Taking My Own Advice

Posted on November 16, 2011 by Eric Berto — Leave a Comment

Subtitle: What I learned at BlogWorld L.A.

Write it. Just hit publish.

Those were my closing thoughts during a workshop I gave on how to utilize the real-time Web for better storytelling. We get so distracted by processes, editing, review cycles and proper tone that we miss the boat. We miss an opportunity to tell a story when telling that story is most vital.

Being able to tell a story is more than the words you use. Sometimes, just writing from the heart is the best way to ensure that people listen to your story. There’s no strategy that enables you to tell a story. While at BlogWorld & New Media Expo, I had a fair number of informative and enlightening experiences.

I got to meet Cloris Leachman. Thanks to Amber Osborne, aka @MissDestructo, for taking this great picture.

I got to attend my first-ever Kings game. Here’s the view from my seats at the game. Thanks to Brian at shareasale.com for these tickets!

And I even got to learn something along the way. The main thing I learned is that at the end of the day, the stories we get to tell are just content. Creating content is fun. Being able to start a new email or a new blog post or a new tweet is fun. Getting to tell stories for a living is amazing. If you happen to be able to make money from the stories you tell, that’s even better.

My workshop focused on how to create a strategy and utilize the technology available to tell better stories faster. While I was telling my aunt (who happens to be a newspaper publisher) about this, she asked me “How is this different from journalism?” Without hesitation I smiled to myself and said “it’s not.” My background is in reporting, so telling a story, quickly, is a skill I’ve been able to make work for me.

It’s just content

At our hearts, we are all storytellers. We want to connect our clients and business groups with customers, reporters and shoppers (they’re all “influencers”), and we want to do it with soul and passion and adept skill. As communications professionals, there is nothing more fun than telling a great story.

I was surrounded by food bloggers, mommy bloggers, tech bloggers and even bloggers who blog about blogging. All of them, though, are storytellers creating content. As communications professionals, we tell stories. We work with clients to create messaging and compel people to act. There are countless pieces of research on how to appeal to emotions and how to optimize for search. You can A/B test your headlines. You can put a picture above the fold or you can add a video.

But at the end of the day, your story is just content.

At BlogWorld, CC Chapman shared the story of a site created by the U.S. Army to tell the stories of soldiers on the front lines and returning from home. Go spend a few minutes reading their stories.

These are human stories told without editors and without a content calendar or SEO in mind. Whole platoons can write from the front line in Afghanistan. No filters or editors at all. And the Army is adamant about the blog having a human voice. If the U.S. Army can speak human, you can too.

Measure twice, cut once

The old carpenter’s adage seemed to ring true here as well. Being able to prove your mettle was an underlying trend at BlogWorld. From back-channel debates on what constitutes science to super smart people like Tom Webster presenting enough stats to melt your mind, the emphasis on measurement and analytics was clear. Here at Waggener Edstrom Worldwide, we place an emphasis on measuring actionable metrics and using them to influence the decisions you make.

Having the tracking systems in place that show both where traffic goes and whether the goals you have in place are accomplished is vital to the continued success of your content strategy. Content and storytelling doesn’t have to be all for profit. Telling stories and communicating with an audience is great in and of itself. Being able to track performance and metrics, you can create actionable plans for future content strategies.

Products such as Ripple Effect and Narrative Network^® make deciphering the streams of information easier. It’s up to you how you want to act on it.

There’s perpetual discussion about the ROI of social media. The person that tries to claim that social media doesn’t have an ROI is seriously flawed. If you can’t track, test or convert on the content you’re creating, you need to rethink your strategy. Everything has a metric. ROI means being able to track the outs of what you’re putting in. It may not have a dollar sign in front of it, but it does have action.

So, just publish. Just tell a story. Just remember to tell the story you want to tell and tell it the best you can.