Managing options

Humans have been telling stories with pictures since the days of cave paintings, so we should be pretty good at it by now.

All right, uswant to increase your business? Then translate your business stories into videos.

I know I know, who's got the time in which is the best tool to use? Most of my stories I share with my clients in the board room. When I think of taking some of my business stories and creating a video or two to share on my website, I get just completely overwhelmed.

But this info graphic drives home the necessity of creating these videos so that your stories can do your marketing for you. For example, for those of you who have products 85% of customers are likely to purchase purchase a product after watching a video on your website about it. Wow!

For service businesses, 65% of the C suite or top senior executives of the company will continue to research you after viewing one of your videos. Wow again!

there are quite a number of articles in this collection about tools and strategies for creating effective digital stories. So dig in, learn lots, and work creating these videos into your schedule. And I'll work hard on trying to take my own advice!

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

Marty Note
Karen (@Kdietz) is a great storytelling resource. I agree with all of these ideas especially moving stories to video. I just got back to my desk after shooting a "Conversation" with my boss Jon Jordan about Ecommerce.

Easy, painless and fun and the video will attract 10x the followers of the same information written into a blog post. Visuals are crushing textuals so be sure to incorporate these tips into your storytelling. Oh, and don't forget STORYTELLING is your marketing strategy.

Managing this combination artfully is the essence of marketing. Today, brands live in such a fluid digital ecosystem that these pixels are constantly being refreshed in real-time to keep the story of the brand alive and relevant. New platforms and technologies allow marketers to manage each of their "pixels" in sophisticated transmedia storytelling. Three growing trends that are improving multi-platform marketing include deeper storytelling, sophisticated curation, and using artificial intelligence to improve the contextual relevance of ambient marketing.

This is a thoughtful article that I enjoyed because it highlights the notion of 'subtlety' in marketing/branding activities. What does the author, Victoria Young, mean by subtlety?

She uses Kate Spade as an example -- where the company uses different platforms to post different content that in its entirety tells a story.

The activity is call curation and as the author says, "This is an effective, graceful, and non-intrusive way to continue to reinforce the Kate Spade story. Furthermore, this allows consumers to identify with aspects of the brand that are not so directly commercial, and therefore more relatable."

Curating content in a variety of ways across different social mediums (this is a take on transmedia storytelling) which can lead to deeper story sharing experiences between companies and their customers without hitting people over the head with repetitive messages. That is a good thing!

So how subtle are you in your marketing efforts and is this a quality you want to bring into your branding? Definitely food for thought!

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

While technology continues to drive emerging forms of communications, it's ironic that the hottest trend in marketing today just might be the ancient art of storytelling. And that doesn't mean that all the stories being told are any good.

LOL -- I don't know if marketers have cornered the market on storytelling but there sure is a revolution going on in their world as they continue to leverage the power of storytelling.

Here's what I like about this article -- it's emphasis on crafting really great stories. And it is rare to find such candid remarks about this. But this author calls a spade a spade. Yes!

The author, Phil Johnson drives this point home and shares his experiences at recent conferences with bad storytelling.

He then gives marketers 3 tips for how to do it right.

Enjoy this quick read and keep crafting great stories!

The Modern Media Agency Series is presented by IDG. Both marketers and users are very interested in social media. Buyers told IDC that less than one in five use social media to make purchase decisions. To learn more about the research, click here.

Whether your company is just getting its social sea legs or excelling in the digital world, there is a niche and opportunity for every brand on social media.

OMD, one of the top media agencies in the world, works with clients of various size and social media exposure. Within the agency, OMD Word is the social intelligence arm that helps amplify clients through social media. The department ensures the client’s social channels are leveraged and optimized to support traditional and digital solutions.

According to Word’s U.S. Director Colin Sutton, your level of understanding impacts your brand’s ability to perform on social media. Generally, this is the first thing that brands should be thinking about when they want to launch a social campaign.

Read more: http://on.mash.to/KEHUPX

Beth Kanter wrote a very complete and interesting piece in NTEN's latest edition of their quarterly journal for non-profit leaders. You have to download the journal but it's worth it and it's free (you just need to register). 

Jan Gordon: I agree with Guillaume, Beth Kanter knows what she's talking about and her article is definitely worth reading.

Guillaume Decugis wrote this commentary:

"It's been fascinating for me to see how non-profits seem to embrace Social Media in general and Content Curation in particular - Beth of course being a key advocate in that move.

The broader take-away that I see for those of us in all sorts of organizations, as independant professionals or SMB-owners is the validation it brings to the model. When tightly-budgeted NPO's embrace a practice as a group, you can bet they're not wasting their scarce resources on a hype. They have to be efficient and as Beth puts it in the article: "Putting content curation into practice is part art form, part science, but mostly about daily practice. You don’t need to do it for hours, but 20 minutes every day will help you develop and hone the skills."

This is precisely where we see the opportunity with curation for professionals: building up a good practice that fits with one's daily routine and that -as Beth puts it - brings great "unexpected benefits".

Selected by gdecugis and Jan Gordon covering "Content Curation, Social Business and Beyond"

Read full article here: [http://tinyurl.com/75ucphe]

Boot Camp Digital prese ts this infographic on the importance of Pinterest to online sales- for example, Pinterest is the #1 referral of traffic to marthastewart.com. That and the rest of the statistics might be surprising to some.

Learn more about the importance of Pinterest when it comes to marketing a business online, and take a look at this infographic on the Purchasing Power of Pinterest...

Relationships are the new currency, especially now with social media giving us another world to mine and harvest great people, in addition to meeting people in person.

Here's some quick food for thought: are you and your business all about relationships -- or all about transactions?

Working with stories in business well is all about relationships. So are you on the right track and what attitudes go along with this?

This article is a quick read and a good barometer to know if you need to up your biz relationship game.

And I love this at the end of the article: "Remember, the WE in Your Social ME-dia works. . ."

Read the full article here: http://smallbiztrends.com/2012/06/7-attitudes-make-you-relationship-centric.html ;

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

The classic sales funnel has long been used to describe website development strategy.

However, the deployment of content marketing in a sales funnel with a campaign focus is a relatively new concept to many.

It’s not as simple as writing lots of blog posts every day and distributing them on social channels.

In fact, the goal of strategic content marketing should be to identify, qualify, segment, score and, ultimately, close leads in an accelerated and predictable fashion.

In order to strategically deploy content marketing it requires the right software, a defined sales funnel and a campaign structure.

Read more: http://bit.ly/MjFpfA