7 formulas for storytelling success · • product or service story: people that your company...

© Copyright 2015 MichaelSMARTPR, LLC © Copyright 2015 MichaelSMARTPR, LLC

@michaelsmartpr

7 formulas for storytelling success: turning boring company info into captivating

narratives

Ragan Social Media Conference

Feb. 2015

© Copyright 2015 MichaelSMARTPR, LLC

Thank you for being here


MichaelSMARTPR

Train and consult communicators how to boost their reach


Our struggles . . .


Listen for . . .

• 7 ways to frame stories when there doesn’t seem to be anything interesting

• Beyond tips, Q&A, predictions, rankings

• A twist on a format you’re already using

• Surprising results when you do this

• Formulas that work for any audience: social, internal, media


7 formulas for winning stories

Start by jotting down “raw materials” for an upcoming issue or event you need to promote


1. Process stories

• Result or event isn’t that interesting, how about the process?

• Great for boring new products or routine events

• Can help take a good event even further



1. Process

2. Focus on real people


2. Focus on REAL PEOPLE

• Product or service story: people that your company touches or changes

• Who are the REAL people behind the story?

• NOT real people:

• Executives

• Spokespeople

• Communications staff

• Employees can count, esp. outside of work


What would you do?


What would you do?

Sarah at a children’s hospital

• Blood clinic trying to find new ways to attract and motivate donors

• High-profile patient, Jessi, needed 100+ units of blood

• Family willing to come to clinic to thank workers and donors

• What could be done? What “real people” could you involve, and how, to enhance this story?


Jon Sullivan, Aflac


Story opportunity

• Aflac field agent had registered as a potential bone marrow donor

• Strangers’ baby needed a transplant


Story opportunity

• Aflac then supported program to add employees to bone marrow registry

• Strategic because Aflac offers policies related to bone marrow diseases



1. Process

2. Focus on “RPs”

3. Two ways to exploit pop culture


3. Exploit pop culture

• All publishers chasing clicks by invoking celebrities, pop culture references

• Breaks out of typical corporate comms patterns

• Can quickly convey complex concepts


Exploit pop culture

Draw an analogy between your activities and familiar pop culture vehicle


Brandy from LA

• Represents Taste Nirvana coconut water and Sweet Leaf Tea

• Struggling to come up with news


Exploit pop culture

• Draw an analogy between your existing activities and familiar pop culture vehicle

• Actually create a program inspired by or tied to a pop culture vehicle


Devin from my “Inner Circle”

• PR Director for Instructure Canvas

• Sells software for online college courses

• Beyond bandwidth and security audits


Devin • The hot topic in his market is “massive

open online courses”

• Free, huge classes offered online to anyone

• Harvard, Stanford, MIT offering them

• Instructure wanted to offer a MOOC to make a splash

• What should the course topic be to maximize coverage and buzz?


News media results

• More than 1 billion impressions (B)

• More than 1,000 original stories

• 330 TV: HLN, CNN, Jay Leno

• USA Today, WSJ, AP


Social media results

• #TWDmooc tweets: 5,906

• Potential reach: 4,789,709


Behavioral results

• 189,858 pageviews in first month

• 62,000 enrollments in the course


Exploit pop culture

• Draw an analogy between your existing activities and familiar pop culture vehicle

• Actually create a program inspired by or tied to a pop culture vehicle


Kinetic Analysis Corp

• Actuarial firm that does damage estimates



1. Process

2. Replace “commands” with imagery


4. The alter-success story


4. The alter-success story: comeback • Not simply success story

• Highlight the previous struggle, even failure


Ken Li


Comeback

• Sometimes hard to convince execs to go with this

• Show them examples that earn attention and don’t reflect poorly on subjects


Josh James didn’t have time to be sick. In December, 2013, only

a few years after selling his software company Omniture to

Adobe ADBE -0.35% for $1.8 billion, he was about to close a

$125 million round of financing for Domo, his young enterprise-

software company. This wasn’t the moment to take a day off.

So James, 40, tried to ignore the sore throat that had been

building since a brief trip to Thailand the month before. Still, it was

worrisome. The soreness wasn’t anything he had ever

experienced. James was in constant pain, as if a golf ball had

lodged itself in his trachea. It was becoming hard to breathe. He

had a fever, too, with his temperature occasionally spiking to a

dangerous 104 degrees. Antibiotics lowered the temperature

briefly, but then it returned with even more savagery.

http://fortune.com/company/adbe/







Comeback

• At dinner to toast deal with IV in his arm

• Later in story, conflict around exit from previous company

• Josh’s internal calculation



1. Process



4. Position as a comeback

5. Beyond typical “tips” format



• “7 ways to . . .” is a great format

• Easy to make it about the reader

• Especially, easy to ID pain points and address them

• Here’s a surprising way to deliver this format more effectively

Groovehq.com


Add narrative to “tips” format

• Begin piece with brief narrative

• THEN go into your first tip


Groove: software startup



• Uses a blog for exposure



• Wanted to test two different formats

• One post about how to land blog subscribers

• A/B tested:

• One version that goes straight into tips

• Another version that begins with short narrative

Groovehq.com


Results

Courtesy Groove


Results

• Anecdotal version beat the get-to-the-point version

• Their blog walks the walk



1. Process





6. Us vs. them


6. Frame as a competition

• Outside’s competition for best outdoor city


Frame as a competition

• Twitter trick – favorite vs. retweet


Frame as a competition

• Food drive? Compete with another company

• Promote safety practices? Internal competition w/in depts.


Frame as competition

• Aflac’s “Voice of the Duck” campaign

• Crisis mode

• Set up applications, auditions


Results

• More than 1 billion impressions

• 12,371 applications

• Increased Duck’s Twitter and FB followers 14%

• 130,000 views to YouTube video

• Traffic to Aflac.com up 20 percent



1. Process




5. Add narrative to “tips” formate


7. Turn to calendar for inspiration


7. Turn to calendar for inspiration • Real-time or newsjacking is great, but . . .

• Holidays

• Seasons

• Anniversaries

• Cultural events

• Even when not obvious . . .


Before…

• Physics undergrad wins small state competition

• Builds “nanotubes” – 20 atoms wide

• Foundation of filtration

• Medical applications


Mary at HR consulting company


What would you do?

Mary McChesney, VitalSmarts, Inc.

• Fall book launch

• Crucial Confrontations tells people how to conduct the difficult and painful conversations in their lives

• One co-author is particularly good at media interviews and giving brief tips from the book


Write-up includes:

“You don’t have to be a pushover to make friends in political discussions,” says Joseph Grenny, co-author of Crucial Confrontations: Tools for Resolving Broken Promises, Violated Expectations, and Bad Behavior. “It’s possible to be 100 percent candid and 100 percent respectful in any discussion – even when disagreeing over your favorite candidate!”

Grenny offers a few tips for improving the outcome of any disagreement:


Result


Also . . .

Holiday angle too good to pass up . . .

When bad relatives happen to good people

. . . Grenny says that by developing these five skills, people can once

again look forward to celebrating the holidays with their family:

• Judge Not. How you see your relatives determines how you treat

them. Soften judgments by asking yourself, “Why would a reasonable,

rational and decent person do what they’re doing?”

• Show you Care. When confronting bad behavior, let others know you

care about their interests.

• Facts First. Start with the facts and strip out accusatory, judgmental

and inflammatory language.

• Keep it Kind. Having laid out the facts, tell the person why you’re

concerned, but don’t do it as an

accusation—share it as an opinion.

• Invite dialogue. After sharing your concerns, encourage the other

person to share his—even if he disagrees with you. One of the best

ways to persuade others is to listen to them.



1. Process




5. Add narrative to “tips” format


7. Turn to calendar for inspiration


Your takeaways

• 3 things you will do differently starting this week:


Keep me posted


Keep in touch

[email protected]

@michaelsmartpr

michaelsmartpr.com

7 formulas for storytelling success · • product or service story: people that your company...

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