I’ve been thinking about the headline of the Scoble post I addressed last week: “What do the freaking tech bloggers want?”

Specifically, does the periodic cuss word (or derivative) enhance storytelling or at the very least command attention?

I think the power of a cuss word can come from the element of surprise. If Martha Stewart drops an f-bomb while she’s baking brownies that’s going to grab your attention.

But the words “freakin” and “freaking” tend to be so overused today that they’ve lost their ability to jar. Rather than depend on gut feel, I turned to the wonders of the Factiva database to chart usage over the past five years.

You can see the two words have been gaining traction to the point that we’re projecting - I know the polls haven’t closed but go with me on this one - 7,122 articles will carry them in 2008. For context, Steve Jobs, who can hold his own with the likes of Britney Spears when it comes to media captivation, won’t show up in as many articles this year at the current pace.

Furthermore, I think it’s fair to say the words enjoy even greater use in the blogosphere. I couldn’t figure out how to search postings employing “freakin” or “freaking” by year, but a quick IceRocket search resulted in 122,923 hits.

Talk about overexposure.

Then again, with the right context the repetition of a cuss word can become a story in itself. For Exhibit A, look at Lee Elia’s meltdown back in 1983 when he was the manager of the Chicago Cubs. His profanity-laced tirade after the Cubs lost another game lives on in infamy thanks to the Internet.

Why?

It was so over the top for a public figure to spew expletive after expletive.

And yes, like all good stories it rang with authenticity.

Businesspeople tend to associate storytelling with fiction.

Yet, the same elements that make a book such as “Moby Dick” a compelling read - good versus evil, care for the characters, humor, etc. - have a place in the business world. Whether it’s a potential customer evaluating your product or a journalist probing your latest news, communicating information in a more entertaining fashion increases your likeability quotient.

And customers, journalists, job candidates and even gadflies gravitate toward companies they like.

Unfortunately, this concept around storytelling is counterintuitive to many business executives, particularly those coming from engineering orientations where science rules the day. I’m not suggesting you need to lose an appendage to a large mammal before anyone will notice you but the ability to build some drama in business communications is a means to capture attention.

That’s the idea behind this blog: To look at the art of storytelling through a business prism.

No doubt, most blog postings will draw from the media world - defining media as any from journalists to an individual with a virtual soapbox since the words are right there in the public domain to scrutinize. But this blog will strive to tackle the bigger challenge of communicating to the outside world in a more entertaining fashion.