My good friend Allison Fine has an interesting post about the “power and limits of storytelling” via social media on her blog. As an example of best practices, she also embeds this cool video about telling the story of Red Riding Hood with social media:

Social media obviously us the ability to tell stories in more visual and powerful ways, allowing us to more adroitly communicate our messages. Allison lists YouTube, human rights advocates at Witness and National Public Radio as examples of folks using video effectively to tell stories. She also highlights the work of Andy Goodman, a longtime advocate (and another very good friend!) for using storytelling for causes.

Allison cautions how advocates need to be careful, however, not to let powerful stories drown out the real message they are trying to communicate. “It’s easy to listen to the loud voices because they’re, well, loud, but much harder to listen to the quieter ones who probably represent the norm of the experience with your effort.”