This beautiful young woman above is named Chimamanda Adichie and I just found her via the TED website. Tomorrow TED opens in my hometown of Long Beach, and like many, I will be proud my city is hosting this extraordinary event and wishing I was on the inside listening to inspiring talks.

But let's go back to Chimamanda. Her talk on TED is called "Rejecting the Single Story" and it's excellent. It's smart, wry, engaging and personal. I hope you'll watch (or you can become a fan of her on FB!) And though she is talking about a universal theme in our everyday lives, a habit of looking at a people or a place through just a single lense of a single story and then making up our mind (on very little information), it is also an excellent idea to ponder for your own public relations campaign.

The truth is we can tell a lovely charming story to death. We can squeeze out all of its juice and interesting bits, we can wear it out - whether it's for a business or a person, a product or an idea. How many of us cringe when we hear a friend or family member bring out that same old story we've heard so many times that we've wanted to yell, "Tell me something different!"

And if we've felt that way, certainly others have felt the same about us, haven't they?

One of the biggest mistakes people make when they attempt public relations on their own is that they try and finagle or force the press into writing about their same old story, again and again. Hey, they wrote that lovely profile on us last year, maybe they'll do it again!

Ah no. Maybe you are the oldest restaurant in town, maybe "so-and-so" has done the most for local charities, or maybe you are #1 in your market. So what? Don't be Johnny one note. Shake it up, look at yourself in new ways, your business, your product, etc. from many angles, and then start sharing different stories. How is what you're doing relevant to what's going on in today's headlines? How are you growing and changing with the times?

There's a very good reason why we ask friends and family, "what's new with you?" when we see them. We like fresh stories, new angles, fresh juice.

Here is what I'm owning about myself this year in a way that I have never fully done before - I am a story teller. Just about everything I do, from being a publicist, to my side time writing a novel, to spending down time with my friends, is about sharing and absorbing some kind of story that really means something personally to me. I have to like clients to promote them, and to come up with creative and useful public relations campaigns. I have to want to tell their story.

So here's a short story I'd like to share with you, and it just happens to be one of the most powerful public relations skills you can have in your arsenal: People will find you more relevant and engaging and useful to them if you share an emotional hook rather than just trumpeting how fabulous you, your goods and your services are.

What do I mean by this? I mean that we no longer live in an age when a successful "expert" is seen as someone who has all of the answers to every aspect of his or her life no matter his or her field of expertise. Indeed, most of us prefer the advice of experts who have fallen down and scraped their knees (just as we have), and then have learned something from it, overcome obstacles, and can get up and share with us the details of how they transformed that particular aspect of their lives.

We would probably still admire Lance Armstrong if he'd won so many races but hadn't experienced cancer, but it's through the grueling but inspiring story of his recovery that we've not only come to love him, but find him endlessly fascinating, and a motivational life expert. How many more millions are enchanted by him, watch him, read him, and give to his cancer charity because he's shared his real story? Countless.

The power of an emotional hook in your story telling is useful whether you need to begin writing a blog, a newsletter, give a speech to a local organization, pitch a story about yourself or your goods and services to the media, and just about any time you need to get up and say anything because as an audience we have little attention for being preached at or sold to, what we want is to be engaged. What we want is for you to tell us a relevant story that might just mirror something in our own lives, make us like you more, and think "aha."

If your words bring someone an epiphany they'll certainly remember you and spread the word about who you are and what you do.

While pondering what excellent examples I should share with you (and therefore preach less) on the excellent use of emotional hooks I came across Gwen Bell (whose Twitter bio reads perfectly: Discovering the Humanity of Technology in Less Than 140) on Twitter this morning (one of my favorite to follow there) and caught up on her blogs. Voila two perfect examples were handed to me on the proverbial platter, but more on that in a second. First let me tell you that I have known about Gwen since the Zaadz social platform site, which then became the Gaia social platform site (where I still occasionally blog). Gosh I've been blogging and involved in social media for a long time (ten years!).

Gwen is a Yoga enthusiast/social media guru & branding expert/enthusiast. And for me she is a truly soulful and mindful example of how to successfully share an emotional hook to engage readers in a blog (spoiler altert: this particular entry very honest and heartbreaking). So "tada" Gwen is my first example. She never grandstands, she never begs for hankies, but she shares from a place of truth where's she's at and what has happened to her to get to this place.

Gwen is also a great example of how to become successful today, and do what you love, by leading the way in a new industry by sharing your journey to inspire others in authentic, creative, and dynamic ways - but we'll cover that in another blog at another time.

My second example of using emotional hooks in a superb way comes from another of Gwen's blogs. It is titled "How Good is Your Digital Tale" (isn't that perfect?) and shares a commencement speech one of my favorite authors J.K. Rowling gave at Harvard in 2008. Rowling's speech shows off what a tremendous story teller she is indeed, and how she has used her own early challenges, and her own learning of the horrific challenges of others, to create stories that get to the heart of what is important in the human experience. Those who turn their nose up at the Harry Potter series don't understand that it's true magic is about kindness and love.

I hope you'll take the 20 minutes to watch, but if you don't have the time please remember two of my favorite quotes from it:

"Failure means the stripping away of the inessential." - J.K. Rowling

"What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality." Plutarch