Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Winning entrepreneurs bond emotionally with employees, investors and customers--and dramatically increase their chances for funding and for long term success--when they hone their ability to tell meaningful stories about their businesses.

Here is an article discussing 2 examples of effective business storytelling for marketing/branding/identity purposes that really work. One is a small business (Baby Steals) and the other one is a large enterpriese (IKEA). You will notice the difference in their stories as the size of the business kicks in.

Pay close attention to what the founder of Baby Steals did/does -- because implicit in the example shared are story listening skills and how the stories she was hearing from customers/prospects also shaped the success of her company.

And then there are 10 tips for bringing storytelling into your business marketing/branding efforts. All are solid. A word of advice here -- working on several of these 10 tips takes time. The ideas you come up with during your first pass you will want to test with friends, colleagues, customers, and prospects. This is an iterative process where your focus and messaging gets sharper, clearer, and more powerful over time. So give yourself the opportunity to play. This goes no matter what size of business you have -- micro to large enteprise.

We are heading into the 4th quarter of the year -- what a great time to hone in on your business storytelling, laying a stronger foundation for your company in 2013.

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

What’s the story of your business?

Are you wondering how storytelling can help your marketing and sales?
 

To learn about the power of storytelling, I interview Dave Kerpen for this episode of the Social Media Marketing podcast....

"Storytelling has quickly become one of the most talked about topics in user experience and beyond—to the point that it’s almost cliché. Most of the ideas presented around storytelling are focused on simple reasons why storytelling is important and some marginal tips for telling a better story. The problem there is that we’re a step ahead of ourselves."

Whenever UX Magazine writes an article about storytelling I read it -- because they are usually sooooo good! And here's another one just for you.

UX Magazine is for geeks who are into User Experience design when developing software. UX design is all about using stories to create more user-friendly tech products. Way cool. I love working with engineers and how open they are to stories.

Anyway, this article is a must-read because it focuses our attention on where anyone working with stories needs to go first. As the author Sarah Doody says, "We’ve gone straight to how to tell the story of an experience or a product and skipped over the crucial element of why we’re telling these stories in the first place."

She continues: "But, if we truly want to make great experiences and products for people, we need to stop focusing on competing and start focusing on creating—creating products that are extensions of our own personal stories. . . you first must be the consumer. What you create must stem from your own personal story. You must live and breath for the experience, product, or business you are creating."

You tell 'em Sarah! She cites Steve Jobs, Jack Dorsey, and Mark Zuckerberg as examples of business leaders able to do this. And Sarah shares other stories to make her point.

She then poses a series of questions at the end of the article to help us focus on our 'why', our personal stories, and meeting the needs of customers.

And don't forget to read the comments at the end of Sarah's blog post. Along with the other article today from Thaler Pekar, we have a wealth of insights to make us story rich!

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

[Great read and an interesting storytelling POV  ~ Jeff]

In 2009, the duo embarked upon a curious experiment: They would purchase cheap trinkets, ask some of today’s most exciting creative writers to invent stories about them, then post the stories and the objects on eBay to see whether the invented story enhanced the value of the object. Which it did:

What a great research project and article on the power of storytelling to increase profits! Here Rob Walker and Joshua Glenn demonstrate that when you can attach a compelling story to a product, its monetary value increases.

That is good news for anyone using stories to sell products. I think it will work the same for selling services, too.

Anyway, go read the story of this research and the results they experienced. I bet you'll get ideas for some stories you want to create for your products/services.

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

[A fascinating read for content producers, marketers and PR pros. Thanks to Karen Dietz for scooping it - JD]