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Jonathan Gottschal puts it well in the “Storytelling Animal” that history is a story we tell ourselves but its only from one viewpoint and the future is a story we tell ourselves that we want to come true. Phillip K Dick , the master of Sci Fi storytelling, said that reality is what you have left when stop believing in everything. Daniel Kahneman in his best seller “Thinking Fast and Slow” writes it best for me. He says that our brains have evolved to seek out stories to make what we see and experience understood. Story then is our central learning and reference system....
A look at how Maersk's social media manager, operating solo, engages fans on 10 social networks without bottom-line sales or gimmicks. He just tells stories. When Jonathan Wichmann's boss at worldwide shipping company Maersk Line told him that the company was approaching a point of being ready to dive into social media a little more than a year ago, the two agreed that it would face some difficulties that companies that mainly communicate with the public might not.
"You can't fake it," Wichmann says. Wichmann was a consultant for the company at the time. After joining Maersk full-time, Wichmann stepped up to handle everything virtually single-handedly. In the year since that initial meeting, the company has accrued 650,000 Facebook fans and won awards for the social media campaign of the year and best community presence at the European Digital Awards. Maersk pulled that off in such a short time with what Wichmann calls an "insourcing" approach....
As more companies invest in content marketing, PR practitioners have an unparalleled opportunity to share engaging narratives with key audiences to raise awareness, build relationships and motivate action. ...For PR people, story marketing presents an opportunity that almost can’t be overstated. Content Marketing is attracting huge chunks of marketing resources. According to a survey by the Content Marketing Institute, 25 percent of total U.S. B2B marketing budgets were devoted to it in 2012 and 60 percent of respondents plan to increase their commitment in 2013....
In many cases, brands have a leg up on news organizations in creating content that resonates with people, argues JWT NY's Lydia Leavitt. Brand journalism, native advertising, sponsored content — whatever you want to call it — has been in the news a lot lately. The big question is whether brands, which need to sell after all, can create compelling content. It looks like brands cannot only do that but also beat their editorial counterparts. Take Pulse, an RSS-aggregation app. Pulse CEO Askshay Kothari went as far as to say that users are 25 percent more likely to share a piece of branded content (aka ads) than a traditional news story through the app. Branded editorial is doing so well on Pulse because it’s much less PR-driven than its non-branded counterparts and, therefore, more engaging. As a former full-time journalist, I’ve witnessed some in the editorial news cycle using an opposite strategy. It’s mainly centered on writing up the day’s most interesting PR initiatives before their competitors do. Of course, this isn’t true for every publication or journalist, but most will admit (after a few drinks) that in the age of editorial sites hungry for pageviews, writing feature stories is a dying art. What good branded editorial should do is rally people around an idea central to the brand’s messaging but not directly about the brand. There’s an opportunity to create better, more engaging content on higher-level topics. Qualcomm and T. Rowe Price’s brand journalism initiatives, which we’ve helped develop at JWT, have seen such astronomical engagement on Pulse because they are not putting out what many would consider advertorial.... [Who's best at brand journalism? ~ Jeff]
...If you bring qualified traffic (prospects, job candidates, etc.) to your site and they like what they see, they want to know how to contact you. Yet, few companies capitalize on this real estate to tell their story and continue fortifying the brand. You do have to be conscious of making it easy for the user. If someone clicks for the contact page, you don’t want the experience to turn into a “Where’s Waldo?” episode. Still, there are simple ways to balance contact information with applying storytelling techniques to the page. You can see how we approach this on our own contact page below.... [A smart, simple way to add value to your content page with some creative storytelling. ~ Jeff]
Credible stories are rooted in data, and your opinions add perspective. Develop more credible stories with these 6 steps for data-driven brand storytelling. How much more compelling would your brand storytelling be if data were the focus of your content strategy? In a recent article published here on CMI, Colleen Jones asked the question, “Can digital branded content ever be taken seriously — even as seriously as journalism?” Without a doubt journalism has had a huge head start when it comes to creating stories that capture hearts and minds. Part of that success comes from using research data (polls, surveys and feedback) to understand what readers find valuable, particularly as it relates to the issues and problems they face. Do content marketers have the same research opportunities? Of course they do. In fact, if more content marketers were to use publicly available data the way journalists do then branded content would offer new angles, insights, and more value to stories that affect people’s lives. But the good news, as Colleen explains, is that, “Americans are quite open to brands being credible sources of web content.” One way for brands to increase content credibility is to introduce trustworthy third-party data as part of their stories. Credible stories are rooted in something that’s real, not just your ideas. So for example data, research and numbers can be the foundation of the story, while your ideas and opinions add perspective to the story.... [These content marketing and storytelling tips were valuable ~Jeff]
Inspiration for using curation in content marketing for anybody who hasn't begun yet or is just starting. [Liz Wilson shares five terrific curation tools worth exploring - JD]
Via Liz Wilson
Simon Staffans: "Transmedia, as we all know, originated some 20 years ago. As a practice it has existed way longer, depending on how you define it, with the Bible being quoted as one of the first instances of transmedia in practice." [Very interesting read for storytellers, bloggers and content producers -- JD]
Via The Digital Rocking Chair
Brand journalism is journalism produced on behalf of a brand But it’s not used just by brands. It can be used by any kind of organisation, or for any cause.
It is as relevant to Amnesty International or the Red Cross as it is to McDonald’s or Coca-Cola. It can be used by everything from a major food manufacturer to a local restaurant; from an educational charity to a particular university or school.
Increasingly, it’s used by any organisation that has contact with the public, including the police and other emergency services, local authorities and government agencies, transport authorities, bus and rail companies and airlines. It’s also used by organisations that work in B2B sectors. So businesses that sell to other organisations use brand journalism to establish themselves as trusted authorities in their field. Any of those organisations can employ journalists and/or journalistic techniques to create compelling content - content that uses all the skills and techniques of traditional journalism to craft a memorable story, and present information that a particular audience needs, wants, values or is entertained by.... [Good look at brand journalism by @AndyBull - JD]
Story telling is at the core of all marketing. Internet marketing, direct marketing, they all include some kind of story. People want to know why, why should I focus my attention on this cause? Why should I donate to this organization? Most of the time, this question is not being asked consciously. It is our humanity that evaluates the question why and then makes a decision to either say yes or turn away. The power to capturing attention and loyalty is in the messages being sent. The power is in the story.... [Christina Kelley talks about the value of storytelling for nonprofits - JD]
Use this seven-step process to develop and tell a business anecdote that will you help close the deal. There are few sales tools more powerful than stories, if they're appropriate and well-told. Because they are always about people and events that changed people's lives in some way, anecdotes create emotion and interest. They teach without preaching. They paint mental pictures that are worth a thousand buzzwords. [Image credit: BigStock Photo] [Great storytelling tips - JD]
Social startup Storify is capturing the imagination of journalists and brands... With the presidential elections underway and the Olympics coming up, this is a big year for event-driven journalism—and for social publishing tool Storify.
Storify built its name on enabling reporters, bloggers or anyone to aggregate status updates, tweets, links and YouTube videos and embed them into a blog-style, continuous-stream article treatment that can then live on a site of one’s choosing. The concept is fairly simple: capture as much content as possible on a particular topic from numerous voices across the Web in an easy-to-consume format....
Brrrrrr! It might be snowing in London (and incredibly cold!) but that hasn’t stopped us from serving up a collection of this week’s hottest new social media tools and platforms.
To ...To help warm you up, were giving this week’s post a ‘green theme’ – yep, the green we all want more of, money. Let’s introduce our money-spinning tools to you one-by-one…
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Writing a good blog post isn’t just about great content… Writing truly engaging and exciting blog posts and marketing is an art for that involves storytelling, emotion, and creating an immersive experience for your readers. How you structure your marketing techniques in terms of storytelling, and connecting with readers, can often leave more of an impact than the content itself (think about how a song or story touched you more because of the emotional impact than the details of the story itself). In this post I want to share 3 tips you can use to enhance the appeal of any post you write, and make it incredibly engaging to your readers....
The grab-bag post returns in 2013, offering a platform for three vignettes. Crafted for easy consumption, here goes – Amazon Continues to Embrace Content Marketing Religion There’s much to be learned from the heavyweight media companies. Like a poker player with most of the chips, they’ve got the war chest to push the boundaries of communications. Amazon caught my attention over the holiday break. As a way to stockpile even more content, they pull the posts from an author’s blog directly into the page highlighting the author’s book(s). You can see how this plays out in the scrape below with Gini Dietrich and her blog Spin Sucks....
If you’d like tocreate more video content,but you’re not sure where to start, the answer may be as close as your blog. Repurposing written content from your blog may be one of the quickest and easiest ways to produce video. After all, the idea is already there – all you have to do is alter the platform! There are many compelling reasons to go from blog to vlog: First, you’re giving your followersanother way to consume your content. In our TV-driven society, many people would rather watch than read. You can also argue that video content is more engaging, compelling and memorable than text alone. With video, you can bring your blog posts to life and make them more personal. So if a picture is worth a thousand words, what’s a video worth? A minute of video is worth 1.8 million words, according to D. James McQuivey of Forrester Research. That’s a lot of written blog posts! Now let’s turn some of those words into videos.Here are a few ways to get started:...
Great content lies at the intersection of your company’s core values and the passions of your audience. Here's how your content marketing can ignite a movement. If you haven’t seen Nirvan Mullick’s short (10-minute) film called “Caine’s Arcade,” watch it now. You’ll be glad you did — and the rest of this inaugural ContentVenn post is going to make a lot more sense. (If you have seen it, read on!) The power of great content marketing
Caine’s Arcade is unbelievably powerful content. It is emotional, heart-warming, and inspired. Caine’s Arcade is so powerful, in fact, that it has spawned a movement. When Nirvan posted the video on April 9, 2012, viewers immediately began donating money towards a scholarship fund for Caine Monroy. Ten days after the release of the film, Caine’s scholarship fund hit the $170,000 mark. That’s powerful content. And it all could have ended there. But it hasn’t. Creating a movement, creating content opportunities
Six months after Caine’s Arcade became a “viral success” it has become a real movement. It’s more than just a Vimeo success story. Today, that 10-minute film has spawned a full-fledged nonprofit with a real mission, real corporate underwriters, and tons more content. Go ahead, check out the Imagination Foundation, whose mission is to “find, foster, and fund creativity and entrepreneurship in kids.” [Here's a powerful and inspiring story and how great storytelling and content can go viral. Lots to learn and potential ideas for nonprofits as well as corporations. Just jump in and enjoy! ~ Jeff]
Storytelling has taken on a different form in our digital world: transmedia storytelling. But what it is exactly? Find out more about it in my interview with a transmedia storytelling expert. [Transmedia storytelling has challenges and opportunities for marketing and PR ~ Jeff]
“Transmedia storytelling” is telling a story across multiple media and preferably, although it doesn’t always happen, with a degree of audience participation, interaction or collaboration.
In transmedia storytelling, engagement with each successive media heightens the audience’ understanding, enjoyment and affection for the story. To do this successfully, the embodiment of the story in each media needs to be satisfying in its own right while enjoyment from all the media should be greater than the sum of the parts....
[Interesting and useful overview of Transmedia Storytelling ~ Jeff]
Transparent storytelling helps brands compete and win. Examples of brands getting it right and those who missed the mark. In a recent AdAge article by Laura Ries, she took the position that, “... the best way into the mind is with visuals, not with words. Visuals play a more important role in marketing becausethey hold emotional power that sticks.” We greatly respect Laura’s opinions, but in this particular case, we’d like to offer a counter perspective. Of course visuals and images are compelling, and necessary, but words are equally important and work to create the essence of a brand. Every brand has a story, and that story can’t be told through visuals alone. While great design might lure you in, it’s not enough to sustain a relationship. Imagine if you were looking for a new face cream and found dozens of packages with only colors and pictures and no description of the product benefits, ingredients, product history or promised results? Or imagine searching the internet to find a new camera and just seeing pictures of cameras, with no information on features or product reviews? Words matter and brands that tell stories have a huge competitive advantage.... [I highly recommend this post on storytelling. It is excellent! - highly - JD]
Content - Sometimes, the hardest topics to talk about are those closest to you. So when businesses have to share their stories, they stumble. This colorful infodoodle slide show can help draw ... Sometimes, the hardest topics to talk about are the ones closest to your heart. So when businesses have to share their stories, they stumble in deciding what to say.
Ann Handley, MarketingProfs chief content officer and co-author of Content Rules, offers eight prompts to help companies begin telling their brands' stories....
You’ve finally convinced your boss that content marketing is critical to your marketing strategy. You’ve found an editor that understands your industry. ...When we think of content, we often think of a compilation of words, words that tell a story relevant to our buyer and connect to our brand. The problem is that our prospects have less time to read these words, even when they tell a well-crafted story that can be useful in their jobs. Why? We’re in a state of information overflow, and many are looking for a way to dig out. Simultaneously, we have learned to digest information faster – sometimes even at a glance. This quick consumption of data lets us know the big message and allows us to decide whether or not we need to keep reading. The headline of an article is commonly used to make this decision, but how can we rely on more than a headline to get our point across? The answer is visual content marketing. Visual content marketing is the utilization of images to engage your prospects through the buying cycle. This can include infographics, images, charts and graphs, memes, comics, photos, videos, and even visual notetaking. What’s critical is that they help tell a story related to your brand. Keep in mind that this doesn’t mean a sales pitch. Rather, visual content is created with the goal of appealing to your prospects and is meant to offer them a solution for a pain they may have....
...Let’s be clear, for the sake of argument, about some definitions here. I’m not in this instance talking about taking someone else’s content and repurposing it in some manner on another site. So this isn’t about a story that first appeared on the New York Times’ site and rewording a couple sentences before posting essentially the same story on another site. The “curation” I’m talking about is taking links to stories, posts, photos and other material and linking to it from a platform like Twitter, Facebook or Tumblr. And that’s something that doesn’t need to be controversial since it’s simply all about telling a story.
I’ve been pondering Matthew Ingram’s post about blowing up the concept of the news article for several days and how it relates not just to journalism but also corporate publishing programs. Specifically I’ve been focusing on where he makes the point that increasingly the model that works best is “small pieces, loosely joined.” That’s where the idea of curation comes in since it’s those smaller pieces that curation fills in....
[Excellent read for all curators and wanna-be curators - JD]
Let me be clear, we do not want you to sell us, nor talk about what your business can offer us, not to mention the classic “how to be the best alternative.” Do you want to scare your audience? Name some of these words: sales, target, loyalty o data base. However, these words are essential. Whether you want to accept it or not, the game has changed. If you intend to carry out any of the actions listed above – I hope you will or you will be damn lost – this is the new vocabulary: connect, align, guide, equip, create resonance and consolidate. It’s not about the technology, but about people and what happens among them. Talk about… emotions, feelings, self-effacement, failures, examples, commitment, people, love, passion and eagerness. Tell a story - the story of you and your business - how you started, the hard moments you've had to face, how you've gotten here. Stay human, always.... [Passionate about storytelling and why it matters to business - JD]
I've been collecting and curating remarkable examples of visual storytelling over at Vimeo for more than a year and the library now has nearly 50 inspiring, thought-provoking, engaging and well made films in there. They are all examples of video storytelling at its very best: creative, universal, visual, and driven by strong narratives. If you’re new to video journalism, or just need some inspiration, then you ought to watch some. I’ve added several new ones in recent weeks which I could easily write pages and pages on. Here’s three which I think you’ll like....
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![How to Tell Your Company's Story: Eight Questions to Get You Started [Slide Show] | Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight | Scoop.it](https://img.scoop.it/rDGBbLGM0TfYOeHdjniKBjl72eJkfbmt4t8yenImKBVvK0kTmF0xjctABnaLJIm9)
Here's a good look at how corporate storytelling can be a powerful tool for brands.