Just Story It

Marketers are supposed to be the experts on connecting emotionally with customers.

Content marketers can learn about audience building & engagement from renowned author Robert Munsch. Improve your strategy with tips from a storytelling master!

Content marketing is all the rage for 2013. I think it might have been the rage in 2012, too. It is a buzzword, for sure, but it is essentially focused on how to tell a story. More so, it is about how to engage with your customer or prospect.

Are you spellbinding?
Let’s be honest.
It’s a huuuuge challenge.
Probably the biggest challenge each blogger faces.

In this example, a single customer interview netted more than 38 pieces of content. And here are the essentials on how to get your customers to help you.

Love this very clear how-to article for gathering customer stories. The author provides very clear steps on how to get this done. Yeah!

Her best piece of advice is to not do the interviews yourself -- find someone else who is a good listener, maybe even someone outside your company. Excellent tip. Asking customers for their stories is sometimes hard to do. Maybe the story the business wants to hear is not the story your customer wants to tell -- and I don't mean that customers want to complain. I just mean that businesses need to be open to all kinds of stories a customer may want to share. Sometimes it is a lot easier for a neutral party to gather these stories for you.

My only other comment is that the author focuses on case studies. But case studies are not the only kind of customer narrative to write. Case studies are not the only effective kind of customer story to share. Better to just collect the stories and then determine what form to use.

It is fabulous that the author shares how a single story can parley into 38 pieces of content. That is a content creator's dream come true! 

Read the article for the author's process, great tips, and a free downloadable book. 

Thanks Giuseppe Mauriello @pinomauriello for suggesting this article to me!

This review was written by Karen Dietz for her curated content on business storytelling at www.scoop.it/t/just-story-it 

Brands are content publishers, and the Holy Grail of brand-produced content is magnetic content.

Read this article for 5 strategies that will help you create magnetic stories to share about your business, products, or services.  

The 5 strategies include:

1. Make it relevant
2. Connect across time
3. Extend across media
4. Inspire people
5. Draw from the everyday

Each strategies has a video that illustrates the point the author is making.

I think 'Make it relevant' needs some work though. I get the point the author is making with the video that's included, but more could be said here -- like, "make sure your stories help customers find answers to the problem they are trying to solve." Can't get more relevant than that.  Or "have your stories reflect the values, needs and desires of your customers."  You get the idea.

I bet you'll gain several ideas from this article and videos that you'll be applying to your business storytelling. 

Storytellers need to remember these personal writing tips and include them in every single story, whether we’re telling it orally, or writing it to share on our blogs or elsewhere.

The best business stories are our personal stories or the personal stories of customers, staff, and vendors. But how do you write these stories really well in order to make them memorable and share-able?

This author has great tips for doing just that. Here's the advice I love the most: “You’ll need to write something to discover what your story is. Then you’ll have to rewrite it to work out why your story’s important, and rewrite it again to make the story clear to your readers. But put limits on rewrites. Don’t be a perfectionist and do quash your inner critic.” So true!

Read her other tips to write stories for great blog posts and website content!

Creating compelling content is a theme running through the PRSA 2011 International Conference this year.

 

I like this quick article with its 5 bullet points.  4 out of the 5 are all about storytelling and is a quick checklist for developing content that is meaningful and memorable.  There are links to videos to illustrate the author's points, making this article even more valuable.  Enjoy!

Tweet I don’t care. I don’t care whether you are an author, marketer, mom, designer, biz owner or rebel leader – if you want to succeed in today’s environment, you have to be a grrreat storyteller first.

Click here to edit the content...

I had two occasions in the last couple of months to see the “About” pages of many Web sites and blogs. In the first, I had a few dozen story practitioners that I wanted to invite to participate in my Q&A series. In the second, I visited many sites and blogs to glean a short description of each so I could list them on my inside pages.

Both activities had maddening elements.

Topics I curate sometimes come in waves. It seems the current wave is "About" pages on websites. I've added several articles to the collection recently about how to craft them well using your stories.

And here is another one. But it is slightly different (and why I curated it). Colleague and fellow curator Kathy Hansen wrote this piece today about the lack of "About" pages on blogs -- and how frustrating it is.

She goes on to give examples of a blog with a great "About" page, and those that don't.

Take her advice -- make sure you have a well crafted "About" page on your blog, on your website, and in your other promo material. 

Whether you're a professional copywriter or a business owner, read these 15 copywriting and content marketing blogs if you want to make your writing more effective and earn more money.

Well now -- here's a different article than what I typically curate. But once you craft your business stories, you've got to imbed them into your blog, website, other marketing content, and write a bunch of content around them. That's where these 15 copywriting blogs can help you!

It's not enough to simply write or tell your business stories.  We all need to get better and smarter and writing not just great stories, but creating compelling copy.

I've check out the blogs on this list and will definitely keep up with several of these. Ben Settle's looks great, as does Harrison Amy Copywriting, Men with Pens, Success Works, and Works That Begin With You.  And The Rant looks like it will provide the occasional much needed kick-in-the-pants!

I hope these blog writers really help you write great material.

Thank you Copyblogger for putting this list together!

...

Learn how to attract and keep more blog readers by telling stories.

This is a great post that shows how to incorporate stories into your blog posts to make them memorable and shareable.  And there are lots of examples to illustrate the author's points also.

As the author says, "Stories stick with us because they make us feel. They appeal to our senses. They inspire us. They create images and emotions that stay with us long after the story is over."

I like the 5 tips he has for us -- they are excellent and should really help you bring your blog posts to life with stories!

In my previous post, I touched on content marketing and I  emphasized throughout the post the importance of quality content. But what does that mean?

What a great post about using stories to build quality content -- and a fun poll to take at the end too!

I love how the author has organized her thoughts and given us really good tips on using storytelling to build great blogs, articles, websites, ebooks, etc. Her tips are a terrific map.

And then you get to take a quick poll at the end and see immediate results.  I'm bookmarking the post so I can keep going back and to see how people are responding!