What's Your Story?

There is a lot of drama everyday in a marketer's life: struggling campaigns, incorrect data, skewed implementations, and by default, crisis management is programmed into the marketing DNA. All this drama leads to good stories, in retrospect though--around luncheons and dinner tables, with colleagues and friends. The times when the social media team almost screwed up the Twitter campaign, the time when the designer inadvertently placed the logo upside down on an event banner (this happened to an industry colleague!), the time when you somehow scraped the client deck together on your flight, the time when you wished, why, marketing?! Why not something easy?

But inspite of being on the receiving side of drama most of their life, most marketers do not make drama their strength. What are your users/customers looking for in the content offered by you? They want their hook. They want to keep reading if they find it interesting. But then, is your shop window interesting enough for them to browse? You are competing against declining attention spans, a cluttered inbox, decreasing budgets? Time to make stories your new best friend.

Why story?

Attention spans are nanosecond longer and on their way to femtoseconds fame, aka getting shorter. Why would you want to waste precious clock time on writing something valuable, but not useful and engaging? Write to them, for them. People love drama--well most of them--and the good kind though.  A story that has the classic elements of structure, rise, fall, triumph and creates feel-good. And yes, this is not just marketing-speak. Its fact based, research based, rather. A research conducted by Paul Zak‘s indicates that storytelling affects the brain, for example, on seeing characters people can relate to or cute characters the brain releases oxytocin, the feel-good chemical that promotes connection and empathy, a happy ending to a story triggers the limbic system, the brain’s reward center, to release dopamine which makes us feel more hopeful and optimistic. In short, storytelling promotes a strong neurological response in people.

How Story?

An interesting article says an engaging story has a witch-hat structure, exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and the denouement. Rise-fall, fall-rise, in short, keeps the audience on the edge of their seats. So how to create a good story platform for your content?

Structure. Follow the arc (Hat technique). Keep them chewing, thinking, asking and then pop your questions.

Characters: Create characters of interest. Why them?


Speed. Grab attention. Always. And in the First Five Seconds.


Sympathy. Use slice-of-life, majorly. Make them see themselves.


Conflict. Building thrill, tension, and a climax-- a flat story evokes a flat response. Conflict is not always adversity. Include emotions, changes in context, and changes in perspective/understanding.


Conclusion. A definitive outcome to your story. Resolution. What finally happened? Oh that?! Why?

Incorporate this into your content marketing efforts, in your client presentations, in your social media campaigns and see if it makes a difference. It did to me, I went from being recognized as a content pusher to one that is clued in (sometimes) into the life and times of my target group. Although small, the pay-offs were incremental but recognizable.

Relax. It doesnt have to be a Hollywood screenplay. Just remember, it shouldn't be dry and insipid.

Happy storytelling!

Source:

http://www.socialmediatoday.com/content/why-your-content-marketing-needs-tell-story
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/article/20141202132525-775309-3-basic-elements-every-good-story-needs