Hello {{first_name}}. welcome back. I expected last week's poll to show that most of you felt invisible when you publish. Almost none of you did. The top answer was "I publish anyway, regardless of who sees it," which gives the 3,277 of us reading this newsletter a quieter, clearer problem to work on.
This is Part 2 of a two-part series. Last week (Edition 22) was the diagnosis. This week is the playbook. The re-engineered framework, the three-question audit, the AI prompt, and three moves you can use the same week you read this.
In this edition
WEEKLY POLL
Which best describes the change you're trying to drive through your work?
Poll results will be shared in next week's edition.
This is a real working question for me, and your answer will shape what I write next for you.
THIS WEEK’S BIG IDEA
How to make the algorithm pick you
Last week's diagnosis was that the committee that used to decide what stories got seen has gone, and a new committee, made of code, has taken its chair. If you didn't read it, the short version: Marshall Ganz's framework of Story of Self, Story of Us, Story of Now is widely seen as the spine of public narrative for social change, and Story of Now is the mode that algorithmic distribution flattens hardest.
Diagnosis only gets you so far. The remedy is to write differently. Not to abandon the craft, but to engineer it for the distribution system it has to travel through.
This week's edition gives you three things. The re-engineered framework. The integration with the three jobs from Edition 21. And the audit, the AI prompt, and three moves you can use this week to start writing differently with purpose.
Self, Us, Now: re-engineered for hostile distribution
Each of Ganz's three modes still does its job. But each one has to be engineered differently for an environment where the distribution layer is no longer neutral. The algorithm rewards specific signals: retention spikes in the first two seconds, conversation over broadcast, human faces over institutional voice, present tense over future tense, identity-affirming content over abstract advocacy.
Here is each mode, with what changes in 2026.
Story of Self, re-engineered
The lived experience that gives you the right to speak.
Lead with one specific detail in the first sentence, not an introduction. "I am a CEO at [organisation]…" is buried by the algorithm before it ends. "Last Tuesday I sat with a 16-year-old who had slept in a stairwell" is held.
Use first person, present tense. The algorithm reads "I am" plus sensory detail as authentic signal. It reads "Our charity is committed to…" as low-signal corporate copy.
Show one moment held still, not a montage. Reels of activity get scrolled past. One moment, one face, one detail, gets stopped on.
Test: could a reader picture you in one specific room, doing one specific thing? If not, rewrite the opening.
Story of Us, re-engineered
The shared values that make us a community, not just a group.
Identity, not category. "The homelessness sector" is abstract. "Those of us who sit in interview rooms at 11pm hearing why someone is afraid to go home" is identity. The algorithm rewards identity-affirming content because that is what people share.
One name, not a population. "Marcus, 34, slept here last night" beats "240,000 people slept rough." The algorithm rewards human faces, and so do people.
Make sharing feel like belonging. If your post lets a stranger signal who they are to their network by sharing it, they will share it. That share volume is the algorithm's reward currency.
Test: would a stranger sharing your post be saying "this is what I care about" to their followers? If yes, it will travel.
Story of Now, re-engineered
The urgency that turns understanding into movement.
Name the deadline, not the issue. "We have until Friday" beats "Year-on-year, the funding crisis deepens." The algorithm rewards specific temporal markers because they correlate with reply rates.
Make the action small and specific. A small ask gets more engagement than a big ask, and engagement is what the algorithm reads.
End with a question, not a conclusion. Conversation is the algorithm's reward currency. A real question creates a real reply.
Test: could a reader take one named action in the next ten minutes? If not, the urgency is theoretical, and the algorithm will quietly demote it.
The integration: How each story mode does its job
Edition 21 introduced the three jobs every social impact story has to do: fund, spread and act. Ganz's three modes sit alongside those jobs. Every post carries traces of all three modes, and every job benefits from all three. But each mode tends to take the lead in one job, and to play a supporting role in the other two.
The grid below maps the relationship. Read the rows as the story mode (Self, Us, Now). Read the columns as the job you are trying to do (fund, spread, act). Each cell shows the role that mode plays when the post is written for that job.
fund | spread | act | |
|---|---|---|---|
Story of Self | leads | supports | supports |
Story of Us | supports | leads | supports |
Story of Now | supports | supports | leads |
How to use it. When you sit down to write a post, find the job you are trying to do in the top row. The cell marked leads is the mode that should dominate your opening two sentences. The two cells marked supports are what else needs to be present somewhere in the post, even briefly. A post that runs only the lead mode is thin. A post that runs only the supporting modes will not do the job at all. The framework works as designed when the lead mode is in front and both supporting modes are woven in.
Worked example. You are writing a fundraising appeal for a named funder. The job is fund. The lead mode is Story of Self: your lived experience, or the credibility of the person asking. The opening two sentences need to land that personal stake. Then, somewhere in the body, you bring in Story of Us (the collective competence of the organisation behind the ask) and Story of Now (the reason this funder needs to act now, not next year). All three modes present, with Self in front, is a well-engineered fundraising post.
The diagonal of the grid is the lead trio you already met in Part 1 (last week). Self leads on fund. Us leads on spread. Now leads on act. The off-diagonal is where most posts are quietly missing depth. Here is what each supporting role actually does.
Self supporting spread. Lived experience humanises an otherwise abstract message. People share content that feels like a real person speaking, not an organisation account.
Self supporting act. The reader needs a peer-protagonist they can model their own action on. Without a Self-shaped figure to identify with, the call to act lands in the abstract.
Us supporting fund. Funders need confidence that the organisation is a competent collective vehicle, not just a personal cause. Story of Us proves the institutional weight behind the Self that leads the ask.
Us supporting act. Collective identity makes action feel less risky. "We do this together" gives the reader cover to step forward where "you should do this" leaves them exposed.
Now supporting fund. Without urgency, funders defer. "Why now?" is the silent question every grant committee asks. Story of Now supplies the answer.
Now supporting spread. Novelty and timeliness are what the algorithm rewards. Even identity-driven sharing happens around what is happening now.
The full grid is the framework. Most charity posts run one mode, weakly, and try to do all three jobs. The framework asks for the opposite: one lead mode matched to one named job, with the two supporting modes brought in deliberately.
Template: The three-question audit
Run this on any draft post in under two minutes.
Story idea (one sentence):
[The story you are about to tell, in one sentence.]
Question 1: Which mode is leading the post? Read the draft. Which of Self, Us, or Now is doing the main work? If you cannot tell, that is the most useful diagnosis of all. Re-read the opening two sentences specifically. The lead mode lives there.
Question 2: Which job is this post trying to do? Be specific. Not "engagement". Fund, spread, or act. Name the audience: a specific funder, a specific share-network, a specific community of actors. If you cannot name them, you cannot write to them.
Question 3: Does the lead mode match the job? Use the grid. Self leads on fund. Us leads on spread. Now leads on act. If the lead matches the job, audit the supporting modes: are both of the other two present, at least lightly? If the lead does not match the job, rewrite the opening two sentences in the correct lead mode for the job you want this post to do, and keep the original content as support.
If a single post is trying to do two jobs, split it into two posts. One job per post is the simplest and most underused move in this entire newsletter.
AI Prompt: The three-question audit
Copy and paste the text below into your preferred AI tool. Works best in Claude or Gemini.
Replace [PASTE YOUR DRAFT HERE] with your content
For extra context, download my free Social Impact Storytelling Framework
(ogston.com/framework), then upload the PDF alongside this prompt. It will make the responses even more useful
You are a senior editor for a social impact storytelling consultancy. Your job is to audit a draft social media or newsletter post against two integrated frameworks:
1. Marshall Ganz's three modes of public narrative: Story of Self, Story of Us, Story of Now.
2. The three jobs a social impact story can do: fund, spread, act.
Work through the five steps below in order. Output your answer using the same numbered headings (## Step 1, ## Step 2, and so on) so each stage is visible. Do not collapse the answer into a single paragraph or combine steps.
## Step 1. Identify the dominant Ganz mode in the draft.
Choose one: Story of Self (personal stake, lived experience), Story of Us (collective identity, shared values), Story of Now (moral urgency, a call to act today). Quote the sentence in the draft that most clearly signals the dominant mode. Justify your choice in one further sentence.
## Step 2. Identify the job the draft is trying to do.
Choose one: fund (donors, grant-makers, boards), spread (supporters, advocates, networks), act (volunteers, voters, communities, policymakers). Justify in one sentence. If the draft is trying to do more than one job at once, name the most prominent one and flag the overload as a diagnostic finding ("the post is trying to do more than one job, and that is itself a problem").
## Step 3. Check alignment and list mode presence.
The lead modes per job are: Self leads on fund, Us leads on spread, Now leads on act. First, state whether the draft's lead mode matches its job (match or mismatch). Second, regardless of match or mismatch, list which of the three Ganz modes are present in the draft and which are missing or thin.
## Step 4. Rewrite the opening two sentences.
If Step 3 found a mismatch, rewrite to bring the correct lead mode (for the job named in Step 2) to the front. If Step 3 found a match, rewrite to sharpen the existing lead mode and tighten the opening so it lands in the first 1.5 seconds of a scroll. Either way: use first person, present tense, one specific detail, no preamble, no announcement. Limit the rewrite to two sentences. Output the rewrite exactly as it would replace the original opening.
## Step 5. Add the missing supporting modes.
Look at Step 3's list of missing or thin modes. Suggest one concrete addition (a sentence or short paragraph) that brings in those modes. The addition must lengthen the original post by no more than 30 words. Quote the addition exactly as it would be inserted, and say where in the post it should go (for example, "after the second existing sentence").
Style requirements throughout: UK British English. Specific and direct. No hedging language ("perhaps", "you might want to", "consider"). No em dashes. No emojis.
Draft post:
[PASTE YOUR DRAFT HERE]A note on using this. The prompt is not a substitute for the audit. It is the audit, faster. The first time you use it, read the answers carefully and check them against your own judgement. By the fifth time, you will have internalised the framework and the prompt becomes a sanity check rather than a teacher.
Three things to try this week
These are pre-selected. Do not pick from a longer list. Do these three, in order.
Move 1. Rewrite your next opening sentence in first person, present tense, with one specific detail. Stop announcing. Start showing. Instead of "We are launching our new campaign on Tuesday," write "Tuesday morning I'm sitting opposite a 16-year-old who lost his home last month, and I'm asking him what he wants you to know." The algorithm reads the second one as human. So does the reader.
Move 2. End your next post with a real question, not a closing statement. The question should be specific enough that one person, somewhere, has a real answer. Generic ("What do you think?") gets nothing. Specific ("If you have ever sat with a funder who asked 'but what does success actually look like?', how did you answer?") gets replies. Replies are the algorithm's reward currency.
Move 3. Run the AI prompt on one post a week, every week, for the next month. Create a habit. The framework only delivers if you use it. By the fourth time, the audit should become muscle memory and you start writing the right way the first time.
Final thoughts
The committee that used to pick which stories the public saw cannot be petitioned. The system that replaced it cannot be lobbied. But the writing is still in your hands.
When the writing is engineered for the system it has to travel through, it travels further than the old committee would ever have allowed. That is the quiet upside nobody talks about. The same algorithmic concentration that demotes lazy charity comms also amplifies the ones who learn to write for the new environment. The floor moved, but a new ceiling came with it.
The remedy was always in our hands. The craft is the politics. Pick the job. Lead with the mode. Bring in the support. End with a question.
This week, write one post that does all four. Watch what happens. Hit reply and let me know if you get stuck.
Until next week, please take care.
Warm regards,
Matt Mahmood-Ogston
Award-winning impact storyteller, photographer and charity CEO.
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Free: Download my Social Impact Storytelling Framework ogston.com/framework
Paid: Book me to deliver a storytelling workshop (online or in person)
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