Another Passion » marketing

Are You a Storyteller?

Rasmus Rasmussen — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 22:35:28 +0000

Storytelling is power. When you tell a good story the world stops, magic happens and those who listen are enthralled. We use stories to build brands, find potential mates, friends and partners. We use them to convey feelings, morals and values that might otherwise be difficult to address. Anything can be sold through storytelling, from religion to mini-ovens.

Telling stories makes you powerful, because they give you an opportunity to control others. Stories can change lives and telling them well makes you extraordinary in the mind of your audience. I’ve narrowed storytelling down to four points. If you practice these, you will become better at it. If you master them, the sky is the limit.

1. Know the Ending

If you’re telling a joke, you have to remember the punchline. Other stories are no different. You have to know where you want to end up – whether it’s “and they lived happily ever after” or “this is why my art is worth your money”. If you don’t have an ending, you’re just rambling. Whether your goal is to make the audience laugh, cry or sign the dotted line, you have to know ahead of time. Every element in your story should help you get closer to that ending.

2. Timing Keeps People Interested

Timing is the vehicle that gets you to the ending. It drives the story and keeps the audience interested. Just as you are ready to put the book down, a cliffhanger ending makes you think “okay, I’ll read one more chapter tonight”. Before you know it, it’s three in the morning. Just when you’re sure you know who the killer is, the movie throws a twist at you and keeps you guessing. When the offer on TV couldn’t get any better, they throw in two for the price of one.

Timing is knowing when to work in the boring details without losing your audience’s interest. Timing is knowing when to surprise, pause or even stroke your audience’s ego. Timing is a skill that anyone can learn.

3. Talk Directly To Your Audience

Who are you telling your story to? Who is actually listening? Are they the same?

Don’t try to tell a story that appeals to everyone. At best, you will end up with a mediocre result that is only tolerable, not remarkable. Tell the same story differently to different audiences, or seek out an audience that likes your particular voice or style. The memorable quotes and funny comments that appeal to a group of bankers will not necessarily work for the medical marijuana proponents.

My grandmother would never appreciate how the movie “Memento” is told backwards, whereas I love it for that very reason. The gruff, twisted style of Tom Waits makes him one of my favorite musicians, but I’ve met many people who can’t stand him because of those same qualities.

Realize that the story is only yours until you tell it. From that moment on, it belongs to those who were paying attention to it. Don’t let those people down.

No matter how trivial your story, you can make it interesting if you know how it ends, how to pace it right and who you are telling it to. Research is good. Practice is good. Being willing to risk making a fool of yourself is crucial.

4. Make a Fool of Yourself

You may make fun of Vince the ShamWow guy (I do), but his manic movements and silly headset work for him. He knows his audience likes it because they buy his product. Whether they like the product, they won’t even know until they get it. But they liked Vince enough to take that chance. Does he look like a fool to a bunch of people? Absolutely. Does he make money on it? Absolutely.

When a musician misses a chord change mid-song they don’t stop and start over. They suck it up and move along. Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham once said that when he made a mistake, he would immediately try to replicate it. That way it would sound planned, like part of the music.

Remember the best story someone ever told you. How did they do it? Did they change their voice for different characters? Did they use body language? How did they mix fact and fluff? Humor and suspense?

Making a fool of yourself is not the same as failure. It simply means standing up for what you believe in, in spite of what others think. It’s taking a chance and sticking your neck out. It’s overcoming the fear of failure and owning your mistakes.

Stories are at the core of everything we love and hate. They are the basis of our culture, of civilization, maybe even humanity itself. From the caveman painting images of his life on the wall to the endless streams of twitter updates, the world is full of stories. It’s all about how you tell them.

Tiffani Jones Brown – Writing for the Web

Rasmus Rasmussen — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 16:19:57 +0000

Tiffani talks like she writes, with sharpness and wit. She is a web writer, which was not what she had originally thought she would be spending her time on, back when she was in college. It wasn’t until she landed a job with Seattle based web design company Blue Flavor, that she truly discovered the art of writing for the internet. Today, she has her own web-writing business, Second and Park, and runs a second business with her husband, thingsthatarebrown.

I met with Tiffani at Victrola, a coffee roaster and café in Seattle’s Capitol Hill district. She contacted me earlier that day, to push our meeting an hour, and when we parted ways, she was settling down to do some work at the coffee shop. Such is the life of the self-employed.

AP: Your educational background is in psychology, religious studies, philosophy and ethics. This seems like a far cry from web writing. What happened to get you into not just professional writing but working in the web industry?

TJB: Until I got into master’s program, I was dead set on becoming a religious studies professor. I wanted to study megachurches, evangelicals and how religion was changing in America, but I had a hard time finding my angle on the subject and got frustrated that the discipline wasn’t as current as I’d hoped it’d be.

Meanwhile, Matt was running thingsthatarebrown and seemed to have freedom to shape his career. When I realized I could be a writer and thinker and stay on top of major forces shaping society, I figured I’d give the internet biz a try.

AP: Web writing seems like a stricter form of copywriting, having to take things like search engines and readers with a three second attention span into consideration. What is it about this particular discipline that is so appealing to you?

TJB: Erin Anderson of Brain Traffic once mentioned that “web writing is the embodiment of Good Writing in general.” I completely agree.
Web writing forces you to be economical, clear, completely focused on the reader and concerned with action and outcomes. You can’t bullshit your way through it, and I love that.

I think good writing is simple, direct, clear and provocative. George Saunders, Raymond Carver, and Grace Paley are all good writers & storytellers. Web writing is simple, clear, direct and provocative too but the way you “tell the story” is different than in fiction. Good web writing works with design, helps people do stuff, and is free of all uselessness. It’s also (obviously) interactive.

I am a pretty visual person, so I can almost “see” when my writing’s working. I look at it on the page or in the context of the site, and I see how it fits: do I want to read it? Does it lead me logically to the next step? Have I kept word count to a bare minimum? If the writing looks or feels awkward or is confusing after I read it a couple times, I scrap it.

AP: Different clients demand different approaches, tone and amount of fluff vs. fact. How do you keep your work varied and fresh, accommodating the client without losing your personal touch or style?

TJB: This is one of the hardest parts of my job, because clients often come to me looking for the same thing: fresh, hip, simple web writing. But the definition of “fresh, hip, simple” means something different for everybody.

To figure out what people really want, I spend a lot of time getting to know them, interviewing stakeholders, and researching their business up front. If I suspect I won’t be able to figure out what a potential client wants, I try not to take on the project.

I also always ask myself the question, “What’s true about this service / product / business” while I’m writing. This keeps me focused on what really matters and helps me avoid marketing fluff.

AP: Could you go into a little more detail about the interview process? How and when do you know whether you’ll be able to understand/meet your client’s needs or not?

TJB: I find that my writing improves drastically after I hear people explain their business in their own words—people tend to speak more freely and descriptively than they write, so I end up with a much better material to work with if I do interviews. It’s always difficult, though, to know in advance whether I’ll be able to use what I’ve gathered. Knowing what research will be most helpful comes later on down the line, after I’ve finished discovery and have a really solid sense of what the business goals are.

As for knowing if I can meet a particular client’s needs, that’s tricky. Usually, though, I get a good sense of who I can’t help or don’t want to work with very quickly. I pay a lot of attention to how people write and talk about themselves; if they come to me for services I don’t offer, want something done tomorrow, sound like spam or are too demanding, I know right away I won’t be able to help them.

AP: You also run a small design agency (thingsthatarebrown) with your husband Matt. How do you balance your time and focus between your own and your shared business?

TJB: Very carefully. I expected Second and Park to be more of a side business, but it ended up growing quickly, which has meant I spend about 3/4 time at thingsthatarebrown and another 1/2 at Second and Park. It’s a bit much.

Since I prefer to do web writing and content strategy in conjunction with design, though, we’re re-tooling thingsthatarebrown’s offerings so that writing is involved in every design project.

This will let us collaborate more, but it will mean less time for me at Second and Park. I’m cool with that.

AP: Being in business with your husband, are you ever able to really take time off and just be a couple? How do you separate work from family time?

TJB: (I think) we had realistic expectations when we started working together. We didn’t expect to have a full work/life separation. Talking about “the direction of the business” at 11pm is the nature of the beast.

We’ve managed to find plenty of time for fun, though. We make a lot of time for our friends, and give each other space. We also try not to take ourselves too seriously and remind each other that there’s life outside of thingsthatarebrown and Second and Park.

For us the endless challenge is to figure out what’s important to be serious about (doing good work and being profitable while having a happy life) and put most our energy on that. We try to put other less important things, like the perfectionistic details or what everybody says or implies we should/could be doing, on the back burner (Matt’s better at that than me).

We also aren’t workaholics. We work a lot, but we’re not going to burn out in three months by sleeping poorly and killing ourselves for… what? Success? That game gets old quick, and then you start hating yourself. We try not to hate ourselves, even though we’re both naturally self-critical.

Bottom line: running your own business is hard, but like most things in life, it’s only as dire and painful as you make it. You can treat yourself good or bad and take yourself too seriously or be irresponsible. We’re in search of a balance.

Find Tiffani Jones Brown on Second and Park and thingsthatarebrown – and check out her twitter profile.

Kevin Urie – Taking Social Media Offline

Rasmus Rasmussen — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 18:24:47 +0000

Kevin Urie is a go-getter. I got that feeling even before setting up an interview with him. He is a marketing man who just over a year ago made the decision to learn more about social media. So he formed the Seattle chapter of the Social Media Club and was blown away by its reception. The rest is history and today the Seattle Social Media Club is one of the most popular networking groups in the city.

I met with Kevin downtown, making sure to show up 15 minutes early and still not getting there first. This did not surprise me. I found it more surprising that he drinks tea instead of coffee (this being Seattle, that’s almost considered a sin by some). In a matter of seconds, I was drawn in by Kevin’s curious nature and warm personality. Obviously both a great talker and listener, I came away from the interview uncertain as to who really asked the most questions.

AP: You founded the Seattle chapter of the Social Media Club, which is now very popular. What made you invest the time and energy to do this?

KU: Ignorance at first. 12 months ago when I started Social Media Club Seattle (SMC Seattle) I had no idea what I was getting into. I’m a learner, and believe if you are not moving forward you are moving back. I wanted to take on a new challenge and learn something new. In the months leading up to me starting SMC Seattle I started to dive into social media, and really enjoyed it, and wanted to learn more.

So I reached out to Kristie Wells from Social Media Club international to see if they had a Seattle group I could connect with. I learned there was not an active chapter in Seattle, so I asked if they would like me to start one. Considering the other Social Media Clubs I knew about at the time, had around 30-50 people at a bar talking social media, I thought it would be no big deal.

Well at our first event we had over 150 people and I was shocked and wondering what the heck I got myself into. Lucky for me a great group of board members surrounded me, and have made working on SMC Seattle fun. Not to mention I have learned more than I would have ever thought, and have made some friends I don’t know what I would do without now.

AP: How has Social Media influenced your own way of life? How much is personal, how much is business?

KU: Social media allows me to get outside both my personal and business silos. I think this is a key to both personal and professional growth.

We learn more from those around us than we do in any book or blog, and with social media I am able to surround myself with some of the best and brightest. I am able to connect with people I would have probably never met through traditional channels.

Think about how many people you typically come in contact with on a daily basis, at work, coffee shops, gas stations, etc. Really it’s not too many people, and it’s a lot of the same people every day. These connections are important but they limit us, and we tend to make us all start thinking the same way.

By using social media I have been able to escape this silo. I am now able to connect with thousands of people every day. Hear what they have to say about topics, see what they think is interesting. Then with SMC Seattle I am able to meet some of these people in person, and take these relationships to even the next level.

So to answer your original question, in my personal life, I am now exposed to more ways of thought than before, and I think it makes me a better friend and more complete person. These social connections work the same way for my professional career. I bring more info and experience forward to my clients and employer than I ever did before.

Social media is like the Borg from Star Trek, but in a good way. When a bunch of people share and learn together, everyone benefits.

AP: You talk about social media as a ‘communication philosophy’. What is that about, and could it be applied to offline life as well?

KU: It’s a little pet peeve of mine. I hear people and companies say I need to get on Twitter, Facebook, etc. Those are tools, they really don’t matter, they are just a vessel for communication. Heck in some cases they might not even be the best vessel.

What social media is about to me is about communication. It’s about connecting with people, establishing relationships, and learning together.

For companies this means listening, sharing and working with your customers/employees to improve your product/service and social media tools provide a great way to do that. If you don’t believe in the listening and sharing part however, the tools are going aren’t going to help you.

Offline is no different. Take a networking event. Some people are there to learn, but others are just there to make connections, give out business cards, and make a sale (lucky for us, SMC Seattle doesn’t have many of these). The networking event is a tool, how you choose to use it determines the value you get out of it. Same thing can be said about friendships, jobs, or pretty much for anything if you think about it.

AP: I know from experience that it’s easy to waste a lot of time on things like Facebook and Twitter. How do you engage in the social aspect and still stay productive?

KU: I won’t lie, it’s hard. The more connections I make the harder it is to step away. I feel like I am turning my back on my friends when I do.

Most of the community understands however, because they go through it as well. We are not all Chris Brogan and can be connected at all times, and going 1,000 miles an hour. I’ve got a family, a busy job, and not to mention SMC Seattle which ironically takes me away from social media at times.

I think with anything you need to find your balance. I remember when I got my first smart phone it was a bit overwhelming to have access to my email at all time. Every time it beeped I freaked out, but over time I learned to live with it, where now it’s to a point I stress if I don’t have it.

I think the younger generations have a huge advantage over us in this area. They can multi-task better than me. They can IM, TXT, and carry on a conversation all at the same time, and give everyone the proper attention they deserve. I can do about two, but still have trouble with it at some times.

ADD is our friend beyond 2010.

AP: I’ve heard some critics say that social media will eventually drown in spam and marketing. What do you think about that?

KU: I agree that people will try, but don’t know if they will succeed. The community on these networks must understand that they are in charge, not the brands. It’s not like TV or Radio, where business decides what airs and what we see. In social media we determine who we friend, what we pay attention to. If we pay attention to the spam and marketing and it works, it will be there.

Let’s hope we are all smarter than that.