How Good a Story-Teller are You?

I hemmed and hawed for a couple of weeks over the subject of this post. I am right in the middle of several projects and quite frankly could have written about any of them but as I am going to be a guest lecturer in the one and only Professor Karen Russell’s Classroom this Friday I felt that topic of properly engaging an audience perfectly fitted the bill.

Okay, first a little background. Way back when I was a lowly undergraduate struggling along with the rest of my class to figure out where I was going in life, (I will admit to being a little more anxious than most of my fellow students seeing as I had about 10 years and 2 kids on most of them) I met a really cool teacher. For whatever reason, call it fate or whatever, we just sort of clicked. We had kids roughly the same age and we were both into this “new” social media revolution. She assigned the class to start a blog, and here five years later, I am still at it. I found something I love to do. Something I enjoy so much in fact that I actually have started several others for various reasons and have helped various non-profits set up ones of their own. Over the last five years, Karen has given me feedback, advice, and friendship and has rightfully earned the title of blogging mentor. Now on to the rest of this post.

I have been studying social media for the past four years. My teachers are people that you are probably pretty familiar with if you follow social media at all. I’m talking about Blog Bloke, Holly Hoffman, Tiffany Mollohan, Lisa Barone, Kelley Crane, Matt Chevront, Michael Margolis, Daren Rowse, Eric Qualman and course Chris Brogan. Some of these I met via Brazen Careerist, an awesome site that brings a whole bunch of us bloggers together regularly in a comfortable forum where we can bounce ideas off one another and share both good and bad ideas. Others I’ve met only in passing, either through Twitter or one of my blogs but I can honestly say that I’ve learned something valuable from each and every one of them.

Recently I have been reading a fantastic book by Annette Simmons entitled “Whoever Tells The Best Story Wins”. When I first started reading it, I will admit it was out of pure curiosity, being a writer and a storyteller by trade. By the time I realized it was actually a book geared towards marketers I was enjoying it so much that I kept right on reading, figuring that the lessons learned could very well apply to just about anyone who makes a living from stringing words together, whether in a sales pitch or an article in a magazine.

So how does this apply to social media? I mean this post is about what I plan to talk about as a THE guest speaker for the 5990H class at the University of Georgia on Friday so I guess I should get to the point.

Social media is like any other media in that those who have the gift of being able to intuitively tune in to their audiences are going to be the most successful. To be able to do this you have to be able to suppress your natural inclinations towards objective thinking, you know the type of thing that has been ingrained into us since we were barely knee-high. This idea that everything must be logical, must have a justifiable cause and effect. This thinking will only slow you down when it comes to getting in tune with those who will ultimately become your bread and butter.

Lost yet? Here is an example. say that a particular client loves the color red, songs by Bach and moonlit walks along the beach. You have been hired to create a social media campaign for a new brand of breath fresheners. Objectively speaking the clients subjective whims have nothing to do with the product. But putting objective aside you decide to do a couple of independent online surveys to see if any of the target audience may also have similar associations with their breath freshener products. 

As it turns out, your cleverly worded survey brings in surprising results. Putting objective numbers and statistics aside you decide to run with your campaign which features individuals being carried away by their breath fresheners….taken over in a dream like state. The video shorts were posted on YouTube and the Twitter and Facebook campaign solicited consumers to send in their own experiences with their favorite brand of X breath freshener, whether it be a magical proposal moment or just a fun moment.

The client was impressed.  They had expected a presentation of numbers, target markets, graphs and the like.Objective stuff.Instead they got a series of stories told right from the mouths of the consumers, The subjective. What better way to sell a product than to tell a great story. One that can be repeated over and over again.

So I ask you. How good a storyteller are you?