Posts tagged: Storytelling
A first, a news release about a porch, led to ways to use storytelling as landscaping to plant PR. Disclosure: Hursthouse Landscape Architects and Contractors is a CoryWest Media marketing and public relations client. CMP.LY/4 View the release, Once Upon a Porch Project Wins Landscaping Gold Award in Glen Ellyn. Please share comments on your PR, landscaping or porch stories . . .
Convergence of Media and the Future of Unscripted Drama on the Web
Sitting in on a Brian Solis BlogWorld keynote is always a conference highlight.
At BWE10, Brian interviewed Mark Burnett, a TV and film producer whose IMDB page reads like a most-watched program list. Watching Mark’s clips was entertaining; you’ll see a few of them here, too.
After I published this poist, I found the convergence of media and the future of unscripted drama on the web keynote video.
Here are my notes, lightly edited and not verified with the speakers for accuracy. If you attended this session, please add your comments and insights or if you’re a Survivor fan, tell us about your most memorable Survivor social media moment. Also, please let me know what I missed. In our section the sound was a bit fuzzy in the early part of this session. And, check out John Chow’s coverage of the Brian Solis and Mark Burnett keynote.
Brian: Social media is an unscripted reality show. How do you see storytelling as being an important part of what we do?
Mark: My job is to take images and sound make stories that represent core values.
How are you going eliminate people every week? Survivor – each week you have death and birth, all the ancient things and s
Orange is a warm nice color, blue is a cold, death color
Now that one person is eliminated, the group dynamic will never be the same.
The person that comes alive on the screen in social media is the person that breaks through.
Casting and choosing who will be in the content is so critical.
Brain: Can anyone predict what will make a good story?
The unpredictable nature is a greater driver. One of your favorite characters could be eliminated. Survivor took unpredictability and turned it into a positive.
Survivor – he believed that the book Lord of the Fires [this may not be the exact title] could translate. Values change when you live on an island: no fancy cars.
As far as the creative process goes, the need to be certain can cause paralysis. You’re never certain that you should marry a person, change jobs. The need to be certain can cause procrastination. You need to be willing to jump in and take a risk. People that need to figure it out will not do anything. The people that get things done need to step out in faith and not worry about being scared “—itless.”
A lot of us are working outside of our comfort zones and sometimes that’s what brings out our best – Brian Solis
The reason that Survivor carried on was that people would go into the office and talk. The change has been with social media is that the conversation is happening during the show. While the water cooler conversation is still going on, social media has expanded immensely what goes on.
The mission is the right kind of casting, the right core values and the right mission, but you need people to be talking about it. For ten years, Survivor at 8 was the number one show.
Bringing Jimmy Johnson on Survivor is what made people way, way more aware. “I can’t win a million dollars, but I can help you win a million dollars.,” Johnson said.
You couldn’t help but feel for him. That’s the whole spirit of social media is sharing – Brian Solis
Mark’s philosophy about shows came from his mom. When he first moved to the US, Mark got a letter from his mom every week with the same stamp and the same stationary, all that was different was what she wrote. Once you get a loyal following you need to give them an anchoring framework with surprise elements. What kind of idiot changes a successful format or blog? Just change small parts. Don’t get a whole new set of stationary – it’s dumb. Just have a couple of interesting and memorable experiences.
MTV award clip with Bruno
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=el0x9-1j7lo
Our job is to have our awareness genes on all the time and when the light bulb goes off take some action. Tom Cruise danced live on MTV awards as Les Grossman with J Lo. Set 6-7 minutes into the show, the skit became a top trending topic on twitter upped viewership.
Brian: You’re giving people something to talk about in social media that brings them back to other experiences
Mark: It’s awesome, frightening and terrifying. It’s evolving every day. One of the things you can do is to think about questions you can ask your audience live. You can play online at the same time and win prizes. Put yourself up against a fifth grader.
Mark has a remarkable gift for bringing people, story and places to life. One of the cool values of shows like Survivor is creating tourism for these places. Mark tries to give people a vicarious travel experience.
Brian asked . . . Regardless of what we think about Sarah Palin, how on earth did you pull off Sarah Palin’s Alaska off?
Mark answered . . .
His career up to now has been adventure. Alaska is one of his most favorite places. Most people don’t really know what’s there. He asked Sarah to give a Governor’s tour. People will be very surprised to see what he’s made.
No one has ever seen what we’re seeing now. Alaska is epic. It just goes on and on with snow fields, the film crew say 50 bears in 30 minutes, and 40 million salmon come through one bay. Every Alaskan gets a check every year. They get paid to live there every year.
This is just their family one summer doing stuff that a lot of Alaskans do.
Sarah Palin’s Alaska Reality Series TV Preview on the Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/15/sarah-palins-alaska-palin_n_764262.html
Brian asked . . . Because of the sites, how do you see social media changing television and your business?
Mark responded . . . It’s exciting and terrifying. It’s your job and your program and you have to be choosing what works. He’s just trying to keep up. When he sees things that work that are repeatable and thematic, he sees easy casting choices like Jimmy Johnson and Sarah Palin. If he was going to focus now and see what will TV and social media be, playing game shows for prizes live will be the simplest form. There is someone in this room who will figure it out. There is huge money to be made in capturing eyeballs.
Disclosure: Thanks to BlogWorld New Media Expo for granting me a media pass that covered my registration.
“We’re wired for stories, individually and collectively. Since the time of Odysseus We’ve been told stories. This is how we’ve been conditioned to learn; our morals and values are taught through stories.” Gay Ducey, past president, National Storytelling Network and Oracle Award recipient for Distinguished Nation Service in Storytelling
How can you use the power of stories in your business life?
Craig Harrison’s new book “Story Tell, Story Sell! Triple Your Sales through Storytelling,” soon to be released, will tell you how. To learn more about telling stories now, order Annette Simmons’ book, “The Story Factor,” which is listed on Amazon’s top 100 best business books of all time.
Craig and I both spoke to the National Speakers Association Illinois Chapter on March 20. Craig covered the power of stories and introduced the “success stories” concept. My presentation covered the world of social media – in 20 minutes. I started my presentation by telling a story, a story about how I covered the Storytelling and Marketing session at the Chicago Search Engine Strategies conference.
Telling Your Success Story
“Storytelling sets you apart from your competition by showcasing what you do best.” Craig says.
Here at CoryWest Media, we often write “case studies” or “customer profiles” or “before and after” stories for our clients. Every one starts with situation, approach and solution. Craig frames his process a bit differently.
Setting: describe time and place in a sentence or two
Situation: talk about the pain points – what needed to be fixed
Solution: reveal the answer and the results
I especially like the setting as a foundation reference point. Before his presentation, Craig worked with two people to help them develop their success stories. They were both sitting right next to me. When we got to the exercise part, I had expert partners providing feedback at my side.
Storytelling for Business
Probably my biggest “ah-ha” was that all of our client’s success stories have common threads. My partner told me she like these: an accelerated marketing plan, a system, “Hollywood casting” and the seven steps in our marketing transformations process. Key phrases that popped out of her story: the secret is in the systems, from reactive to proactive and from locally powerful to globally influential. As you tell your story, these phrases will pop out.
Craig suggests you write out your success story, read it out loud and practice telling it so that you tell yours in a minute or less. Need more guidance? Check out Craig Harrison’s articles on storytelling.
What’s your success story? Past/proven, present/in progress and future/inspiration and motivation tense all work.
I am thrilled to be speaking at this event, hosted by the National Speakers Association of Illinois. Wendy Piersall, @emom, and Johnny Campbell, the Transition Man and I will be talking about social media for speakers, coaches and consultants. If you’re in Chicago, I hope you can join us for this Fabulous Friday event that includes a family style lunch at @Maggianos in Oak Brook on March 20. Landed here looking for a storytelling social media speaker? Here’s my speaker page.
NSA Illinois Fabulous March 20 Friday Event Details
Topic: Story Tell, Story Sell: Sales Through Storytelling, morning session and Master Social Media, afternoon session
Format: networking begins 9:15, meeting is 10:00-2:30, family style lunch included
Location: Maggiano’s (click here for directions)
240 Oakbrook Center, Oak Brook, IL, 60523
630-368-0300
Register online or call Sue Black at 630-208-0776
COST: $59.00 members, $69.00 nonmembers, $79 for all others, $89 at the door
Morning Session: Story Tell, Story Sell: Sales Through Storytelling
As a speaker, trainer, consultant, coach or subject matter expert, your can utilize stories to connect from the platform, persuade prospects in sales situations and even help existing clients better understand additional ways you can serve them!
In this interactive program Craig Harrison will show us how to leverage the power of storytelling to share past success stories with audiences, clients, prospects and customers. Using story from the platform you can inspire and illustrate learning points. In sales situations your use of story offers a soft sell that subtly brings buyers to you. Craig will reintroduce us to story and make it our friend again!
About your presenter:
Professional speaker and storyteller Craig Harrison has been telling tales since the age of eleven when he went door-to-door in his hometown of Berkeley California selling Used Jokes.
The adult Craig Harrison founded Expressions of Excellence!™ to provide sales and service solutions for organizations and individuals.
Craig is the founder of NSA’s Storytellers PEG, past chairman of the Sales PEG, past president of the Northern California chapter of NSA, and has been an NSA member since 1997.
Craig is also a leader in the National Storytelling Network, and is competing his sixth year as a board member of the Storytelling Association of Alta California, producers of the Bay Area Storytelling Festival. Under the name of Hackin’ ‘Boo, Craig has told stories in China, Japan, Australia and here on Turtle Island. For more on Hackin’ ‘Boo visit www.HackinBoo.com. For more information on Craig’s sales and service offerings, visit www.ExpressionsOfExcellence.com.
Afternoon Session:
Master Social Media
Learn and leverage social media tools such as Blogging, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and more – to sell, find new clients and even procure sponsors.
Social media gurus share their success and expertise
Wendy Piersall, Founder and CEO of Sparkplugging.com, the largest blog network dedicated to home resources for solo business owners. Follow Wendy on twitter @emom.
Barbara Rozgonyi, owner of Cory West Media, publisher of blog, www.wiredPRworks.com and founding member of Chicago’s Social Media Club. Follow Barbara on twitter @wiredprworks.
Johnny the “Transition Man” Campbell, NSA-IL member and social media trainer who has taught hundreds how to use social media to book more speeches and sells thousands of dollars worth of products.
Wendy Piersall
Barbara Rozgonyi
Johnny Campbell
Register online or call Sue Black at 630-208-0776
COST: $59.00 members, $69.00 nonmembers, $79 for all others and $89 at the door.
Click here to register online.
Are you attending this event? What’s your biggest question about how to get social media to work for you?
Thanks to Joanna Young of Confident Writing for coming up with the Simply the Best group writing project. It’s a call to sort through all of your 2008 posts and pick out just one to share. Joanna will be posting the collection. I’m looking forward to reading what others selected and I’ll be back with that link when it goes live. Hat tip to Brad Shorr for sharing his best post and getting me thinking about submitting mine. What’s your best post? Joanna’s keeping entries open until December 28.
Joanna Young’s Simply the Best Group Writing Project: My Entry Storyteller Marketing Search Engine Strategies Coverage
Joanna asked that we use 30 words to characterize our best post.
This post is simply the best because . . . it connects two of my favorite topics: storytelling and marketing, covers an industry event, links to real-life lessons, promotes others, includes insight-full comments and ignites inspiration.
And the back story . . .
It’s not every day that I get to go to an event on a press pass. In fact the last time I did, I went to a gardening show in Chicago to interview Roger Swain, former show host of Victory Gardens, and a few landscape experts. The Chicago Tribune bought the story. It was fun, it was novel, it was about 10 years ago.
I never did it again. But, a few months ago when someone from Chicago Search Engine Strategies called to offer my readers a discount, for some reason I asked them to send me a link to apply for press credentials. I applied, they came through and I got to go to the show – for free.
Although this was my first industry press pass, this was the seventh event I covered. Every post went up almost right away – except one. The storytelling marketing post took over a week to go up. When I went back to my notes, I wanted to give it some life. So, I decided to add links to the case studies mentioned.
What I didn’t mention on the post is that this year I created a program about storytelling for a friend of mine.
A friend in his 80s who asked me to speak to his social group. When I sent him a list of my regular marketing and PR topics, I was almost hoping he’d cancel.
But, the next time I saw Bill he said, “Say, I’d like to talk to you about what you’re going to talk about.”
He wasn’t going to give up.
So, I asked him, “Bill, what do you want me to talk about? What message do you want your friends to hear?”
“I don’t want them to give up on living,” he said. “I want them to keep telling their stories to people of all ages.”
“Life-giving Storytelling: The C-P-R Method” became the title of my simple motivational speech for Bill’s group.
Thanks to Bill, I came up with my own personal perspective of what storytelling is about. Make that storytelling for people of all ages.
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How do you define a “best in class” post?