No storyteller has ever been able to dream up anything as fantastically unlikely as what really does happen in this mad Universe. (Robert Heinlein)

1. A storyteller knows the stories that make the most impact are the ones that come from the heart.

2. A storyseller thinks that you have to bedazzle folks with little bits of exaggeration and insipid calls to action based on fear and anxiety.

3. A storyteller is adept at knowing their audience and keeping them engaged.

4. A storyseller is always at the back of the room contemplating how stupid everyone else’s stories are compared to his/her big story.

5. A storyteller encourages people to move the story forward and relate it to others in their own way without trying to control the messaging.

6. A storyseller is constantly afraid his/her story will not be passed along with the correct “brand” respect so they spend most of their time correcting people’s impression of the story.

7. A storyteller is thrilled beyond belief if the story goes viral and doesn’t immediately need to equate it with how many click thru’s or sales leads the story will create.

8. A storyseller wants you to fill out online registration forms to get the good stories, and loves to use scarcity as a fear tactic for pushing you to listen.

9. A storyteller believes in the power of magic, abundance and the Web to push the story in the direction it can be most appreciated.

10. A storyseller is the guy at the hula party that never takes off his tie.

11. A storyteller is the person who cares nothing about superficial impressions but rather how a story can empower one’s life in a positive way.

12. A storyseller thinks “commercials.”

13. A storyteller thinks “movies.’

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And second, that no one likes a mean hostess! (Espescially in the South.)

What good publicists do whether they are working offline or online on behalf of your book, music or product is to be the best host possible while they are working the “party” for you.

Good hostesses are not:

* Mean
*Snide
*Prone to sarcasm
*Cloaked in mystery
*Pushy
*Snooty

Good hostesses are:

*Kind
*Witty
*Authentic
*Entertaining
*Persistent and Open (So everyone feels important at the party.)
*Joyful

In the Spring, when I was at Mark Twain’s house (Samuel Clemens) in Hartford, CT, my husband and I toured the house with a guide and she chatted on about how Clemens and his wife loved to entertain and how he loved to tell stories at parties they held.

Stories connect all of us on a deeper level, and a good party hostess is never without wonderful, inspiring stories. I’ve spent 14 years on the Web telling stories. If you’re willing to tell real stories and find ones that help people deeply connect to one another, then you’ll find a perennial group of folks who will want to also stay connected with you.

The world is a better place if you strive to be exactly who you are and let others be who they are. No facade, no celebrity, just people to people. And remember, always have a good story to tell.

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2. Look for the news to have a local or national angle or hook. News that ties into the bigger picture has a better chance of being covered. For instance if you’re a tech company and you’re offering a computer backup system – a great tie-in might be that during the dog days of summer it’s not only people that heat up, but computers do as well. Thus, it’s always good to back your system up.

3. Customize your news to the journalist you’re sending it to. Note one of their recent stories and make sure that you identify how your news fits their beat.

4. Offer up a tips article in the form of a press release. i.e. “Five Ways to Keep Your House Cool During Summer” .

5. Be disruptive. If you’ve got a different angle to a story that’s hot, send a short brief to the reporter and tell him/her why they might want to get your take on the recent story as well. (And when I say send, I mean just send it politely. Don’t email stalk the journalist till they respond to you.)

Now go and make news!

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Roy C. Clarke’s superb take on narrative form.

And the history of Writer’s Digest and why you should be reading it.

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Here is one clip of the interview featured on YouTube .

There are several things to learn from this particular interview and how it went from both journalist and media/pr perspective.

While Sarah is actually a good journalist and writer and no doubt has talent, she failed in this interview because she was more concerned with seeming cool and hip than smart, serious and engaging. People come to SXSW to learn new things, not see somebody being interviewed by a journalist who spends a lot of the time playing with her hair and touting her book being released in May.

Sarah was too casual in her interviewing style and she lost control of the interview. She engaged the audience and then belittled the audience at the same time. She evoked audience comment from the stage which enabled them to feel as though they had an opportunity to rate the interview live.

This is somewhat similar to a comedian letting a heckler take the mike. There are always going to be some folks in any audience who are ready to pounce (Not POWNCE) and as an interviewer you have to respect them but you also have to manage them.

The bigger point is for someone who is writing a column for Business Week and has made it despite all odds to this level of work, there’s no time in live interviews for hair-twisting or spending a considerable amount of time asking a CEO about notebooks they write their ideas in and then debating whether they actually burn them or not.

I’m curious to know if Sarah found time to ask Mark about Bill Gates leaving Facebook and moving to LinkedIn or whether Facebook is truly making a return for all those ad dollars companies are spending on it.

While Mark might benefit from some interview or media training it’s not really his job in interviews to move the interview along or make sure the audience is engaged and getting what they need.

It’s the interviewer’s job. From the three years I was the Managing Editor of a Texas arts and entertainment magazine in Austin, the very best lesson I learned was how to be both an engaged listener and an engaged interviewer. Celebrity interviews are in some ways the toughest to do because they are already very media-trained and prepped by publicists not to answer questions.

When I interviewed folks like Frances McDormand, Debra Winger, Jimmy Kimmel, Ben Stein (one of my faves) I went into the interview determined to get something new and meaningful. Ben Stein gave me his secret to making a living as a writer (thank you Ben Stein – to this day), and Frances McDormand was a new mom so I found a way to connect with her on that level and the interview was fantastically revealing. (It helped that I was a new Mom too and Moms are always ready to talk about being a Mom.)

These skills served me well when I started writing online and managed the Ibizinterviews.com site (now gone) and interviewed all the early Net folks that were quite literally changing the way we would all do business and live.

In the mid 90′s, one of my favorite interviews was with Nelson Carbonell who was at the time CEO of Cysive and ended up telling me how he started the company in his basement with chairs purchased from Wal-Mart.

Or Jon Nordmark, CEO of eBags.com who successfully made it through the dot-com burst intact and said during our interview that luggage was sexy. (It is if you get it from eBags!)

In the late 90′s, I interviewed the CTO of Google – Craig Silverstein about Google and ended up getting him to talk about Star Trek and how it related to the Google algorithms. I knew he was a Star Trek fan and that helped move our interview into a real conversation. He’s still at Google today.

Oftentimes if you just do exhaustive research you can find a way to even help the most tech-centered folks have authentic conversations and illicit aha moments from them without berating them or belittling them.

The real key to being an adept interviewer is to help people tell their story even if they’re not comfortable with telling it. Mark was spending too much time in “company speak” but even that can be diffused if a reporter has really done background research and is able to pull the interviewee out of “company speak.” It’s a hard skill to learn, but it can be done.

There is also a lesson in all of this about how journalists often go into a story or interview with a set template or angle in mind. Sarah had a set angle she wanted to cover and did a poor job of stepping outside that angle. She seemed argumentative and that’s tough to handle when you’re the interviewee, espescially when you’re a tech guy.

I’m reminded of years ago how deft Sally Richards was and how much I learned from her in terms of getting tech guys to speak in real terms. Sally never sacrificed herself, or her intellectual acuity either. She succeeded because she had a great sense of humor, camaraderie and engagement with the Silicon Valley elite and it was never about “Sally”.

The Internet, the Web, Web 2.0 or Web 18.0 is still at the very base founded in technology and the brilliant minds moving us all along to a better place. It’s not The Actor’s Studio, it’s technology and if you’re a journalist it’s never about you. It’s about the news and how it will impact society as a whole.

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And my favorite "customer centric" campaign running as of late is Kleenex’s – Let it Out campaign. This campaign is a stunning example of how you can as a company, person or brand, engage your prospects on their level.

At the end of the day, who wouldn’t want to sit on a bright blue couch with a Kleenex box and tell someone an amazing story about their lives? That’s what our lives are made up of, and that’s what Kleenex gets with this series of vignettes of folks on the couch.

The first time I watched the commercial, I honestly felt compelled to dust off my application for a Master’s in Counseling. Now that’s an engaging commercial!

Go and see for yourself here.  Keep in mind after you watch it, that there are few things truly in this world that are universal – but emotion is certainly one of the most powerful things.

Ask these questions about your story:

1. What is my company story?

2. What is the emotional hook for what I’m trying to sell?

3. How can I tell the story so it’s truly authentic and engages others?

4. Why is my story different than all the others out there?

5. Is the story strong enough to motivate my customer to take action?

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