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Social media training is more effective through visual storytelling

September 7th, 2011 | No Comments

The Power of Story Part II: “Social Media and the Storyteller” from ParkHowell.com on Vimeo.

Do you feel cornered by social media? “Like” this. Tweet that. Friend me. Poke you. Give me some link love-in’. It seems the virtual online world is more frightening than the real one.

These were just some of the social media fears and myths we explored during the Power of Story training at Forever Living Product’s International Super Rally in Washington DC. The first part of the training focused on how to craft and tell a compelling story to increase the success of sales and marketing. You can view the video and Keynote presentation on how to structure your 9 beats of story here.

Once we outlined the structure of every great tale, we did a social media training on how to share your story with the world. We had to be very visual in our presentation, because I was in front of over 3,500 distributors from more than 140 countries. Even though it was translated in 10 languages simultaneously, much of the meaning in one’s words can get lost in, well, translation.

Your social media command centter

Instead of a PowerPoint filled with typical social media icons and website captures, we commissioned illustrations from the remarkable French artist (He lives in Phoenix), Christophe Jeunot. He captured the character of each social media channel we covered in a single frame using the same hero character we featured in Part I of our Power of Story training.

We began by describing a social media command center that includes your website/blog. All other social media channels feed into and broadcast out of this command center. We then separated each channel by one of two functions: Utility or Promotion?

Utility Channels

Feature your story on YouTube.

Channels like YouTube, Flickr, and SlideShare are used to capture, archive, embed and share video, photos and PowerPoint presentations. They have online communities, but I really use them more for the utility of organizing and embedding different kinds of audio/visual content into my blog, as well as increasing the search engine optimization (SEO) of my site.

Promtional Channels

I view the likes of Twitter, FaceBook and LinkedIn as social media channels that publish and promote your blog and website and build conversation around your business, while helping others grow their businesses.

Twitter is the Pied Piper of social media to help you attract followers.

Twitter is the Pied Piper of these social media channels. Used properly, its 140-character “Tweets” can present an intriguing headline to beckon followers into your post. You can provide quick updates on promotions, events, new product launches and other quick hits of interest to your online community.

Twitter is also great for listening in on conversations to gain insight on what topics are of most interest and will resonate with your readers.

We talked about Facebook as your personal international media center, while LinkedIn is it’s professional cousin functioning as your online business portfolio and contacts list.

Facebook is your international media center

All of these social media channels can instantly share your blog content with a single click of a button, helping you become an international online publishing and broadcasting magnate for your personal content.

This was a fun training that made the most of storytelling. The cartoons resonated well with the international audience and were powerful visual aids to amplify the narrative of my training.

You can watch the entire training on the video at the top of this post.

How would you illustrate your favorite social media channel?

CMO’s – Don’t let advertising tactics become your marketing strategy

July 26th, 2011 | No Comments

The following article, written by our director of client services, Stan Yamamoto, recently appeared in our Flashpoint agency newsletter, and is well worth the read if people around you are thinking more tactically than strategically.

Social media is here to stay. It’s becoming increasingly important for companies to build ongoing two-way conversations online with their customers to move products and services. The problem is that sometimes they get so caught up in the execution that they overlook the need to make sales.

For example, Burger King parted from agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky after they produced many iconic online executions like the Subservient Chicken, Coq Rock and other Facebook and viral campaigns. But according to Adage.com, the restaurant chain experienced declining sales, particularly during the last months of the relationship. You might say these tactics were one-off buzz generators, not really supporting an overarching brand strategy for Burger King.

The Burger King example just solidifies to me that social media isn’t a silver bullet for success. It is only one tactic in your marketing arsenal to help support your brand. And tactics should not be confused with strategy. I think Apple has exceptional marketing strategy across the board. And they don’t even have a Twitter account. OMG!

Now there are plenty of social media success stories, too. Like Old Spice’s use of YouTube videos and other online media for their “Smell Like a Man, Man” campaign. The difference to me seems that these attention-getting online tactics were just one part of an integrated campaign strategy that drove people to the stores, where they found additional compelling product benefits. In an Adweek.com article, “According to Nielsen, sales of Old Spice Body Wash—the line touted in the Wieden + Kennedy-created campaign—rose 11 percent over the past 12 months, and since the effort broke in February 2010, sales seem to be gaining momentum.” Ah yes, moving product. What a concept.

Companies do need to embrace new media avenues but must remember to build on things that still matter: making their brand stand for something to customers, offering a great product or service, having two-way conversations, asking people to buy from them and giving superior service after they have. Sounds so easy and so old school. But the basics of solid “blocking and tackling” in marketing is a step that many seem to miss.

Bottom line: focus on solid strategy at a brand level and the marketing tactics really do fall into place more easily. And, more importantly, move the needle for your company.

Now, doesn’t that smell nice.

Is social media deadening our storytelling skills?

March 5th, 2011 | 1 Comment

More of my Q&A on the power of storytelling from Dr. Kathy Hansen’s A Storied Career blog.

Q: The storytelling movement seems to be growing explosively. Why now? What is it about this moment in human history and culture that makes storytelling so resonant with so many people right now?

A: When was the last time you heard a really funny joke? When was the last time you took the time to practice and tell a terrific yarn at a party? The Internet is full of them, but like the world economy, our storytelling talents have been in recession.

When you see a cave painting created by the ancients of a person on horseback following a large beast with a spear in its side, what story are they telling? Why would they take the time to build the fire, burn the charcoal, and memorialize their victory on a dark and damp cave wall? Because story, no matter how it is told, is essential to bringing meaning and expression to life.

As the noise of advertising, media, and politics has increased over the past 50 years, our attention spans, and therefore our message delivery, has grown dramatically shorter. We have become experts at “low-resolution” communications: The sound bite, 30-second commercial, PowerPoint slides, Twitter’s 140-character character, thumbs-up liking, speed dating, and texts that replace whole words with single letters. The pendulum has swung so far in the direction of burping information like bullets out of a Thompson machine gun, that people are beginning to realize something is missing.

Storytelling is making a resurgence because the social animal in all humans craves context, depth and content in our interaction. A story that involves us as the protagonists, or at least presents a hero we can identify with, that has to overcome great odds to achieve their desires, absolutely parallels the quests in each of our lives. It is an elemental depiction of our most basic instincts and fight for survival.

We have all been in such a hurry to be heard that the dots and dashes in our high tech telegraph communication are losing resonance. We communicate in binary form like the computers we type on. I believe the pendulum is swinging back to what people are starting to long for again: Slowing down and being part of a greater story.

Why you can’t fake authenticity in “The Now Revolution”

February 8th, 2011 | No Comments

Serendipity has a funny way of delivering us extraordinary treats.

It happened yesterday when I was reading The Now Revolution, a new book on social media by Jay Baer and Amber Naslund. The Now Revolution is an amalgam of the bottom-up management found in The Rudolph Factor, Zappo’s uber-company-culture tome, Delivering Happiness, and Chris Brogan’s Trust Agents. This social media primer provides actionable steps you can take to make real-time business work for you, rather than against you.

With social media and the connected consumer, you can’t feign passion, fake authenticity, and be complacent.

Here’s how I inadvertently put Jay to that very test.

A unique feature in the book are QR codes that you can scan with your PDA, which then immediately transport you to greater online content. I downloaded the Microsoft Tag app. on my iPhone and scanned the tag on page 16 for “The Culture Barometer;” a quiz that helps you determine the “social” culture within your organization.

But the tag kept taking me to The Now Revolution Facebook page. After three attempts, and being new to the technology, I reached out to Jay on Facebook about the errant link suggesting that it might be user error. Within five minutes, he responded thanking me for the alert. He made a quick adjustment to the URL, and asked me to try it again. Voila!

This is The Now Revolution at work. When else could you immediately reach an author, point out a business challenge, and have it fixed within minutes? And it didn’t cost the publisher thousands of dollars in reprints and weeks of wasted time. Plus, this customer (me) became an even more active participant in the product and brand: an amazing example of the new velocity of commerce.

I jokingly suggested to Jay that he embedded this snafu to demonstrate the premise of the book: “7 shifts to make your company smarter, faster and more social.”

I’m going to miss Jay and Amber

But you don’t have to. This Friday, you can meet the authors at the Social Media Arizona event at Madcap Theaters in Tempe, AZ. I’ll be in Omaha. But if I was in the crowd, and after reading The Now Revolution, I’d ask:

I can appreciate the pragmatic use of QR codes for companies and causes that can deliver meaningful content. But how can marketers avoid making them annoying promotional gimmicks, and therefore diluting the technology’s credibility?
What level of manager or executive typically drives the cultural shift needed for large organizations to adopt social media?
Besides Yammer, what are the top three internal social media platforms, and have you heard what SharePoint is doing in this space?
Who is moving faster to learn, adopt, and activate B2B social media: Ad agencies, PR firms, or internal corporate communicators?
What is the single greatest fear an organization must overcome to be successful with social media?

If you haven’t ignited your own social revolution inside your company, then the time is NOW to start by attending SMAZ.

The CMO’s Recipe for a Sustainable Social Media Campaign

February 10th, 2010 | 1 Comment

What can green marketers learn from Julia Childs when it comes to creating a sustainable and effective social media campaign? Don’t begin with tactics.

Julia didn’t become a world-renowned chef by choosing her pots and pans first. She started by thoughtfully considering the ambiance of the dining setting, the tastes of her guests, and how best to tell a delectable story as the centerpiece for what she was going to serve.

Only then did she grab her spatula.

The same is true with planning your foray into social media. The recipe that I have found works is 7 parts strategy, 6 parts storytelling, and 4 parts tactical channels.

I. Strategy for Sustainable Social Media

1. Describe your brand in one sentence

2. Communications goal

What are you trying to accomplish?

3. Where is your audience relative to your cause?

Awareness: How familiar are they about your program?
Interest: They’ve heard of you but maybe not as involved as you’d like.
Action: They’ve taken at least one action because of your campaign.
Advocacy: They are fans of your brand and perhaps even evangelists.

4. How does your audience use social media?

Creators: They write blogs, upload and create content online.
Critics: They respond to blogs and contribute to forums.
Collectors: Organize content for themselves and others using RSS feeds, tags, and voting sites like Digg.com.
Joiners: Connect in social networks like MySpace and Facebook.
Spectators: Consume social content.
Inactives: None of the above.

(See Forrester Research’s technographics ladder)

5. What makes your story unique and shareable?

6. How will you become more approachable?

7. How will you know you have won?

(Props to Jay Baer at Convince & Convert for putting handles on his social media strategy outline, from which I sprinkled liberally across my plan.)

II. Telling Better Green Stories

1. Describe the hero (Protagonist)

2. Write the ending of your story; what do you want to achieve?

3. Who/what stands in your way (Antagonists)?

4. What do you have to overcome?

5. Who will help you?

6. Why do they care?

Here is a library of resources to help you become a better storyteller.

III. Activating Your Green Marketing Social Media Plan

1. Realistically, what do you have to do to activate your plan?

2. Who needs to buy in and champion your cause?

3. How long will it take to launch?

4. What social media channels will you launch first?

Here’s a campaign starter form we use to get clients thinking in the right direction for both online and offline word of mouth marketing and social media.

Campaign Starter Form

Remember, it’s Strategy, Storytelling, THEN Tactical Channels. Let’s not pull out the Ginsu knives before we know what we’re cutting.

Now, how would you spice up this recipe for social media success?

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Social media training is more effective through visual storytelling

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