Happy New Year! But how happy can you really be this year without telling your stories? Have you really considered what will make you happy and increase your business in 2007? Try storytelling.

Every professional and businessperson has an audience waiting to hear your stories to promote their relationships with you (patronage, loyalty, understanding, etc.) Tell your value stories; your business stories; your corporate stories; your relationship and romantic stories; your organizational stories; your success stories; your painful stories; your vision and mission stories; your process stories; how you work, and how you operate. If you do so, you will enlarge your professional space and do more business.

 Any story worth telling is important. Tell it. Even the birds, as they fly and sing, they are telling stories. There are many stories to tell about your life and your business. The market will recognize this and respond because storytelling will supercharge your personal and professional branding this year.

You have many platforms and media to tell your stories and a good one is the Great Storytelling Network you are reading now, which is anchored and sent to you every two weeks by Aneeta Sundararaj, a consummate storyteller in her own right who left the practice of medico-law to go full time into storytelling. And she has become very happy after taking that decision. That is her passion. Such is the power of storytelling, and professionals all over the world, leaders at all levels are realizing the importance and power of storytelling.

Philip Kotler, Professor of Marketing, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, USA, says, storytelling is taking branding to the next level. Kotler is an authority in Marketing, and author of many textbooks on marketing. Whenever he speaks, professionals listen. And that includes you.

So how do you want to supercharge your business and personal branding this year? Try storytelling. It works. There are many success stories and Infosynthesis will in subsequent editions of the Great Storytelling Network give you examples of the dynamics and applications of storytelling to business. Why? You ask. The reasons are many.

Marketing communications is becoming increasingly important; in negotiations, leadership, teamwork, entertainment, politics, marketing, selling, corporate social responsibility, evangelism and charity work.

Media outlets are multiplying by the day and the audience is becoming more fragmented. The numbers of newspapers, magazines, cable, satellite, and radio and television stations are legion and still increasing. So are movies, music, artistes, CDs, cable, internet media and more. These media outlets are now being used to bombard the consumer daily with commercial messages.

The critical question is: How does a producer, service provider, politician, religious minister, lecturer, or marketer ensure his/her message stands out from the crowd and is well received and acted upon? This is the present scenario where time-pressed consumers tune off lots of commercial messages.

The new trend of achieving results is “Storytelling.” Storytelling is gaining global attention because it enables the message sender to connect with the receiver at the emotional level, in the mind. This is where decisions are taken.

Storytelling in now increasingly being used  to lead; cause organizational change; promote brands; to sell; build teams and communities; to excel at job interviews and negotiations.

Storytelling is the new winning tool for marketing communications. It is a growing business as corporate executives are realizing the shortcomings of advertising and other standard forms of communications which no longer make impact on the skeptical consumer. You have to tell your many stories: That is the message now.