Sometimes getting the best brand stories extracted from inside the organization can be difficult at best. This post focuses on three easy-to-implement ideas that will help you get the most thought leadership content out of your executive employees.
It's easy to get onto the biz storytelling bandwagon. It's hard to actually implement. So here's an article to get you started.
Here the author focuses what to do when leaders and others in your company have important messages to share, but aren't great storytellers -- and the beginning steps of how to capture their material and shape them into stories.
And there are other ideas for you here. I hope this begins to clarify your next steps to finding and sharing the stories within your company! Via Gregg Morris, Karen Dietz 
Why customer stories are better than metrics http://t.co/aMqlaxwX Jeannie Walters talks about the gold in off-the-cuff customer comments...
Articles like this one are rare -- hardly anyone recognizes, much less writes about, how customer stories and anecdotes gain you far more than metrics, surveys, or focus groups. Usually focus groups are crafted info-gathering exercises rather than story sharing experiences where deep meaning can be gleaned.
OK -- so maybe a lot of people in these fields don't know the best narrative research and story evoking methodologies. If they did however, I think we would see huge improvements in customer feedback, engagement, and better/deeper/richer material.
Back to the article -- this is a quick post but with good tips for thinking about customer anecdotes as critical information, and how to start gathering them. I really like that the author suggests once you have these anecdotes in hand, it's time to take action on them. Seems obvious, but it doesn't always happen.
Enjoy this post and I hope to see more like it in the future! Via Karen Dietz 
Jonathan Gottschall, author of The Storytelling Animal, says science backs up the long-held belief that story is the most powerful means of communicating a message. Via The Digital Rocking Chair 
This post was written by Melonie Gallegos for iMediaconnection
In this piece, there are 8 tips to help marketers get in on the social curation boom in a meaningful way - that means Pinterest and beyond!
Here's an excerpt:
"Curation is a long-standing tradition of collecting, saving & organizing objects. Today it takes on a different meaning. Organizataions have evolved from collecting artifacts to digital curation of media and content"
When human behavior shifts and it certainly has, (more about that in the article), brands are quick to follow suit.
Here are some highlights:
There are a lot of websites offfering curation-type services
To get a clear sense of how a brand might leverage curation in this article, they have broken them down into categories.
**social bookmarking and news
**sharing
**Aggregation and syndication networks
**There are 8 ways your brand can get in on the action
Here are a few that caught my attention:
Become a curator creator
**Create your own Pinterest board and it's more than just slapping images, it takes thought, strategy, being part of the community and continually showing up
**appreciating other people's content and having two-way conversations
Create an Interest-based content strategy
**Focus on the interests of your audience, not your products and services!
**Allign their real-life interests with your brand position
Curated by Jan Gordon covering "Pinterest Watch"
Read full article here: [http://bit.ly/IXNQQB] Via janlgordon 
"Chasing the past, I stumbled into the future". - T A Sachs I've always been a firm believer that in order to look to the future, we must look back to and fully grasp the past (and the present)." David Armano discusses in this post the merits of looking back on the social computing trends of the last decade, before looking forward:
#1. Digital: The Interactive Revolution The digital revolution initially begun by replacing the analogue world. Digital began seeping into personal and professional lives and organizations, businesses and industries had to evolve along with it
#2. Digital Media: Information Goes Online The "corporate" Website was born—essentially a glorified brochure for your organization however the business world began to wake up to the fact that not being on the Web was perhaps risking being irrelevant.
#3. Digital Business: The Transactional Era Digital had become not only interactive and informational, but it became transactional—offering organizations new ways to connect with customers or even employees (intranets).
#4. Social: The Human Web The word social becomes key during this era, because we begin to shift behavior during this phase. No longer are we just interfacing with digital systems (human to computer) but we begin to interface directly with each other (human to human).
#5. Social Media: Global, Local, Mobile Connectivity At Scale Today, we live and interact with a digital world which is not only about finding information but is about being "connected". Networks now drive much of the Web's traffic as billions of people share links and opinions about the world around them.
#6. Social Business: Connected, Adaptive & Intelligent The reality is that most organizations are currently dealing with the realities of social media and only a few truly recognize the potential of social business. Not unlike how digital media evolved into digital business—social business takes the foundation of social media and begins to build new economic models on top of it. Business models where new connections are formed to the benefit of both the business, customer and even employee and shareholders are a core tenet of "social business".
#7. Winners & Losers: Navigating Today And Tomorrow's World Today digital has become embedded into the lives of millions of people and a generation who has never known life before it pours into our workforce and gradually rises in the ranks.
We are now in a social-digital environment where things increasingly move in real time. Tomorrow's business models must not only be able to adapt to change, they must help drive that change. Via maxOz 
Facebook thrives on organic marketing and mobilizes and synergizes the best marketing there is, "word of mouth' with its promise of trust and high engagement. Via Rami Kantari, Khaled El Ahmad 
Website speed is important for usability.
***** Post Panda lack of response time when Google comes a callin' could ruin your website's SEO. Actually Google has been speed sticklers for years, so I'm looking for quick but good and cheap or free speed testing tools. Found these, if you know of others or better let me know. Via Martin (Marty) Smith 
Organize anything, together. ... Trello is a collaboration tool that organizes your projects into boards. In one glance, know what's being worked on, who's working on what, and where something is in a process. Via Heiko Idensen 
We live in a world facing multiple crises, many set in motion by factors beyond our individual control. As if this were not enough, we often compound these collective and personal crises with self-judgments, insecurities and doubts -- the voice I call the obnoxious roommate living in our heads. But again and again in my life I have witnessed moments of extraordinary strength, courage, and resilience, when fears are confronted, even overcome, and anything seems possible. For me personally, the biggest step was realizing that fearlessness is not the absence of fear, but the mastery of fear. Fearlessness is like a muscle -- the more you exercise it, the stronger it becomes. It's getting to the point where our fears do not stop us from daring to think new thoughts, try new things, take big risks. It's about getting up one more time than we fall down. Via Internet Billboards 
An all in one. It's really an extraordinary item for doing the right things to improve your ranking. If you have a blog with great articles, but not many visitors, apply the ideas in this article, it'll help you for sure. [note mg] Think about semantic keyword research to help you focus your content and and improve your rankings.
Via Martin Gysler, Neil Wilkins 
Humble PowerPoint slides can go a long way if you use them creatively on the social web. Here are seven ideas to get the most out of your slides. (Great tips! Via Bridge PR & Media Services Every company has customer stories to tell. Some don’t know they have them, some don’t tell them well while others miss the mark by using them to carry marketing too overtly.
I like the focus of this SlideShare piece because it distinguishes between a customer story platform and other customer contact models. And it makes the case for having a customer story platform very well. So I think you will receive lots of good insights here.
But this is what disturbs me about it: There is no understanding about the power of story sharing -- which is a dynamic inherent in storytelling. Story sharing is all about engaging with your customer in an ongoing story swap about you and them. If you go after customer stories, then you have to add this into the equation and internal company conversation if you want to get the highest value from your story activities that continues to spiral upward. Otherwise you head into issue #2: The tone of this piece is heading into the realm of exploitation. A customer is viewed here as a commodity, and so is that customer's story. But whose story is it anyway??! The tone here is "Let me extract a story from you and then push my message to the world using you." Ugh!! This leads us into issue #3: Ethics. Nowhere in this piece is there a discussion of story ethics -- permissions, ownership, shareability rights, over-storying, editorialism, transperancy, and the like. In the happy world of the 'storytelling bandwagon' these thorny issues -- and the dark side of storytelling -- are being ignored. At a company's peril, I might add because ignoring these means eventually breaking the covenant of trust/credibility/authenticity that you create with your customers through stories. Which leads us into issue #4: Lack of training. This piece is pretty comprehensive in its treatment of customer storytelling. However, they make a big point about the story evoking process being important, but never really giving anyone guidelines for it. Learning how to evoke stories is critical because how you do it will depend on if you get data, description, narrative, or an actual story. So if you are going to work in business storytelling/ what training do you need? Story listening, story evoking, story crafting, story tools, story ethics, story dissemination, story dynamics, and story applications.
Oh, and I can't stand it that at the end of this SlideShare, you can't get out of the contact screen (give us your name & email) without reloading the page. Sigh.
So take what you can from this piece (whose focus I really like), understand the critical missing compotents, and then go round out your knowledge. Via Gregg Morris, Gimli Goose, Karen Dietz |
Business storytelling is more than a ‘Unique Value Proposition’ told on an elevator. It goes beyond giving an entertaining PowerPoint presentation. Your business story is made up of every action you take. The better you know your story, the easier it is to actively embody it.
I like this very quick read by colleague David Vanadia about business storytelling because of several key reminders: You are ALWAYS telling a story as you go about your business. Your business 'story' is greater than your 'About Page' or a slick PPT. Focus on emotion -- people remember how you make them feel, not think.
It's easy to get tunnel-focused on a particular story or one particular story application (marketing) in business. Step back and keep your eye on the bigger story picture as David so eloquently says in this post. Via Karen Dietz 
Robin Good: Viewbix is a new web app which allows you to integrate branding, call to actions, offers and other interactive apps to any video coming from YouTube, Vimeo or Facebook.
"Viewbix lets you add interactive apps to your videos that engage viewers and drive calls to action.
The apps overlay dynamic content on top of your YouTube, Vimeo Pro or Facebook videos to create a rich viewing experience that can be shared across the web, social and mobile platforms."
Key features: Overlay apps on video including: photo feeds, coupons, Google maps, RSS feeds, QR codes and more. Additional available apps here: http://www.viewbix.com/apps?r=
Add branding, a call to action and share across the web, social and mobile platforms.
"More than 20% of the viewers who watch a Viewbix video click on the call to action or engage with at least one of the apps inside the player.
Viewbix tracks and reports each interaction so you can optimize your players and achieve the measurable results you want."
Viewbix is based on a freemium model. It currently offers its base product for free but will shortly be charging a monthly fee for branded players, premium apps and detailed analytics.
Pricing info: http://www.viewbix.com/pricing?r=
FAQ: http://www.viewbix.com/faq?r=
Examples showcase: http://www.viewbix.com/demo?r=
More info: http://www.viewbix.com/ ;
(Thanks to Baiba Svenca for uncovering this new tool) Via Robin Good
This post was written by Melonie Gallegos for iMediaconnection
In this piece, there are 8 tips to help marketers get in on the social curation boom in a meaningful way - that means Pinterest and beyond!
Here's an excerpt:
"Curation is a long-standing tradition of collecting, saving & organizing objects. Today it takes on a different meaning. Organizataions have evolved from collecting artifacts to digital curation of media and content"
When human behavior shifts and it certainly has, (more about that in the article), brands are quick to follow suit.
Here are some highlights:
There are a lot of websites offfering curation-type services
To get a clear sense of how a brand might leverage curation in this article, they have broken them down into categories.
**social bookmarking and news
**sharing
**Aggregation and syndication networks
**There are 8 ways your brand can get in on the action
Here are a few that caught my attention:
Become a curator creator
**Create your own Pinterest board and it's more than just slapping images, it takes thought, strategy, being part of the community and continually showing up
**appreciating other people's content and having two-way conversations
Create an Interest-based content strategy
**Focus on the interests of your audience, not your products and services!
**Allign their real-life interests with your brand position
Curated by Jan Gordon covering "Pinterest Watch"
Read full article here: [http://bit.ly/IXNQQB] Via janlgordon 
2 billion people are online. 85% of customers expect businesses to be active in social media. Word of mouse = word of mouth.
Here are 7 reasons - http://bit.ly/JrexbQ - and some thought provoking questions to get you loving Facebook, Twitter, emarketing, blogs and more...
#1. 80% businesses are NOT passionate Show you’re human. Business is built on relationships. Your web presence must show you are passionate #2. 55% more web visitors & 67% more leads for businesses that blog #3. 68% Email subscribers & Twitter followers are likely to buy #4. 20-30% Emarketing response rate #5. 30% customer questions & compliments get no reply #6. 77% customers read brand posts but don’t comment #7. 71% complaints on Twitter are NOT responded to
Download / Embed: http://bit.ly/JrexbQ ; Via maxOz, janlgordon "Email, to me, is still the largest social network in the world," says Brian Solis. "The reality though, is that we're using it less and less." In Solis' lat... Via eProAgi Anderson www.RealPROAdvisor.com 
Acquiring Facebook "likes" has become the major goal of many social media marketing efforts. Via Rami Kantari 
The presenter correctly indicated that stories can be used to hold interest that might otherwise drift. He supported this by outlining a structure: Start with the point you want to make; Illustrate the point with a story; Provide an example or application that supports your point.Ugh!! I can't stand this flow because it is simply a regurgitation of the old "Tell them what you are going to tell them; tell them; then tell you what you told them." I agree with the author of the article who says this is not storytelling. The author continues to say:
A side benefit, he contended, is that this structure can be quickly delivered.
It sounds logical, but it is not storytelling. Speeding through events with an eye on the clock cuts the heart out of emotional involvement, and effective storytelling ties directly into the emotions of the audience.
Now, this structure can certainly work when the second step is changed to “Illustrate the point with an anecdote.”
I love this article because it is a terrific discussion about the difference between an anecdote and a story -- and when/how to use each effectively. The author makes great points and I know you will get a lot from reading this post.
And if you want more examples of different narrative forms so you can be a smarter storyteller, then go download my free guide "Narrative Forms -- What the Heck is a Story Anyway? Why Can't I Just Use An Example?" http://www.juststoryit.com/howto and scroll down to #2 on the page. Via Gregg Morris, Karen Dietz 
The Latest Infographics: Mobile Business Statistics For 2012ForbesThere are some highly revealing infographics that have come out recently that underscore the massive shift to mobile technologies.The quick adoption of mobile devices is really... Via Rami Kantari 
Touchpoint Optimization Strategy a 5-step process that tracks conversion and ROI from a one way touchpoint to action point in customer relationship lifecycle. Via AnnaGenis 
Empire Avenue - What is it, How does it work, and why should I use it. 
Since late 2010, StumbleUpon has been one of the top sources of social media traffic in the US, even surpassing Faceboook as a referrer.
In fact, using StumbleUpon to drive traffic to your site can produce some amazing results. According to Shell Harris, StumbleUpon basically built her website TopTenz. Here are some of her stumble numbers that she shared:
That’s huge traffic that can create some pretty lucrative income stream. The only problem is that traffic isn’t very targeted and your conversion may suck.
Read more: http://bit.ly/IlXic6 Via Martin Gysler, Alessandro Rea 
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