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?

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.

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.

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:

1. 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?
2. What level of manager or executive typically drives the cultural shift needed for large organizations to adopt social media?
3. Besides Yammer, what are the top three internal social media platforms, and have you heard what SharePoint is doing in this space?
4. Who is moving faster to learn, adopt, and activate B2B social media: Ad agencies, PR firms, or internal corporate communicators?
5. 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.

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?

Today I’m telling my story at Social Media Arizona. It’s about my early efforts, struggles, and successes with social media strategy for sustainability and green marketing. I’m not whining. I’m learning. This is my right of passage in social media, and I welcome any advice you might have.

I’ve chosen to structure my story as a screenwriter would in pitching a Hollywood producer a movie. This structure comes from Blake Snyder in his screenwriting book, “Save the Cat!” I’ve found you can use his concept of 15 story beats in every great tale for just about anything you want to communicate powerfully.

So grab a cup of coffee, and put your feet up, because I’ve got a doozy for you.

The logline to my story – that one sentence that answers the question, “What is it?” – reads:

In a bid to survive the devastating economy, an optimistic businessman first has to overcome the unrequited love of his new marketing darling – online social media – before his muse will save him.

Opening Image: (Cutout of my head with eyes dreamily peering upward at all the social media logos in a thought cloud; like visions of sugar plumbs dancing in my head. Then the “caching” of dollar signs replace my eyeballs.)

Theme Stated: How you tell your story is more important than where you tell it. (The logos in the above image are replaced with the line, “Once upon a time…” and my face turns to puzzlement as the dollar signs drop from my eyes in a crash.)

The Set-up: Park Howell runs Park&Co, a growing Phoenix agency with a growing client list. In fact, the firm is celebrating its 15^th year in business on March 1. Park’s pretty proud of his team and what they’ve built. He owns his own building, works with 16 wonderful employees, and he and his interior designer wife, Michele, have three lovely kids, each a creative entrepreneur in their own ways. Park&Co is right on track to take over the world. Always fearful of becoming a dinosaur, Park and the agency embraces social media early and begins successfully using elements of it for their clients.

• The agency used iTunes to help its client distribute its training videos worldwide, saving the company more than $250,000 in its first year of the program.
• Park&Co has have given rural Arizonans a voice in Washington D.C. by capturing their stories of needing jobs and broadcasting them through YouTube.
• He has created Ning networks to gather people online for Goodwill and Water Conservation causes

Catalyst, or “Inciting Incident”: Then “Bam!” In October 2008, the world ends as he knew it with the beginning of the global recession. (Picture of ship sailing off the edge of a “flat” world.) The “New normal” was dawning. It was not enough for Park to help his clients weather the storm with decreasing marketing resources. He had to insure the survival of his own agency. Park followed the lead of many captains in the industry, and they all pointed to online social media as more than a temporary lifeboat, but the new marketing world order.

Debate: But can he pull it off? What will it take? Does he launch his own blog or amp up the agency’s online presence? What is his story, his niche, his expertise? Which social media tools, proven or not, will he employ? How will he measure it? What will he measure? What matters? Who cares?

Break into Two (Act 2, the “Love Story”):  Following a Vegas ad agency seminar, and biz dev. gurus introducing Park to the sultry and sensational attributes of online social media, Park falls head-over-heels. He develops his own blog, “A Brighter Shade of Green Marketing,” that focuses on one of the agency’s successful niches: Sustainability.

He takes time to listen to his potential audiences with his new accounts on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, FriendFeed. He monitors Digg, StumbleUpon, Technorati. He hosts online polls and posts videos. He participates in webinars, creates a Ning network, and reads social media romance novels like Bernoff’s “Groundswell,” Brogan’s “Trust Agents,” Baer’s “Convince & Convert” blog, and a plethora of novelettes in the form of free eBooks and SlideShare presentations.

Everyone’s a social media expert and he wants to be invited to the dance. He is delighted and surprised when he is asked to speak about social media in a niche within his niche: Water conservation. He researches, and writes, and posts lists, and links, and insights. He comments on other blogs, reaches out to sustainability writers, and Tweets about everything but where he’s having coffee.

Midpoint: Park finds himself in a feverish, but seemingly one-sided courtship with social media. He’s ready to round third base and head for home.  Readers are going to come flooding in. The phone is going to ring off the hook. One person cautions him,

“How are you going to keep this up – working four to six hours per day on social media – when you’re going to be so busy handling all of the new business?”

Great question, he thinks. Then, in a figurative gesture, he puts his hand to his ear, leans forward toward the very computer he’s been banging away at for 10 solid months, and stops for a moment to hear what his effort has earned him in the way of new business.

Click to hear crickets.

Bad Guys Close In: As Park’s doubts about his social media abilities grow, and its relevance as the new marketing beloved, the economy worsens. Not ready to abandon his initial romance, even though her delicate hand seems just out of reach in the way of biz dev reciprocity, he has to reinvent how his agency can remain sustainable in this new environment of more project work, less campaigns, and dwindling budgets.

All is Lost: Park travels East to meet with other agencies for a two-day session on “Best practices.” The more they talk of scheduling tweets, publishing lists because people don’t read but scan, how bloggers game the AdAge Power150, the more Park finds himself repelling from the process.

Dark Night of the Soul: Park returns to Phoenix more confused than ever about his wooing of social media and the unrequited love he has received in the form of zero new business.

Break into Three: With the help of his brilliant team back at the agency, and what he’s learned from the accumulated months of research while pursuing his social media muse, Park arrives at the greatest truth of all:

It’s not where you tell your story, but how well you tell it.

She doesn’t want you to simply show up with flowers. She wants you to freely share your heart and soul. Only then will she give back.

Finale: Park realizes that behind the siren song of online social media lays many virtues that aren’t at first apparent. Online social media loves you back by:

• Making you a better listener
• Honing your writing skills
• Recognizing and capitalizing on trends
• Developing ones self as a more skilled online communicator/marketer
• Building expertise in your chosen niche outside of social media
• Employing your new found knowledge to guide your customers
• Creating more enlightenment to innovation with easy access to thought leaders
• Exercising resiliency and self-discipline in your daily development
• Perfecting presentation abilities
• Enhancing your own leadership skills

And most of all, social media helps you become a better storyteller.

Tomorrow, I will tell Part II of my story. I will share with you compelling stories being told offline and on that make it easy for people to share. These are stories that in many ways are changing the world. And they all have one thing in common…

My Journey in Social Media for Green Marketing and Sustainability from ParkHowell.com on Vimeo.

I wanted to share with you what I’ve learned about leveraging social media to help green marketing and green marketers become more sustainable. You’ll meet a number of great people who have helped me along the way. All of the links I reference in the video are below. Thank you for watching my milelstone of sorts. If you enjoy it, please pass it on.

1. Lost in Space: Putting the Green Back in Green Messaging
2. Join me on twitter
3. Michael Gass and his Fuel Lines blog, Fueling Ad Agency New Business Through Social Media
4. “Trust Agents” book review
5. Chris Brogan’s blog, Community and Social Media
6. Jason Baer’s Convince & Convert blog
7. Sustainable Social Media For The Green Marketer
View more presentations from Park Howell.
8. How We’ve Become One of North America’s First Carbon-Neutral Ad Agencies in 5 Easy Steps
9. Toyota Creates Powerful Green Marketing Product Demo for its New iQ City Car
10. 12 Faces of Social Media for Sustainability and Green Marketing
11. A Floating Island of Garbage Twice the Size of Texas?
12. “Strategy for Sustainability” book review
13. Repositioning a 30-Year-Old Community Clinic into a Leader in Sustainable Healthcare
14. “High Speed, Low Drag,” and 13 Other Tips to Running a Sustainable Business in this Economy
15. Current “A Brighter Shade of Green Marketing” Newsletter

Click on the image to join our Ning network and learn about how to leverage social media for water conservation

I’ve been on the water conservation circuit lately expounding on the benefits of using social media to help save water. I just returned from working with the gracious folks at the North Texas Regional Water Symposium, sponsored by Dallas Water, North Texas Municipal Water District. and Tarrant Regional Water District.

It was an engaged crowd of nearly 200 water professionals, and they were a pleasure to work with. My social media presentation, “Giving Your Consumers a Voice: Conservation and Social Media,” raised many great questions. It’s always difficult to continue a meaningful conversation in a conference setting. So I’ve decided to launch a Ning network that maybe one of the narrowest niches going: Water Conservation & Social Media. You can join the conversation at h2osocialmedia.ning.com.

The idea here is to use social media to share best practices in using social media to help water conservationists help consumers save water.

The network features blogs, video, photos, a chat room and relevant Twitter streams focused on promoting wise water use. We’ll talk about ways you can sell social media upstream to management. We’ll explore best practices in creating a doable social media strategy given tight financial and personnel resources. We’ll share ideas on how to activate your network. And we’ll all commiserate about our trials and tribulations of working in this new and powerful communications environment.

So if you have an interest learning how social media can help promote water conservation, and you’re open to sharing your efforts, please join us at h2osocialmedia.ning.com.

It’s FREE. And just imagine what it might cost you if you don’t join the conversation.

If you would like me to speak to your group about social media and water conservation, please send me a note through my contact form.

Today, at a social media roundtable in Birmingham with Michael Gass and four other incredible agencies, I learned about bit.ly.com and immediately put it to work.

Bit.ly is a plugin that gives you a bookmarklet for your toolbar. When your blog is written, you simply click on the the bookmarklet and bit.ly goes to work. It immediately creates a tiny URL without have to go to another site (like you have to with TinyURL.com). It includes your post title in a message ready to post on Twitter. Plus it feeds you immediate analytics to the right of the post you’ve bit.ly’d (already making it a verb). It shows your clicks, and who is talking about and sharing your post on Twitter, Friendfeed and other channels. All with a click of the tool.

It’s also great to use on other people’s posts. Click the bookmarklet and it will show you the conversation happening around that blog.

Thank you Michael for setting up the roundtable, Stephanie for hosting, Jaci for your type-AAA insights, Habib for your humor and tough questions, and John for your “Not afraid to get your hands dirty” sensibility. Great sharing.

Photos from the roundtable.

This morning Parker sent me a link to Chris Brogan’s presentation at Chapman. As advertised, it’s 51 minutes of great insight into why and how individuals and companies should approach social media.

So given that it’s the weekend, grab a beer, or your beverage of choice, and do yourself a favor: Watch Brogan’s presentation. It’s thoughtful and filled with great advice, some of which I’ve shared below.

Chris Brogan Speaks at Chapman University from Brandtailers on Vimeo.

Chris Brogan gems from his presentation include:

1. Social media creates, “Serendipitous connections to big opportunities.”
2. Unlike past advertising, “You no longer have to be the beautiful people to be famous.”
3. “We all have stories that we can equip other people. That’s power. That’s magic.”
4. “Does it take more time? Hell yes. Does it take more money? No, lots less. But it does take a lot of sweat equity and it does take being human. That’s the tricky part.”
5. Social media is “Mass micro evangelism…It’s a phone versus a bullhorn.”
6. “Be there before the sale. Get to know me before you sell me.”
7. “Share versus horde.”
8. “Give your ideas handles.”

And one of my favorite Brogan thoughts: “What we do best in America is, ‘We get it done.’”

Now I guess I should finally crack his book, “Trust Agents,” that’s been beckoning me from my desk for the past couple of weeks.

Thanks Chris!