audience, to like you. So you start to populate your internal corporate communications, your emails, instant messages and reports, with expressive emoticons, such as happy or hesitant faces, kisses and cute animals. They appear chatty, personal and funny.

That reinforces one important aspect of emoticons and emojis. They are designed to convey, as their name suggests, emotions. There are now more than 3500 available emoticons and emojis, but the 90 or so in the Smileys and People category remain the most frequently used.

Generally speaking, it’s good to add emotion to factual communications, as content that elicits an emotional response is far more engaging.

You can learn more in our Factual Storytelling School lesson ‘It’s Time To Get Emotional’.

A 2018 research paper examined the specific use of emoticons and emojis in job-related communications, and how their use affected perceptions of whether the sender was a capable executive.

That paper, which you can read here, asked participants to read an email presumably written by a male supervisor, demanding the timely completion of an important task. When the message was enriched with emojis or emoticons, recipients felt more warmth and empathy towards the sender.

However, and this is important, they also rated the sender as being less assertive.

A prior research paper published in 2017 titled The Dark Side of a Smiley: Effects of Smiling Emoticons on Virtual First Impressions found that using smiley emoticons online doesn’t necessarily impress your audience. In fact, the research paper discovered that “contrary to actual smiles, smileys do not increase perceptions of warmth and actually decrease perceptions of competence. Perceptions of low competence in turn undermined information sharing.”

In short, the researchers say: “a smiley is not a smile”, and adding a smiley emoticon to your online message may lead your audience to react with less empathy towards you and think you less capable.

Another study in 2020 examined how using emojis in emails affects perceptions of business leaders.

It found that emails with emojis led to positive perceptions of a leader’s likeability and effectiveness. But the kicker is that only male recipients felt this way. Female recipients rated a leader using emojis as less effective, with no difference in likeability. Further study showed that females perceived emails with emojis as more positive but also less appropriate for the workplace.

So using emoticons and emojis may engender warmth, but they are unlikely to engender professional respect. The unintended reaction to your content is that your audience likes you more, but respects you less. So think about the reaction you want from your audience. And then optimise your content to maximise the desired reaction. For more on this see our lesson ‘How will your audience react?’

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When considering whether to use emoticons and emojis, also consider the platform and format you are using to communicate.

It’s far more common and accepted to use emojis in messages sent via informal digital channels, such as directly between two individuals who know each other via WhatApp or text messaging, or direct message services that form part of tools such as Slack, Microsoft Teams or LinkedIn. Or via social media accounts, where they are prevalent.

For example, research published in 2022 found that as working from home increased during the Covid-19 pandemic, people selectively used emojis to forge interpersonal bonds with co-workers online.

But it’s less acceptable to include them in emails, and even less so in more permanent formats such as presentations and reports.

Other research published back in 2014 offered some insights into why people include emoticons in their workplace emails.

Contrary to what may be expected, writers didn’t included emoticons to convey their own emotions. Rather they added them to give clues to the email’s recipients about how a message should be interpreted.

Emoticons such as happy faces or thumbs ups are added to demonstrate that the message should be received with a positive attitude. They are added to humorous sentences to denote to the reader that a joke has been made. They are added to strengthen expressive speech, such as ‘thanks’ or ‘greetings’, and to soften how directives, such as requests, corrections etc., should be received.

Using emoticons makes messages more emotionally extreme, with the use of a negative graphic emoticon increasing the negativity of a message, while a positive graphic emoticon increases the positivity of a message.

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They can help clarify an unclear message, and change how the same message is perceived, for example by expressing humour and giving indications of how the message should be interpreted.

But that’s a risky strategy. It implies that the content of an email isn’t being clearly communicated, if further emojis need to be added to provide context.

It’s far better to review the email, and write it appropriately, rather than rely on emojis and emoticons to communicate, especially given they can lower people’s perceptions of the sender.

As we’ve referenced above, distinguish between private versus public, and personal versus corporate communications.

Emoticons are still regarded as a relatively informal language. So the more formal the situation, in terms of either your message or people you are communicating with, the less you should consider including emoticons. Conversely, the more informal your message, the more they are appropriate.

So the more personal and private the message, the more emojis are accepted. But they should be avoided within public and corporate messages.

As we’d perhaps expect, the research generally finds that people are highly mindful when they add emoticons and emojis to their messages; sensitively adapting their use to fit the occasion, the recipient’s status and to match the recipient’s own communication behaviour.

That makes sense. You’re unlikely add them to emails you send to the head of your organisation. But you just might if you know that head routinely uses emoticons and emojis themselves. Or if you are also friends, and you’re messaging to communicate a much less formal message, or a personal rather than professional one.

You should be mindful too. Before you add emoticons and emojis to your content, consider your audience, how they will react, and the format and platform you’re using to communicate.

If in doubt, leave them out. Let your words do the talking, and craft them to communicate exactly what you want to say.

The fundamentals of effective communication

Every now and then it’s useful to be reminded about the fundamental principles of communicating. Because if you forget them, you’ll almost certainly communicate badly, and not get the response you were hoping for. This week’s big tip is this:

When you’ve got something to say, remember. It’s not about you. It’s about your audience. It’s not even about how well you tell your story.

It’s about how well others listen to it.

Because you may have done the greatest thing, and are able to tell it in the most amazing way. But if no-one is there to listen to you, or other things prevent them from listening to you, your story will drift off into the ether, either being lost in the wind, left neglected in a drawer, or absorbed into the 150GB of data sent over the Internet every second.

It sounds harsh. But how many times have you crafted and published a piece of content, that elegant email, witty social media post or deeply analytical report, for example, to realise that no one appeared to listen to a word. You failed to get anyone’s attention.

Each time that happens, it should remind you that communication is a two way process. It requires you the sender to formulate and send a message, ideally in the hope of engaging and influencing another.

To inform them, impress them, educate them, or encourage them to take an action.

But it also requires someone to receive your message, to be present to hear you, to listen to your words, and read or view your work. And that person or persons, that audience, should always be at the forefront of your mind. You should be considering them, before you even begin crafting your content.

To use or not to use AI

The latest release in a flurry of new AI-driven writing tools come from website hosting and design service Squarespace.

This week, the company announced the launch of it Brand Identity tool, which you can discover here.

In the company’s words: “With the new Brand Identity tool, you can teach Squarespace AI how to write in your voice.

Simply enter a description of your brand, select your preferred tone of voice, and Squarespace AI will reflect your inputs every time it creates or updates copy on your site.”

Now that is both good and bad.

Good because it’s another tool you can use to generate quick, effective communications on your website. And we always recommend that any organisation develops a consistent tone of voice. See our lesson ‘Who You Are’.

Bad, because we generally don’t recommend you use AI tools to write for you or your organisation. They can be incredibly useful to help edit your work, but can be counter-productive when generating written content. See this issue of The  Factual Storyteller for more details on our thinking on this.

Editorial Director job alert

There is a brilliant position available that may appeal to experienced factual storytellers specialising in science publishing.

The world-leading Public Library of Science is seeking an Associate Editorial Director to manage a subset of their growing PLOS journals portfolio, with oversight of esteemed publications including PLOS Biology, PLOS Medicine, PLOS Genetics and others.

You can view the job advert on LinkedIn here.

Qualified persons from the UK and US can apply, with the position fully remote/home-based.

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When you communicate your factual story, you will not just be speaking it, you will most likely be publishing it. So unless it’s an audio production, it’s important your published content looks good. If it doesn’t, you’ll lose your audience, and undo all your good work in creating your story in the first place.

When you publish your content, whether that be a document, report or presentation of some kind, a website or a video or film, consider the principles of layout and composition, which form the foundations of good content design.

These provide structure to your content and will help your audience navigate their way through your factual story. Information presented clearly and logically will be read or viewed more quickly and easily, be better understood and retained in the memory.

Layout and composition can include text, images, graphics and negative space, where there is little or no content. There are countless ways to compose and layout these elements. But as you create your own factual content there is one fundamental technique you should always use, and that is to embrace and utilise alignments and grids.

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Most people don’t notice how much of their content is aligned, because often it is done so automatically. Whenever you create a document or write an email, the software you are using automatically aligns the text.

But you should pay attention to how the visual elements of your content are aligned, and be consistent.

That means placing the tops or bottoms of images and blocks of texts along the same lines, and creating equal spacing between elements and lines. It could mean centring images and text that have a relationship to each other, so they look even and balanced.

Create equally spaced margins and use the same margins on all your pages or slides.

A good tip is to overlay a grid onto your content. If your content creation software doesn’t allow this, try to imagine a grid and use your eye to line up items. Try to ensure all your content elements fall into a regular pattern on this grid, consistently appearing in the same places relative to each other, and aligned to each other.

Take our lesson ‘Why layout matters’.

Tips from a design master

Continuing the theme about the importance of good design, we recommend you listen to the School of Motion podcast - particularly the latest episode which offers a number of excellent tips about how to improve the design of your work.

School of Motion teaches animation and motion graphics, but many of their podcasts are useful to all those communicating their work. In their latest podcast, the School of Motion chats with design master Brady Erikson, who offers a numbers of tips you can use to amplify your own projects.

These include

• Delving into colour theory and experimenting with different colour settings to enhance your design work.

• Continuously evaluating your designs from different perspectives. Use techniques like zooming in and out, flipping the design, and adjusting saturation to assess the composition and balance of your work. This practice can help you identify areas that need improvement and enhance the overall quality of your designs.

• Embracing iteration: accept that perfection is rare in the initial stages of design. Embrace the iterative process of refining and adjusting your work. This mindset will help you overcome discouragement and lead to better design outcomes.

• Experimenting with blending modes: Brady highlights the potential of use blending modes in software such as Adobe’s Photoshop, Illustrator or After Affects to achieve creative results, unique effects and add depth to your designs.

• Capturing real-world textures: incorporating textures from the real world can add authenticity and emotion to your designs. Brady suggests taking the time to photograph textures yourself, experimenting with different objects and lighting to create unique effects.

Shutterstock’s best colour combinations

To help you explore colour, and if you’re looking for some design inspiration, it’s worth checking out a new round up by image library Shutterstock.

The colours you use in your designs, presentations, reports and websites are important. They set the tone, engage viewers while also shaping their perceptions of who you are and the work you’re communicating. You can learn more in our lesson Use Colour Theory.

To help, Shutterstock has created 101 colour combinations, that you can use either as inspiration or directly in your work. Each colour palette is free, and comes with hex codes, so you can be sure to be copying and using the exact recommended colour. 

As well as the colour combinations, the roundup offers a quick crash course in colour theory and psychology, and segregates out its palettes into cool, bright and warm combinations among others.

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Amazing new storyboard tool

One of our key lessons at the Factual Storytelling School is that you should always script and storyboard any video or audio production, before you create and publish it. You should plan these, before putting in the significant creative and technical effort needed to produce them. 

But what if you can’t draw, yet need to sketch out convincing scenes in a storyboard to share with colleagues and clients?

We’re very pleased to recommend an amazing new tool you can use to do just that.

Created by David R Smith, Storytribe is a new platform for storytellers that aspires to be the world’s best storyboarding tool. 

Storytribe provides a library of ready-to-use graphic assets and scene props. It allows you to create stunning illustrations and storyboards effortlessly. No drawing skills needed. You can customise characters, props, backgrounds, and speech bubbles in minutes, via an easy to use user interface. Find out more here.

See our lesson Why You Must Script And Storyboard for much more on how you go about it structuring your next video or audio show.

Promoting your content on new platforms

We like to recommend other useful writers and content creators whose advice may help you create, publish and promote your factual content to audiences.

This week, we suggest you take a look at writer David McClory, who offers a wealth of valuable insights into how to write, and as important, get noticed.

In his newsletter this week, David shares tips about how best to utilise under-saturated platforms, where your content has a better chance of getting noticed.

David produces The Solopreneur Stack newsletter on Substack, which you can subscribe to here.

Learn how to engage people quickly and effectively, and become skilled at introducing your factual communications. If you don’t, you will be missing perhaps the greatest opportunity you have to impact others, and be listened to.

So apart from the importance of a good hook, how do you best introduce your story, content, presentation, social media post or report?

Perhaps one of the most surprising rules of how to create good introductions, is also one of the most counter-intuitive. When people tell stories, they think they need to start at the beginning.

In fact, a good introduction should start at the end, the story’s end.

What do we mean by that?

If you start at the beginning, the risk is that you spend too much time setting out the context for what you later want to say. Or you try to explain why you want to communicate with your audience.

Or you try to set a scene, or focus on introducing characters or personnel. This mistake is commonly made when writing presentations and reports, which often open with a long explanation of why they have been published, who the content is for, or a long list of who authored it. All of which is frankly dull, uninspiring, and unlikely to win the audience’s attention or affection.

For more, visit the Factual Storytelling School, where, for a single fee, you and your colleagues can enrol for more than 90 lessons, including Authoring Captivating Reports and Creating Powerful Presentations (p 252).

A good, powerful introduction should begin by somehow capturing, or encapsulating, the key, most important point of your story. The point that your narrative will lead up to, and conclude on. Your introduction should convey or reflect in some way, everything you are trying to say.

Let’s look back at an example of a powerful introduction that does this - the introduction to this article.

Those words essentially summarise the whole point of this article. They also reflect a core message of our Factual Storytelling Course, which is to help you learn how to engage people quickly and effectively, and become skilled at introducing your factual communications.

It also introduces a value proposition to you. And it acts as a sales pitch of sorts, encouraging you to continue paying attention, to gain the reward of new skills.

It also contains an element of jeopardy, that you will lose out if you don’t read on.

So as well as starting at the end, the introduction to this article was crafted so it was personal to you, meant something to you, and created a connection with you based on expected value, and emotion, as it’s hard not to have an emotional response to the idea that no-one may listen to you.

There are many reasons why you should learn to shape introductions that evoke the main point of your content.

First, is the very blunt conclusion that if the most important message you have to report isn’t that interesting, and is unlikely to gain your audience’s attention, then you can’t expect anyone to engage further, and consume any more of your content.

Second, audiences subconsciously prefer to be led through a story, which is why we use narratives and structure to direct them to what we next have to say. It is why we use techniques such as signposting, to further direct them to upcoming or important aspects of our stories.

Take our lesson ‘The Art Of Signposting’.

Third, some audiences will disengage with your content, however good your introduction. Life gets in the way, and people have other demands on their time.

So by introducing the main point of your content, you have grasped the opportunity to convey your message in the shortest time possible, and you’ve extended an invite to those in your audience to return, as they will understand the subject of your content they are returning to.

Using AI tools responsibly

Generative Artificial Intelligence is a fast developing technology that poses opportunities and risks for content creators, the majority of which are factual storytellers striving to communicate their work.

How should you use Gen AI to help tell your story? Will it serve your needs? How will your audience respond - will your colleagues, clients, customers and partners be comfortable with your use of the technology and its various applications?

There are no simple answers. We’ve offered guidance as to why you shouldn’t use AI to write for you, but also recommended AI-image generating tools and raised issues with how some of them perform.

The UK’s national broadcaster, the BBC has now updated its own plans for how it will use Gen AI.

They are worth a read in case they may help inform your organisation’s approach.

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The BBC has already set out three principles to govern how it plans to use Gen AI responsibly, which are:

• Always act in the best interests of the public.

• Always prioritise talent and creativity.

• Always be open and transparent with audiences when we use AI to support content-making.

Now it outlines some of the ways it is considering using Gen AI to help create future content.

They include:

• Using AI to translate content to reach wider audiences, and reformat content to widen its appeal.

• Creating a new BBC Assistant - essentially a digital chatbot to help people learn, as they use the BBC’s Bitesize educational service.

• Using AI to create more personalised marketing material - this reinforces one of our core messages at The Factual Storytelling School - that personalising content is a great way to better reach and impact audiences.

• Using AI to aid journalists - for example, by helping them generate a range of headlines to factual news stories. Again this reinforces another of our teachings - that you should continue to iterate your content to find the optimal way of expressing it.

• And asking Gen AI to help label content so it can be better and more consistently be found via search functions, and served to audiences engaging with similar stories.

Take a look here, and see how the BBC’s approach to using Gen AI may inform your own.

A new range of microphones

Is you’re creating video or audio content, then microphones matter. Good or poor sound recording can lift or ruin the story you are trying to tell.

So it’s worth being aware of the hardware you need to record good sound, and new options coming onto the market.

Shure have just launched a new discreet range of lavalier microphones, the ones you attach to clothing, usually a lapel, to record a person’s voice as they speak.

Their MoveMic system is wireless, and designed for use by content creators, videographers and mobile journalists.

You can purchase a MoveMic One to record over a single channel of audio, or MoveMic Two to capture a second sound source. You’ll get 8 hours or recording, with a further 24 hours available using the microphone’s case to top up the charge. The mics can wirelessly record direct to a smartphone, and a receiver kit can be added to record to a DSLR or mirrorless camera. You can also use free ShurePlus apps to determine and monitor your recording settings.

Other brands, such as Rode and Sennheiser also make great lav mics, but Shure’s new clip-on wireless mics may also be one to consider buying.

They get great reviews, including from Forbes.

How to grow an audience on Substack

This newsletter is based upon the Substack infrastructure, which is a relatively new platform, designed to help authors find and build an audience.

If you think Substack could be for you or your organisation, have a read of this guest post by Anna Codrea-Rado, which offers valuable advice on what to do when starting from scratch, how to build a career and find an audience.

How many people you are talking to, where they live, what platforms and publications they engage with, and which social media products keep their attention. The better you can understand your audience, and how they behave, the better you’ll be able to reach them.

Which is why we’re drawing your attention to the Digital 2024 Global Overview Report, published by Simon Kemp at DataReportal in partnership with Meltwater and We Are Social.

The report outlines significant top-level insights into how audiences around the world are engaging with digital products, platforms and media, insights worth paying attention to.

According to the United Nations World Population Prospects, 8.08 billion people are now living on Earth. Of these, 5.61 billion use a mobile phone, up by 138 million (+2.5 percent) since early 2023. That’s almost 70 percent of the world’s total population.

More than 66 percent of all people on Earth use the internet, with global users totalling 5.35 billion. Internet users have grown 1.8 percent over the past year, up by 97 million new users since the start of 2023.

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Active social media user identities have passed 5 billion, equivalent to 62.3 percent of the world’s population (if social media user identities represent unique individuals, which they do not). That’s an annual growth of 5.6 percent.

Moreover, in the report’s words, the “typical” social media user now spends 2 hours and 23 minutes per day using social media. The highest usage tends towards the Middle East, with people in Africa tending towards being the most infrequent users.

While the typical internet user now spends 6 hours and 40 minutes online each day.

The report is full of further insights, and we encourage you to review them, and develop your understanding of the most significant global trends in how audiences are today engaging digitally.

Learn to ask “What’s New?”

When you want to communicate the story of you or your organisation’s work, remember this advice about meet and greets:

When you greet someone, don’t ask “How are you?”

They’ll likely reply with no meaningful information. They’ll say “I’m OK”, tell a boring anecdote, or list ad hoc facts about their day.

Instead, ask “What’s new with you?”

This forces the person you’re communicating with to become self-critical. To seek out novel, meaningful information about themselves. To tell you something you don’t yet know. Which will be far more insightful and compelling to hear.

Now use this same technique when telling the story of your work.

Don’t ask yourself “How are we doing?”

Because then you’ll tell a story that summarises your position. You’ll list facts. And offer no new insights.

Ask yourself “What is new with us?”

And then tell that story to your audience.

For more, visit the Factual Storytelling School, where, for a single fee, you and your colleagues can enrol for more than 90 lessons.

A novel way to create digital animations

If you’re not aware, Lottie is a highly popular animation format, used to create customizable vector animations for use in motion graphics.

It can be a great way to incorporate complex factual animations, infographics and graphics into websites and mobile apps.

Their size and usability make Lottie files far easier to work with than GIF and SVG files. That helps developers incorporate motion graphics into their designs without increasing the time it takes web pages to load.

Lottie has now released a beta version of Lottie Creator. Usually, you’d create Lottie files using Adobe’s After Effects software or the design tool Figma.

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But with Lottie Creator, you can now create Lottie animations directly via a web browser.

According to Lottie: “Lottie Creator is an easy way for experienced and beginner motion designers alike to create and ship high-quality, lightweight and powerful Lottie animations.” Read more here.

And for more information about different file types and when to use them, visit the The Factual Storytelling School, sign up and take our lesson Know your Files and Codecs.

Infographics designer job vacancy

There is an exciting opportunity to join the i newspaper in the UK.

The digital-first publication is looking to hire a talented Designer and Infographics Artist, “who is passionate about digital storytelling and converting complex data and narratives into visually appealing, interactive, and user-friendly graphic elements.”

Key responsibilities include:

• Creating eye-catching digital infographics and stunning visuals to enhance the i’s coverage of news, sport and features.

• Using statistics and data to bring stories to life, helping to enrich readers’ understanding of complex issues.

• Contributing ideas to the production of visual journalism at i.

• Collaborating with editorial colleagues to translate news stories and data into compelling graphic narratives.

Find out more here. The closing date is 29th February 2024.

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In short, there are two ways that people and corporations usually tell stories about what they do. The common way. And the less-used, far better way.

To illustrate what we mean, watch the short film we’ve produced below. It lasts just a couple of minutes, and tells the same, hypothetical story from two different perspectives. As you watch, think about which approach impacted you more, and why.

As you’ve just seen, the video shows two versions of the same basic story, celebrating a new type of high-tech nuclear reactor, capable of transforming energy production.

Although the content is futuristic, and technological, it is representative of the work undertaken by many companies - which is often technical in nature, and detailed, or information heavy.

The story is first told using a conventional approach, mostly commonly employed by organisations. They tell the story of their work, from THEIR PERSPECTIVE.

So it is told as a factual story, an organisation highlighting the new, astounding capabilities of its technology. The story’s focus is on the technical advances made. The company is reporting news about what it does.

Telling the story from this perspective has strengths. By communicating extraordinary, new developments, the story has news value, and will naturally gain attention as a result. (See our Factual Storytelling Course lesson - Types of Engaging Introduction).

However, telling the story from this perspective has several weaknesses.

It’s a classic top down narrative, with the storyteller positioning themselves as the person in the community with the knowledge, insight and power that others must also know and subscribe to. Moreover, it follows a top down transmission model of communication, a common but also ineffective way to structure content.

Try to communicate the story from the perspective of your audience

Why? Because a narrative shaped this way doesn’t really ask anything of its audience.

It does one thing well. It has a wow factor. By presenting exciting, new information, it may grab the audience’s attention, and impress them. But that’s where the story’s journey ends; that the world may somehow change. But it offers no real information or insight about how.

And as we all know, when we get excited, the feeling quickly wears off. So, though the story of a futuristic technology may excite and impress its audience, that impact will be fleeting. The audience won’t remember the technical details. They won’t remember why this news matters, nor what it actually means for their lives and future.

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The perspective used to tell this story also leaves important questions unanswered.

Who is the audience for this story? Is it people who like science, or technology? Is it people who like watching sci-fi movies? Is it people seeking news about the latest world-changing technological advances? All may apply, but it’s not obvious. It’s a story in search of an audience.

If the story finds these audiences, it then leaves open a following question. What does the organisation hope these audiences will do with the knowledge shared in the video? These audiences will likely acquire a raised awareness of the energy company’s brand, and capabilities. And they may feel excited. But only for a very short time. The story doesn’t ask the audience to feel much more, or aspire to do anything.

People recall stories far better than facts. People respond better to stories they can relate to personally. People respond better to stories that impact them emotionally. These are all crucial lessons we coach at the Factual Storytelling School.

By changing the perspective from which you tell a story, you can convert weaknesses in your storytelling into strengths, and dramatically improve the impact your story will have, on many levels.

In our video, the story is told again, this time from the perspective of the people the technology is actually designed to benefit. Of the two approaches to communicating the same technical advances, this is more memorable and impactful.

Why? Because telling the story from perspective of the end-user of the technology, the story is already defining its audience, and speaking directly to them.

This approach makes the story personal to those viewing it, as they can see how it will positively enhance their lives, every day. It also elicits an emotional response from the audience, communicating an uplifting, transformational message about how the technology can support people.

By communicating the technology’s benefits, rather than technical details, the content also conforms to one other fundamental rule of telling factual stories. Which is to focus on and tell ‘the real point of any work’. Its most meaningful aspect, which ultimately defines why the work was done in the first place.

For example, financial services companies work not to trade financial products, to administer funds, or be expert in financial planning. Yes, they do all those things as part of their day to day operations. But they do so to fulfil the ultimate point of their work, which is to make money and profit for their clients, and themselves. When communicating with prospective clients, they will better served by telling the story that they will make you money, not try to impress you with the technical details of the technology, talent or methods they use to do it.

The nuclear fusion story is more impactful when it communicates the technology’s fundamental raison d’etre, which is to generate near endless, renewable, cheap power for use by the people whose governments funded it.

Try to avoid communicating your work by taking the approach most organisations do, of telling a story from your own perspective; focussing on what you do, what is new about that, and how good your work is.

Instead, try to communicate the story from the perspective of your audience. Focus on how your work will benefit them, how it will change the way they feel and benefit their life in some small way.

Learning to listen to your audience

So important is this next point, it’s worth another reminder.

When communicating any factual content, try to see the world as your audience does, and respond accordingly. That means paying attention to your audience’s behaviour.

For example, if the majority of your audience enjoy consuming short-form content, there is little to gain from mainly publishing long-form.

If large sections of your audience change their consumption habits, change to meet their expectations. If internal staff prefer to hear company updates direct from their line-managers, there is little point publishing an internal newsletter no-one reads. If your readers now consume all their news on social media, consider moving your activity to where your audience is, and create a social publishing presence.

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But you need to strike a balance. Because sometimes, you shouldn’t listen to your audience.

Audiences can also be fickle. They do not share your responsibilities as a storyteller. And the loudest voices are often not the most representative, or sage. The audience members that speak to you the most loudly, may perversely not be those you wish to listen to most.

Part of the art of factual storytelling, is learning when and how to respond to the people you are communicating with. Find out more by enrolling on the Factual Storytelling School course.

Leading science communicator job vacancy

There is an exciting opportunity to join the editorial staff of The Economist in London.

The internationally-renowned magazine is looking to hire a writer on science and technology, who will mainly be responsible for covering emerging technologies — topics such as artificial intelligence, biotechnology or space.

According to the job advertisement: “They will help shape The Economist’s thinking on new technologies and how they could affect society, business and economics.”

And “Experience in journalism is not essential, but the ability to write clearly and entertainingly is,” which are just the sort of skills we coach at the Factual Storytelling School.

We know some of the science team at The Economist. They are a talented bunch, and very much worth joining.

Find out more here. The closing date is 24th February 2024.

For prospective journalists in the US, other exciting news

The Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY is going tuition-free, according to its namesake Craig Newmark and the school’s dean, Graciela Mochkofsky.

That will make it the first journalism graduate school to offer a tuition-free program, according to US News site Axios.com — a move intended to help widen opportunities for journalists from more diverse backgrounds.

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Visual media grabs attention, images can be used as entry points to content, and content that contains imagery can be more appealing to look at. Which explains why the majority of content published to audiences contains photographs, graphics or illustrations.

However, although content producers are used to working with images, and some social platforms, such as Instagram, are defined by their images, many people are confused or uncertain about how image files can differ. And which image files they should use when publishing different types of content and media.

For example, it is very common, even for communication specialists working within large corporations, to share brand logos as .jpeg files. And assume these files can be used by colleagues. The reality is that often they can’t - for reasons we’ll explain below.

That simple misstep can lead to significant confusion, frustration and time wasted as staff try to work out why the brand logo they’ve been supplied, and placed on their presentation or report, is displaying a large, unwanted white square behind it they can’t remove.

So here is a short handy guide to the most commonly used image files.

First we must highlight the difference between images based on pixels, and those based on vectors.

Software such as Photoshop produces raster files, which record pixels, storing an image as a series of tiny coloured squares. If you size up these files too large, eventually you will see the image pixelate and lose definition. Photographs are usually saved as raster files exported to .jpeg, .png or .tiff file formats, while .gif files also contain a series of raster images.

Other software, such as Illustrator, produce vector files, which use mathematical code to create the same image at any scale. So vector files will look crisp at any size. Vector files are then exported to either .pdf, .png files, or to the .svg file format.

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JPEG

.jpeg or .jpg is perhaps the most common file format used to save and share images.

Note that .jpg is the older, more limited format, and .jpeg is the current standard. These files are commonly used to post images to websites, blogs and social media, and placed in presentations and reports.

Images saved as .jpeg files are compressed. Be aware they can be further compressed each time the file is saved. So check the quality of the image files you want to use in your content, to ensure it is still acceptable.

Note the .jpeg format always includes a background, adding white to replace any transparency. Usually you don’t see this, as your image fills the image canvas, reaching all four edges. However, if you place a smaller image on a larger canvas, or you add an image that has transparent elements, the export process will fill those spare spaces and elements with white.

That’s why it’s a bad idea to share logos as .jpegs. Logos usually contain negative space, either between the letters of written logos (known as a Wordmark), such as Google’s logo. Or around a non-rectangular logo symbol (Brand Mark), such as Nike’s swoosh logo. This negative space should be transparent, so the logo can be placed on top of other images and designs.

.jpegs are raster files.

PNG

An image saved in the .png format maintains its size and quality throughout multiple saves and changes.

Another benefit is that the .png file format can maintain transparency, so you can cut content out from images, and save it as a .png file without a background. This can then be overlaid onto other content. Logos are best shared as .png files or .svg files (see later).

.png files are lower in resolution than other image file types, so are better for digital media than printed images.

.pngs are raster files.

TIFF

The .tiff file format can be used to save and print high quality images, and is best used in creating documents or content to be printed rather than digitally published, which usually requires smaller file sizes.

.tiffs are raster files.

GIF

The .gif file format can support short animated graphics, short clips or moving images.

.gifs are raster files.

SVG

The .svg file type is most common in website design. If you’re designing a logo or graphic for a website, you may work with SVG files. This extension supports smaller image files and short animations. This file type maintains a clear resolution at any scale.

.svgs are vector files.

PDF

PDF is the portable document format, saved as .pdf.

An image can be saved, shared and published as a .pdf, which is why we are including pdf in this list. However, that is less common.

More usually, .pdf is a popular file format for sharing documents.

A .pdf preserves the original layout, formatting and design of a file, and can be printed, emailed and scanned relatively easily. Though possible, it can be harder to extract information back out of a .pdf file to use in other software, so this file format is usually used to capture a final document, report or magazine that will be viewed by an audience, but not interacted with or altered.

However, it’s worth knowing that .pdfs are based on a similar technology to Adobe’s Illustrator software, which produces .ai files. That means .pdfs can be converted to .ai files, and edited in that software, relatively easily.

.pdfs can contain both raster and vector-based images.

For more information, enrol in the Factual Storytelling School and take our lesson Know Your Files and Codecs.

Embrace Behavioural Science

Our recommendation this week? That as well as subscribing to, following and recommending The Factual Storyteller, you review the archive of “A Load of BS: The Behavioural Science Podcast”.

At the Factual Storytelling School, we’re big advocates of drawing insights from behavioural science, and using that information to better reach audiences.

To truly impact audience, you need to understand how they behave, make decisions and what stimuli they best respond to. You’ll hear us talking about it a lot, and we’ve previously recommended you follow Behavioural Scientist Patrick Fagan.

Apple’s new M3 chips

When it comes to content production tools, we’re not going to re-open the age-old Mac versus PC debate - and we suspect we may not change anyone’s mind about which is better even if we did.

Instead, we’re highlighting that Mac’s new M3 chips, that power the company’s latest MacBook Pro and iMac models, have been available for a few months now, since their launch in late 2023. And that’s enough time for reviewers to have trialled the chips, and provide insights into whether Mac-using content producers should consider upgrading their hardware.

Before Apple started integrating its own chips into its products, content producers were in a bit of a bind. That’s because Macs with high chip speeds, had fewer processing cores. And those with more cores, had slower chip speeds. That created a dilemma for multimedia producers.

Higher chip speeds allowed for faster working, and a computer that could design and edit more quickly. But they are slower to render out and export the resulting final files. More cores rendered large files, such as long-form videos, or videos containing lots of effects or animation, far quicker, but were slower to drive design and video software, as they were combined with slower chips.

So you could either work fast, and wait a long time for your file to export, or work on a slower computer that exported the final file far more quickly.

Apple’s M-series chips have reduced this issue - and use multi-cores and multi-threading to far more effectively process and render content.

PC Mag has published a detailed review of how the latest generation M3 chips stack up in terms of raw performance, which you can read here.

A new way to search information

When you want to research your factual story online, there are generally two ways to go about it.

You can take the conventional approach, open a web browser and use a search engine to find web links and pages related to your request.

Or you can use an AI chatbot to search the web for you, and summarise the information it has found.

Increasingly, you should learn to do the later, and start to harness the power of AI to more efficiently research factual content. It’s a topic we’ll return to, with tips and techniques about how to best use AI in your communications work, and just as important, aspects of using AI that you should be wary of.

But for today, we’re highlighting a new development in how to use the dominant Google search engine to research your work.

Google have just launched a new search tool, called Circle to Search. It works only on Android phones. But it offers, in the company’s words, “a new way to search for anything on your Android phone without switching apps.” It’s particularly useful for searching for information about objects in images and video.

You activate Circle to Search by long pressing the home button or navigation bar on your Android phone. You can then circle any item you see in a visual image. The tool will then find similar items from across the web. Circle a watch in an image, and it’ll return information about it, including links to retailers selling it.

You can ask more complex questions about what you see.

Circle a food and ask “is this nutritious?” and Google will provide information from across the web. Or you can circle phrases or words shown in videos or images to learn more about what those expressions mean.

Circle to Search is, of course, powered by AI.

If you want to know more about how a range of Google’s AI-powered tools can help you research your work, this blog by Google is a good place to start.

We recommend you do.

For example, you can find out how you can point your camera and ask the Google app to answer questions you have about what you are filming, among other techniques.

You can also read here our coverage of Google’s new Pinpoint tool, that allows you to search thousands of documents.

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Subscribe for more future updates about how we can help you use such remarkable new technology to tell your story, and that of your organisation.

And don’t forget to consider enrolling you or your team or organisation into the Factual Storytelling School course.

Before you plan and publish your content, go through the following checklist.

Check you have covered each point, and crucially, that each step is aligned with the next.

Almost all mistakes people and organisations make when communicating or publishing content are due to a failure to properly address one of the following:

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TARGET AUDIENCE

You must know who you are telling a story to. Ask yourself: who is your audience? Who are you trying to reach and why?

EDITORIAL BRIEF

Do you have a strapline? This doesn’t need to be audience-facing but you should capture the overall ambition of your editorial endeavour, put as simply as possible. This can set the tone for your output, and provide clarity around what your content and stories are hoping to achieve.

EDITORIAL CONTENT 

Before you begin, think about what you are commissioning, from yourself or others. The stories, formats or  campaigns you are planning to produce. 

It’s important you know what type of stories you are telling, the volume and why you are publishing your content.

Once you’ve established the format, decide how to best structure your story, rather than listing information.

STAFF 

Consider the personnel required to produce your content. These may be internal staff, freelancers, partners, external consultants, or your audience creating user-generated content. 

Stories can’t be told without storytellers. 

You need the requisite number of staff to produce your expected content output. They also need to be skilled storytellers, able to contribute to the required media.

BUDGET

Content production takes time and resource, which usually translates into budget. It’s crucial to know the resources required and available for storytelling.

PLATFORMS AND CONTENT PRODUCTION SYSTEMS

Where and when will your story publish, and which platform can best reach your audience? You need to know this before you create your content. You also need to know how to use any content production system used to make stories and publish them to your platform.

PUBLICATION SCHEDULE 

How often will you publish your content? Audiences appreciate knowing when they can expect to hear from you, and how often. As a content publisher, you will also need to know your schedule so you can plan resources and budget.

PROMOTIONAL ABILITY 

You must let audiences know your story exists. You cannot expect audiences to actively seek out and find your content. You must promote it, so have a plan for how that will happen.

PUBLISHING TARGETS 

Set publishing targets or metrics you can use to gauge performance. Unless you measure the impact on your audiences, you will never learn, improve or know if you have achieved your publishing goal. So will you check how your story will be received? 

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When you communicate, start by going through this editorial checklist, and plan not only what you want to say, but how you will say it, and how audiences will receive your message. If you don’t, you’re setting yourself or business up to fail.

• For example, you may create engaging content but publish it to the wrong audience, or on the wrong platform.

• A marketing department may conceive a wonderful campaign, but fail to allocate enough budget to its creation and execution.

• Or leaders may fail to provide their teams with the training and equipment needed to produce the content they want to send clients.

• A company may produce an informative conference report, but not address how to promote and distribute it to delegates.

• Or set up a social media team, but not create a publication schedule, and plan ahead how often they need to publish to be heard by audiences.

You can learn more about this in our Factual Storytelling School module The Science Of Publishing.

First AI video

Remember a few weeks back, when we said this:

“A stunning new way to produce animated video may be just around the corner.

Pika.art has just announced Pika 1.0, a new tool that uses AI to turn your ideas into visually astounding videos. Pika converts text to video, images to video, and even video to different video, as well as allowing users to resize videos and expand their canvas.”

Well, the tool is already available to selected users, and we at the Factual Storytelling School have had a play.

Above and below are three short animated videos, produced by Pika, generated in JUST MINUTES. We asked Pika to create animated clips of Pixar characters as storytellers, using a typewriter, a hurricane at sea, and a tiger.

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Keep subscribing, for more future updates about how we can help you use such remarkable new technology to tell your story, and that of your organisation.

What colour is a tiger?

Which leads us to another related question: what colour is a tiger?

To you, a tiger likely appears orange. But to a tiger’s audience, a tiger does not appear orange. To a tiger’s natural audience, prey mammals such as deer and antelope, a tiger appears a very different colour - it actually appears green.

To find out more, and why this insight is so important, explore our Factual Storytelling School course module Know Who You Are Talking To, which covers all aspects of how you should think about audiences. 

Challenge your audience

Finally, we want to highlight a brilliant marketing campaign, that should be an example to us all. For what is says, but also how it says it.

Not only does it convey an important public health message, but it’s a good example of how you should consider using counter-intuitive content, editorial contrast, juxtaposition and inversion in your message design and communication. 

Each is related to the other.

• Counter-intuitive content is self-explanatory, but one of the best ways to engage audiences is to start your content by sharing an insight that challenges your audience’s world view.

• Think about how you might add editorial contrast to your designs. A really effective way to do this is to use imagery that stands in contrast to your words to make a point, or in contrast to other images.

• Juxtaposition is the placing of two things near to one another with contrasting effect - in this case the images of happier-looking people being identified as those actually silently suffering depression.

• Inversion, is the concept of challenging your audience’s preconceptions, communicating the opposite of what they may expect.

We cover these within our lessons on Types Of Engaging Introduction, Techniques For Creating Content and The Importance of Contrast.

When you use any of the above, you will stimulate your readers or viewers into paying you more attention.

All credit for the images, design and campaign goes to The German Depression Aid and Suicide Prevention Foundation and its Germany-wide network German Alliance against Depression. Read more about their work and campaign here.

The website is in German. But here’s another tip: use the web browser Microsoft Edge, and it will automatically convert the website into English (Google Chrome will also translate websites, if you click Translate to the right of the address bar, as will Safari if you click the Translate button in the url bar.)

Refer a friend

One of the main reasons we give each other gifts, is to build and cement our relationships.

However, while giving a lovely gift can impress another, and helps deepen a relationship, giving a poorly-chosen gift can have the opposite effect. It’s why we fret over whether to give a spouse an experience, such as cooking lessons, or a fashionable piece of clothing? Do we give a friend a bottle of fine wine, or if we can afford it, take them wine-tasting?

Giving gifts has consequences. So which types of gift should we gift each other, and why, and what has that to do with communicating better?

The answers can be found in a fascinating research paper entitled “Experiential Gifts Foster Stronger Social Relationships than Material Gifts”, by Cindy Chan of the University of Toronto, Canada and Cassie Mogilner of the University of California, published in the Journal of Consumer Research.

The research investigates the impact of different types of gifts on the strength of interpersonal relationships.

The researchers conducted experiments examining actual gift exchanges in real-life relationships.

They found that experiential gifts (events for recipients to live through) produce greater improvements in relationship strength than material gifts (objects for recipients to keep), regardless of whether the gift giver and recipient consume the gift together.

Given that this is a newsletter designed to help you and colleagues improve your communication skills, why are we talking about gift-giving?

Because the research on gift-giving reinforces two significant points you must keep front of mind when communicating your message: know your audience, and remember the importance of making an emotional connection with them.

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Just as you shouldn’t assume that giving material gifts (objects) is the best way to foster a relationship with friends and family, also don’t assume that sharing information (facts) is the best way to foster a relationship with your audience.

In our Factual Storytelling School module Know Who You Are Talking To, we have eight lessons covering how your audience will react to your message, how to learn to listen to your audience, what your audience expects and why audience culture matters.

Emotional connections matter more. In their research paper, Chan and Mogilner state: “Research on relationships highlights emotion as a key feature in relationship development and maintenance.”

It’s why giving an experiential gift has a greater impact, as an experiential gift tends to elicit a stronger emotional response than a material gift, when a recipient consumes it - think of the awe of an adventure trip, the excitement of being taken to a art gallery or rock concert, or the calmness of a spa day.

When people communicate facts about themselves, their business or enterprise, they naturally tend to forget this. And that is a big mistake you should try to avoid (see our Factual Storytelling School lesson Why Stories Are Better Than Facts).

Emotions also drive how we consume and engage with content.

We have an emotional response to almost everything we read and listen to; including being peeved by garage repair prices, salivating over restaurant menus, or impressed with our company’s latest sales figures (see our Factual Storytelling School lesson It’s Time To Get Emotional).

So create content that you imagine will emotionally provoke your audience. And when you create your factual content, don’t necessarily strip out, or leave out, emotions from what you have to say.

We’d like to give a festive hat-tip to Patrick Fagan, a behavioural scientist, who initially flagged the research mentioned above on LinkedIn. If you’re interested in similar insights into how people behave, we recommend you give him a follow.

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As an aside, if you’ve still to buy gifts this Christmas, remember this: you don’t have to spend much.

Giving experiments have shown that despite gift givers’ beliefs that expensive gifts will be more appreciated, recipients appreciate expensive and inexpensive gifts alike. People receiving gifts also tend to put a lower monetary value on a gift than its actual cost.

And you don’t have to think too hard about what to buy, as according to the research paper: “Although gift givers think that unsolicited gifts convey greater thoughtfulness and serve as a stronger signal of relationship value, recipients prefer receiving cash or gifts that they had explicitly requested.”

The beauty of Rembrandt lightning

When you tell your factual story, try to embrace visual storytelling techniques, such as using photographs or videos.

And when people are your subject, try to include a visual effect known as Rembrandt lightning, so-called because the famous artist used this type of light in his paintings to dramatic effect.

Rembrandt lighting is now a standard lighting style used in portraits.

You can achieve the same by placing a light to the side of your subject, exposing one side of their face. Then move the light back towards the camera, until you see the light just starting to catch the other side of the face, casting a triangular shadow from the nose across the cheek. Experiment with the light position to get it just right.

You and your colleagues can learn about this and similar techniques when you enrol in the Factual Storytelling School, which includes a whole module titled Embrace Visual Storytelling.

The evolution of 3D animations 

The latest release of Adobe After Effects is now available (version 24.1, December 2023).

For those not in the know, Adobe’s After Effects software is an incredible content production tool that can be used to create and add motion graphics and animations to factual videos, and also make animated online graphics.

The latest release includes several new features and enhancements, most of which will enable users to better create and employ 3D imagery in their designs.

Users can now directly import 3D models into After Effects and realistically place these 3D models into scenes with complementary lighting and shadows.

They can seamlessly use 2D and 3D elements in the same composition, creating more visually exciting and complex animations. And create dynamic camera effects, as well as more quickly render out these 3D visuals, which is always useful for content producers working to deadlines.

A new way to view time

When you think about the personal or corporate messages and stories you want to tell, it’s natural to think in the moment. To tell stories about stuff that has just happened. But we don’t always need to think that way.

Sometimes your audience will want to hear something deeper, and more meaningful. 

That’s why this week, we’re recommending the The Long View: A Field Guide by Richard Fisher, a newsletter devoted to long-term thinking.

Richard is an experienced science and technology writer who has worked for New Scientist and the BBC among others. The newsletter is an extension of his book The Long View that dare we say, would make an excellent Christmas gift, even if it is a materialistic rather than experiential present.

As we near the year’s end, it feels appropriate to talk about time, and reflect that sometimes it can be better to think long-term, and share stories about the challenges we face, and successes we aspire to, over a much longer time frame.