Annie Leonard’s “The Story of Stuff” series makes great use of simple video animation to create concise little stories around issues like the environmental impacts of bottled water. Here’s eight minutes that should clarify why buying bottled water is a boneheaded idea on many levels.

You can check out other videos in the series including Leonard’s latest, “The Story of Cosmetics,” here.

photo by ausiegall

As you might expect at the end of the year AND decade, lists were among the most popular tweets in December. No New Year’s resolution lists, though … guess everyone’s saving those for their January posts.

What the Hell Are You Waiting For?

50 Social Media Tactics for Nonprofits

The 4 Cornerstones of Social Media Monitoring

Is Your Nonprofit’s Story a Call to Action?

Three Reasons Why Storytelling is the Key to Social Media Marketing Success

BNET’s 10 Worst Ads of 2009

The Best and Worst Identities of 2009

Measure the Impact, Not the Influence

What Matters Now, Seth Godin?

10 Things You Need to Stop Tweeting About

Why Print Isn’t Going Anywhere for a Long, Long Time

Storytelling Through Social Media

Website at a Loss as to Why It Disappeared From Google

The Best Business Books of 2009

When It Comes to Online Content, More Niche Usually Trumps More Masses

100 Social Media & Content Marketing Predictions for 2010

Social Isolation and New Technology

5 Qualities of a Good Social Media Manager

Volunteers Give 10 Times More Than Other Americans

10 Best and Worst Internet Company Names of the Decade

Here’s how charity:water tells its amazing story through video (thanks to Allison Fine for the lead on this one).

While it’s a brilliant example of nonprofit storytelling, there’s another lesson here I’d like you to consider. If you were to tell your organization’s story through video, would it be anywhere nearly as compelling as this? I’m not referring to the scale or impact, just the simple power of what you’re doing as illustrated through video.

If not, you might want to give some serious thought as to what you’re doing. There are countless nonprofits out there who, given their limited impact, don’t really have a reason to exist. Don’t be one of them. If you can’t tell a compelling story about your organization and its mission, then perhaps you should reconsider what you’re doing or how you’re doing it.

If every picture tells a story (don’t it?), imagine what you can accomplish through social media. The introduction of social media to traditional storytelling has huge implications for the effectiveness of your marketing and communication efforts, whether you’re selling a product or a cause.

Here’s a nice presentation that walks you through the various elements of storytelling and how you might use social media to tell your stories in a more compelling fashion.

photo by fotodawg

I don’t remember who I first borrowed the idea from, but I really love reviewing my top 20 tweets each month. My approach to twitter is as editor/curator: I look for posts I think will appeal to those who follow me in the areas of marketing, communications, social media, journalism and related subjects, especially as they relate to nonprofits and small business. I of course liberally tweet my own posts since those happen to be the subjects I tend to write about.

What is particularly interesting is what my highest-performing tweets tell me about my followers on Twitter: they’re a fairly discerning bunch interested in real substance, not fluff. I can always tell when I’ve missed the mark, and it helps me quite a bit when considering what to blog about.

Here’s what was most popular in October. I encourage you to check out any you may have missed when first we tweeted. It’s all good stuff. Even my stuff (I think).

No More Excuses for Crap Communications

If Marketers Today Created the Stop Sign

Social Media and the Paradox of Choice

Why Every Communicator Should Blog

The Dangers of No Content Strategy

Your Communications Plan: What It’s Really For

Small Business: Get in the Social Media Pool

Why Nonprofits Are So Good at Social Media

All You Need is the Story

Results of the Fourth Annoying PowerPoint Survey

Build a Social Network for Your Business

Why Uncensored Blogging is the Future of Corporate Communications

Blogging is Dead, Long LIve Journalism

A Tagline is a Terrible Thing to Waste

Is Philanthropy Ready for the New Consumer?

Five Reasons Corporations are Failing at Social Media

My Five-Year-Old’s Future in Marketing

Hyatt: Managing the Boston Aftermath

Debating Seth Godin’s “Non” Slam

Small Business, Social Media Not Mixing

photo by wildxplorer

Time once again for a quick roundup of the 10 most popular links I tweeted last month. Twitter continues to be a fixation for many of us, but there also was lots of interest in storytelling, internal communication and social media in general. In order of popularity:

Advice From the Pros: Telling It Like It Is courtesy of Brain Traffic, noted content strategist Kristina Halvorson‘s firm, preaches the gospel of short, sweet and simple (my kind of sermon).

Content Creation Strategy for Nonprofits is a slide deck from Kivi Leroux Miller on how you can effectively manage all the content you create in support of your marketing and communication efforts.

Peter Shankman, the man behind HARO, asks the eternal question, Is Your Social Media Expert Really an Expert?

Time for a Twitter Reality Check, courtesy of yours truly, takes a look at the reality behind the hype that is Twitter (and I’ll be reviewing some of the feedback I received in my next post).

6 Lessons From the Best Marketing Campaign Ever looks at how an unlikely underdog stunned the marketing world at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival.

Wild Apricot did us all a real service in compiling Social Media for Nonprofits: 26 Presentations. Now there’s no excuse for not being ready to explain this stuff to your organization.

Kevin Spacey Explains Twitter to Letterman pretty much sums it up. Watch it. It’s funny stuff.

Use of Social Networking Tools Growing in Nursing, Medical Schools looks at a new study that finds growing popularity of Web 2.0 tools in health curricula.

How to Tell Your Story in 100 Words or Less is my take on the value we all can derive from having an elevator pitch.

Internal Communications and Twitter is me again on how Twitter might be used to support an effective internal communications program.

That’s it for July’s tweets. I’m out there every day in search of useful info on communications, marketing, social media and more, so be sure to follow me on Twitter so you don’t miss the good stuff.

This may destroy my reputation among some people, but I love this. Another great example of connecting emotionally to tell a story.

It figures. The day after I write about how so many nonprofits fail to make a real emotional connection through their storytelling, Katya Andresen posts this piece on Mark Horvath and his efforts to make the homeless visible.

I met Mark earlier this month at an L.A. nonprofits tweetup. I didn’t have much of an opportunity to chat with him, and now I wish I had. The work he’s doing at invisiblepeople.tv is truly heroic. Check it out.

photo by brad & sabrina

Michelle Tripp had a great post recently about how truly outstanding advertising turns a product or service into an “emotional experience.” She used a clip from AMC’s Mad Men to perfectly illustrate the point. After watching it, I wanted to run out and buy a Kodak projector and dig out my family’s old slides from the garage. (The embed’s been disabled so I can’t link to it, but go to YouTube and search “Mad Men: The Carousel.”)

As Michelle put it:

“As advertisers we add a magical ingredient that no tangible product could ever have on its own. We tell a story that makes a connection. We help the consumer see value beyond the price tag. It’s no longer something they can own, it’s something they can live. We take a product that exists in the outer world and make it a part of their inner world. As humans we’re driven to define ourselves through association, and we begin to LOVE the products we choose, because they fulfill our need for identity.”

For some that sense of fulfillment comes with a TV show or an ad campaign. For me it’s usually a song. Like this one. (Ignore the video. It just distracts from the song.)

Go ahead and listen. I’ll wait ’til you get back.

That’s Bob Schneider’s “Changing Your Mind.” Man I love that song. I’m wearing it out on my iPod and it still moves me. Sorry, but I’m a sucker for a great song about the death of love and how the awful moment can catch us in the headlights.

If only how we communicated on behalf of our organizations had that kind of impact. Can you truly say that you move your stakeholders to tears? That your message dwells in their hearts and weighs on their thoughts?

Telling stories isn’t enough. Your stories have to make an emotional connection that pledges people to the cause. I’m not talking about the easy tears jerked out of soft souls by using cute kids or American flags waving in the summer breeze or nostalgia about the way life used to be. I mean crafting a narrative that convinces people of the absolute worthiness of your effort and creates a yearning to be a part of your righteous crusade.

Does your communication do that? Really? I doubt it. If it did, you’d have people lined up around the block and more funding than you knew how to spend.

Here’s Gary Vaynerchuk again, this time on why press releases are a waste of time and why storytelling should be at the heart of your branding efforts.