It’s easy to overlook the daily stories we tell and how they interconnect us with one another.
As a student of Gonzaga University’s online communication and leadership program, I recently spent a weekend in Spokane, Wash., discussing the principles of good storytelling. Unlike many of my classmates, I get to talk about storytelling and writing principles all the time. I wasn’t expecting to hear anything too revolutionary. But, silly me, I forgot about the power of community.
Our intimate group of 20 was made up of vastly different backgrounds and stories. We formed a community around our mutual interest in learning, and shared pieces of ourselves that we rarely share with others. For instance, our instructor asked us each to find a quote that spoke to our hearts, and read it aloud to the group. Each beautiful line gave us a peek inside one another’s personality: One man recited his wedding vows; another read hip-hop lyrics from The Roots. Some students chose quotes from their favorite books; others read poems from their childhood.
These snippets painted images of one another that conveyed our personal histories — one of many storytelling lessons I learned from my educational community and Prof. Kristina Morehouse that weekend:
- “Stop in time, and pay attention to the power of words.” What we say builds community — and sadly, sometimes breaks it down. We need to be mindful of the words we use because someone is always listening.
- “Concise messages are most important.” If you find the right word, you don’t need as many.
- “Show, don’t tell.” When telling a story, don’t leave out the details. Oftentimes, we’re writing for an online audience that reads fast and suffers from information overload, so we skimp on the background information — the interesting characteristics — and focus solely on the lead, aiming to quickly grab attention. But when the next newsworthy headline hits, your lead is long gone.
- “Everyone needs one really good editor.” Find someone you trust to read your work. Ask for constructive criticism, and grow from your mistakes.
- “You can’t write if you don’t read.” Even the best writers find inspiration in other people’s words, and they appreciate how others phrase their musings. We should all read to better learn about the basic rules of grammar, and to uncover the magic behind parallel structure and cadence.
I found myself nodding along to each suggestion, excited to share them with my broader community of writers, editors and storytellers. Even if we’ve heard them before, it’s always nice to reiterate their importance in our industry.
And as for my inspirational quote? Always the grammarian, I read a quote that demonstrates parallelism at its finest:
“To him she seemed so beautiful, so seductive, so different from ordinary people, that he could not understand why no one was as disturbed as he by the clicking of her heels on the paving stones, why no one else’s heart was wild with the breeze stirred by the sighs of her veils, why everyone did not go mad with the movements of her braid, the flight of her hands, the gold of her laughter. He had not missed a single one of her gestures, not one of the indications of her character, but he did not dare approach her for fear of destroying the spell.”
– Gabriel Garcia Marquez, “Love in the Time of Cholera”
Image by wallyg.
Khloe Kardashian’s Wiki page defines her as an ”American businesswoman, TV personality, radio host, socialite, model.” Based on a recent encounter with her, I would add master storyteller to her Wiki descriptors, having recently stumbled across the opportunity to observe a reality show in the making. My key learning was that making a reality TV show is not unlike what we do every day as storytellers: take loads of data and try to cobble it together into a cohesive and compelling storyline.
While visiting my brother’s nano-premie babies in the NICU of Children’s Hospital Dallas, the hospital PR director called up to say that Khloe Kardashian was on-site and wanted to come up and visit a couple of babies. Not just any babies — my brother’s babies because they’d been born weighing one pound and are now thriving. Khloe came on the scene some 15 minutes later via a back elevator, preceded by producers handing out releases to anyone and everyone on the floor, and followed by a big camera, fully rolling. We had not been warned that Khloe (who is, in fact, NOT an amazon!) would be accompanied by a crew shooting footage for her new show, “Khloe & Lamar in Dallas” (premieres Feb. 19 on E!). While she cooed over the babies and chatted away with my brother, I took a backseat near the producer so that I could ask him my burning questions about reality TV. Here’s what I learned:
• These cameras capture between 12 and 14 hours of footage per day of Khloe; they follow her everywhere.
• The footage is not scripted: writers/producers don’t create scenarios for her to fulfill; she just lives her life how she wants to live it (only on camera).
• Two weeks before the show airs, this producer and two writers guide the editing of the footage. They troll through hundreds of hours of footage with a goal of piecing together a compelling story, based on classic storytelling elements: tension between “characters,” good guy-bad guy dynamics, scenes that include genuine and raw emotion, “turning points in relationships,” etc. (Sound familiar?!)
• They then make recommendations to Khloe for the cuts they want to take and the commentary they will need from her. She ultimately makes the decision for what’s included and what’s not, with a goal of including “only the most authentic moments” because her “credibility depends on authenticity.” (Sound familiar?!)
Khloe and her crew soon departed, on to some Dallas hot spot for the night. I thanked the producer for the fascinating info, mumbling something cryptic about our being kindred spirits while thinking about how our jobs continue to change to accommodate audiences who increasingly want to be entertained rather than informed. Like this producer, our ability to tell compelling stories entirely depends on the quality of the footage we’re able to capture. And like reality TV, success means that we authentically communicate “reality,” the reality of business challenges and triumphs as well as the reality of how people experience products and services.
Like her and her sisters or not, watch their shows or not, their audience appeal is undeniable. Millions of viewers tune in weekly to to get the story (Truth) behind the headline. THAT’s what I call storytelling chops!
Being able to tell a story is the cornerstone of what we do here at Waggener Edstrom Worldwide. Being able to tell that story as quickly and as efficiently as possible is what makes for a successful business. Having a strategy and the tactics necessary is only part of being able to tell a story in real time.
For those of you that came to my session at BlogWorld and New Media Expo recently, welcome. For those of you looking for a real-time content toolkit, thank you for stopping by. As I recently wrote, being able to tell a story in real time is a vital part of a successful integrated communications strategy. Being able to be nimble and agile enough to post content in real time has a number of positive effects, including SEO boosts, community engagement and thought leadership.
In order to get started, there are a few things necessary. The absolute first thing you need is a content management system. For multiple author blogs, I like Windows Live Writer (disclaimer: #client). Sorry Mac guys, us PCs get to have all the fun with this one. Manage multiple blogs, manage formatting offline and draft posts when you have spotty Internet coverage. From there, even though this is real-time content, having a content calendar to supplement social channels and content marketing will help you reach your audience. This editorial calendar features social networks as well as a content flow for a multi-author blog. There are even several macros built in to help you plan your content.
From there, you need to be able to monitor trends and analyze success. In order to do that simply, I recommend a couple of tools, including Simply Measured, the Twitter client of your choice and Twendz.
Creating content in real time is far less about the strategy and more about trusting yourself and your writing. By having the systems in place in advance, all you need to do is open you text editor, write and hit publish. Having your team of content guerrillas at the ready is essential as is having an exciting story to tell.
Of course, these tips, tricks and hints would be useless if I didn’t give you the methods to use them, right? Below is a huge list of some great apps and tools for monitoring various social networks, social sharing sites and even forums (yes, forums).
- Google Insights: Custom search trends.
- Rowfeeder: Monitor Twitter and Facebook conversations based on keywords. Import into a Google Spreadsheet.
- Social Mention: Pull out mentions and other metrics.
- Twitter widgets: Customizable Twitter widgets that can be embedded on any website.
- Friendorfollow: Establishes your followers/followees for mutual relationships.
- Klout: A standardized measure of a Twitter account’s influence.
- Wildfire: Manage contests and promotions. Can track the Facebook fan ID and allow you to follow up.
- Knowem: Username check across multiple social networks.
- Digg Alerter: Notifies you when you get votes or hit the Digg front page.
- di66.net: Digg stats.
- Big Boards: Monitor message boards and forums.
- OMGILI: Bulletin board and forum search engine.
I hope that you put these tools to use as you tell your story. And, if you’d like to learn more about how WE can help your company be the story it wants to tell, contact us and we’ll make some real-time magic happen.
As a communications professional, one of the best parts of my job is getting to tell a story. Being able to connect the information that our clients have with customers, media and analysts that are looking for the latest innovation or product announcement is why I log on every day.
In an age where everybody is an influencer, being able to tell a story well is essential. The adage “it’s not what you say; it’s how you say it” has been redefined. The words you use are now as vital as the medium you use to convey the message. Gone are the days of issuing a press release and relying upon the nation’s media to tell your story for you. Instead, we can instantaneously shape the day’s news events simply by posting to Twitter or Facebook. Real-time communications is an essential part of the overall integrated communications landscape.
In a few weeks, I’ll have the honor of presenting an hour-long workshop at the upcoming BlogWorld & New Media Expo in Los Angeles. On Friday, Nov. 4, I will be presenting Real Time Content In No Time: How to create and manage a content strategy that is nearly real time to show that a content strategy does not have to be created three months in advance in order to be effective. By utilizing search trends, emerging social trends and analytics, it is possible to create a multichannel communications strategy that reaches your audience and influences it to act — regardless of the timeframe.
Here at Waggener Edstrom Worldwide, we have the opportunity to work with innovative companies to tell great stories in the moment. But those stories, even though they were created in real time, couldn’t have happened without advance planning and strategy.
I’ll be talking more about this in the coming weeks, but for now, I want to invite you to join me Nov. 3–5 at the Los Angeles Convention Center for BlogWorld. If you do want to register for the conference, you can use my special code: BWEVIP20 when you sign up to get 20% off of ANY pass (that means $300 off of the full access pass). So, go register now and I’ll see you in LA!
When we discuss influence, we immediately think about popular movie stars or athletes. But what if I said that in today’s society, each of us is an influencer?
I listen to a lot of people talk a lot about influence. The amazing thing is that they all have something different to say. Here at Waggener Edstrom, we of course have our own answers about how to define and measure influence. But this got me thinking. What is the future of influence, and what role do we as communications professionals have in that future?
What is influence?
A recent panel I listened in on had the stated mission of establishing just how we can define influence. But even after an hour of people talking, nobody had a clear definition. At the end of the session, I tweeted: you know who should be influential for your brand? Your brand.
And I stand by that.
As integrated digital communications professionals (see also: public relations), being able to influence your key audiences by creating content and telling a story is the key to establishing and maintaining influence. But first we really do need to establish just what influence is.
While at South by Southwest, I had an opportunity to interview Klout CEO Joe Fernandez about Klout, what factors are important to influence, and what the future is for scientific research of influence.
A research team at Yahoo! recently examinedthe various conversations that occur on Twitter and reported “a striking concentration of attention on Twitter roughly 50% of tweets consumed are generated by just 20K elite users|where the media produces the most information, but celebrities are the most followed. We also find significant homophily within categories: celebrities listen to celebrities, while bloggers listen to bloggers etc; however, bloggers in general rebroadcast more information than the other categories.” What’s that mean? It means that influence is as much created as it is earned, which has a definite impact on the future of public relations.
Be the story you want to tell
One of the tenants we profess at Waggener Edstrom is to be the story you want to tell. What we mean by that is when you have a message you want to convey, the best conduit for telling that story is to control how it is told. To influence how you are perceived through your own words and use the channels you build to influence the audience you want to reach the most.
So, how do we do that? To me it comes to three key strategies:
- your own corporate blog
- your own corporate website
- your customers.
Your own corporate blog
By creating a two-way communications channel, you are able to interact with potential customers, existing customers and anybody interested in learning about the business problem your company solves. Being able to create a community around a central content hub, you are able to create influence among your core audiences. Social media is important for engaging and building a community, but your corporate blog is where you get to tell your story.
Your own corporate website
As important as real-time and in the moment communications through a personable blog are, having static content that is informative, engaging and compelling is vital to the success of your products. At the end of the day, ROI is not measured in clicks, likes or followers. ROI is measured in revenue. By having a website that is designed to convert the traffic your digital storytelling drives, you will continue to realize benefits over the long term.
Your customers
Empowering your customers to tell your story is the most influential thing you can do for your brand. Creating content that your customers can share and evangelize is essential. Being able to tell your story in a meaningful manner that is compelling and actionable will help influence not only the purchasing decisions of people interacting with your content, but influencing the purchasing decisions of others through their social interactions.
Digital media is the great influence equalizer. Anybody can create influence, and there’s no reason why your brand shouldn’t be an influencer as well.
Infographics are suddenly everywhere. As brands and organizations look for new and creative ways to tell their stories, infographics have emerged as a popular, powerful tool for communicating challenging concepts and presenting information in a compelling way. Timely infographics can help clarify or drive important news stories, and evergreen infographics can extend the online life of your story far out into the future. With more and more infographics being released into the wild every day, the following tips can help yours stand out above the crowd.
Lead with data
It’s tempting to think about design first, data later. But an infographic is just a visual vehicle for telling an interesting data story. Focus on refining your data and ensuring that it tells a clear story first, and then follow with design. Verify each stat that you include, and ask yourself if the stats combine to tell the story you think you’re telling. A mix of data sources can help deliver a more neutral infographic.
Lead with the right data
In a rush to get infographics out the door, publishers are not always building their graphics on a solid statistical foundation. Carefully examine your sources and consider the implications of the data — what people, groups or organizations might be affected by what you publish? Casting your own skeptical eye toward your stats before you create your infographic can save some headaches (or worse, the spreading of misinformation) down the road. The Next Web has an example of what can go wrong if you don’t pay sufficient attention to your data.
Dial back the marketing and branding
Subtly branded infographics will have more traction with bloggers and publications than ones that look like a full page advertisement for your brand or product. Consider approaching a publication to partner on creating an infographic; they’ll know what’s most interesting to their readers and may be able to provide new insights into the data.
Just the tip of the iceberg
If your data is interesting (and if you’re creating an infographic around it, hopefully it is!), let your mind wander beyond the graphic — chances are there’s an opportunity to develop a full story package. Think about how you can extend the reach of your infographic with story placements and other digital content. Amplify via social media channels, blogs, websites and owned platforms — even a well-placed search ad can be highly effective.
What do you think makes for a great infographic? Share your tips and favorites in the comments.
Images by westudio.
Jennifer Roth (producer “The Wrestler” and executive producer “Black Swan”) looks at the infamous “staple scene” from “The Wrestler” like it is her wedding video. The scene starts with Mickey Rourke working out a routine for his match with Necro Butcher, his goateed, staple gun-wielding opponent. We don’t see the match instead the film cuts to “The Ram,” Rourke’s character, walking back from the ring bloody and stapled and reddened. He is about the collapse. 
Recently, at Microsoft Corp., Jennifer delivered a Waggener Edstrom Worldwide-organized master class talking about the choices she and Darren Aronofsky faced maintaining his creative vision despite their project constraints. Why she views that scene with such pride is that instead of shooting the entire match with some “Rocky”-like bravado, their limited budget forced Aronofsky to re-evaluate the best impact for the sequence. He chose instead to represent what happens to “The Ram” in the ring in flashback. It saved them a day in their production schedule and a significant amount of money. The way the sequence is filmed and how it progresses is extraordinary. This scene alone almost cinched Mickey Rourke his first Oscar for Best Actor.
The challenges of low filmmaking are well-known. The budget constraints that agencies and their clients face every day are not too dissimilar. Jennifer left us with some wonderful nuggets on how to handle creative challenges with limitations.
- Jennifer sees directors and creatives like brides just about to get married, with visions of a William and Kate wedding (and sometimes a shoestring budget): “I tell them to tell me the three things that they can’t live without. After that I do everything to fight for those things or at least come very close.”
- “The dozens of other priorities truly become secondary when a director sees that I’m advocating for the things they believe matter.”
- Focus on the top two or three things that matter most. Oftentimes, we can’t have it all. Oftentimes, we don’t really need it all.
- The story/message has to be first always; if it is, then you don’t always need a big budget to create something great.
- There is a way to tell stories that doesn’t involve complicated logistics, effects, processes – find that voice.
- Trust your own taste/gut; it’s gotten you this far.
- Love what you are doing and believe in it.
- If you do good work, you’ll make good money.
Jennifer Roth recommends that anyone working with creative people should read “Shooting to Kill” by Christine Vachon and David Edelstein. “Shooting to Kill” is a good mixture of practical, hard-edged information and road worn knowledge. At work when you face your own “staple scene” challenge, you may be able to look back on that experience with the pride of watching your wedding video.
Photo by Marcos Perini.
As former media buyer, it wasn’t a huge shock to learn that the 159-year-old New York Times is betting the newsroom on whether or not readers are willing to pay to read it online.
Advertising, it would seem, no longer makes the world go round.
No, this won’t be a PR vs. advertising post, declaring a universal winner because one of the most globally noted newspaper decided to stop at a losing game. Marketing done well incorporates both strategies. (Sorry, I digress). People want direct access to the real-time news they want, and, apparently, consumers are fine with paying for it. According to The Times, more than 20,000 consumer survey responses confirmed pricing of “100 product combinations priced as low as $5 and as high as $40 a month.” Advertising as primary source of revenue stream appears in most cases to be a broken model. Consumers are voting with their wallets, signaling that they are tired of the signal-to-noise ratio while just trying to get to news they want. It’s not clear from this post if ads will be a part of the pay model or not, but I would think anyone paying for content deserves clutter-free news. 
As media specialists, this shift represents a huge opportunity to engage with the “true audience” that might develop from a successful pay model. I welcome the narrow focus on defining true influence. Then again, influence is an ever-moving target and variable that can be highly personalized – actually, there’s room for a whole separate post for the subject of influence alone. A recent post from Olaf Kowalik, vice president of product management and development at Waggener Edstrom Worldwide (WE), highlights some of WE’s tools used to identify and amplify influence to see who is making impact for clients and how they communicate within their community, as well how deep those relationships are and advise on how best to spread conversation. The Ripple Effect and Social Graph are a few of many offerings from WE’s Influence Toolkit. Oliver Blanchard has also done a good job detailing why “Influence is not a Jedi mind trick.”
What really happens if you lose a percentage of the audience due to the new model? Are they outliers who maybe weren’t paying attention to start with? Does it follow that you gain a refined audience of engaged listeners? Does this new core audience represent a more “accurate” circulation figure? Potentially, at least, a new industry standard could be born, shifting the thinking around the “norm.” Is bigger really better? Ideally, under this new model, one can target those who are actively listening and are therefore more likely to take action.
Will advertising go away completely under the pay model? If so, will that shift have any impact on how The New York Times covers companies, the economy and even politics? Investing in and being a part of how quality content is generated is what we get paid to develop, analyze and promote.
There are several current examples of other types of pay models doing fairly well:
- Traditional cable companies are seeing market share eaten upby pay-TV and by the likes of both Hulu and Netflix – especially among the younger demographics.
- Streaming on mobile devices is the latest channel to emerge and challenge the traditional ad-supported model of television. According to USA Today, 2011 NCAA men’s basketball tourney rating hits 11-year high. According to CBS/Turner, “Visits to its live streaming game coverage online and to mobile devices is up 47% this year, which is partly driven by coverage being available free to mobile devices for the first time.”
What are some other great pay models that you personally or professionally subscribe to? Would love to hear why you feel they are worth it. Do you believe that The New York Times can find success by asking readers to pay for content?
Edits by Julie (Arterburn) Evensen.
Images by Mike Bailey-Gates.
IBM’s Watson supercomputer has become a publicity-generating dynamo this week. As Watson rules on TV’s “Jeopardy!” game show, the human champions arrayed against it are in peril. The match of men versus machine has everything a PR pro — and TV viewer — craves in a great story: a quest, a conflict and, in tonight’s final episode, a resolution.
Watson isn’t perfect: It badly flubbed a Final Jeopardy answer. But it is impressive. It’s amazing that the IBMers have created a machine sensitive enough to play TV’s brainiest game. Watson must distinguish subtle and multiple meanings of English vocabulary, yet be robust and lightning-fast to access its memory for Beatles lyrics or names of U.S. airports. That’s no trivial pursuit.
Game-show host Alex Trebek is the perfect impartial storyteller and referee for the match. He is credible and familiar to people across North America. IBM couldn’t ask for a more populist voice to convey the capabilities of Watson and the skills of the team that created it. Trebek’s presence makes Watson seem friendly, despite its intimidating speed and knowledge.
All-time human “Jeopardy!” champions Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings can be excused if they feel like John Henry racing the steam drill. Against Watson, they may die with their hammers — er, buzzers — in their hands. Day 1 ended in a tie between Watson and Rutter, then Watson raced more than $30,000 ahead on Day 2.
Let’s summarize. IBM gets great publicity. “Jeopardy!” gets a spectacle. The TV audience gets heroes and villains (they choose which is which) to root for or against.
If the “Jeopardy!” writers have a sense of humor, then tonight’s final answer, framed as a question, will be, “What is the HAL 9000?”
(Full disclosure: Unlike the loser in Weird Al’s song, I am a former “Jeopardy!” champion, although not in the same tax bracket as Jennings and Rutter, and spent my prize money long ago.)
What does the story of Watson versus the humans mean to you?
Image by Justin Levy.
How often have you seen a video that blows you away, then immediately leaves you baffled and questioning — how in the world did they pull that off?
It’s unrealistic to go into a campaign expecting to produce a “viral” hit, but you do sense when you’re tapping a creative goldmine. There is nothing more exciting than being in a brainstorm when the big idea finally surfaces and the foundation is in place to build out a creative project.
But during a campaign planning phase there is also a need to maintain a proactive mindset, analyzing and assessing every possible outcome and interpretation of your campaign across various audience segments. Any good viral campaign is going to lend itself to series of spoofs and remakes that twist the messaging and shift the focus around a marketer’s own specific goals. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if ad agencies are already marketing “spoofs and remakes” as a key service area.
In most cases, this isn’t a bad thing. Remakes and spoofs will often actually help drive traffic back to your original campaign as viewers reference back to provide context around a related spot they are watching. That being said, preparing the “story behind the story” can serve as a huge asset to help extend coverage around your message or campaign.
Undoubtedly, if your campaign does go big, outlets will come knocking, wanting to know how in the world you pulled off the idea (examples: Old Spice & Coke Happiness Machine). Why not dump a few extra resources into capturing video, photos and interviews with key people behind the campaign to build out this asset in a creative way?
In looking back on the Walk Across America video, what I particularly love was the way the crew simultaneously developed a “behind-the-scenes” video detailing out how they developed the spot:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cp8t27oT_ww
Immediately after providing viewers with a “wow” video, they quickly enable interested viewers to dig deeper on context. Would you mind taking in a extra 350k views?
This is a huge strategy for brands as it can afford a method for pulling off a great creative spot while still having a backend asset to enhance some brand messaging that would otherwise detract from the original creative. Furthermore, the additional context can drive the authenticity of the campaign and provide a viewer with a greater appreciation for the time and resources devoted to making the end product appear smooth and effortless.
Big Takeaway
Whether you’re building out a video, narrated photo slideshow, blog post, infographic or other asset, always keep the extended storyline in mind as a way to garner additional attention.
“Behind the Scenes” – Image By: Bryan Fenstermacher
