What's YOUR Story?

My first online forays were for an online music magazine I started with a friend called The Pit. I fancied myself a burgeoning rock journalist and tried to emulate Hunter S. Thompson in telling stories from my perspective around music, culture, and concerts. When I first worked in web marketing in the golf industry, we had marketing slogans including “every day is a brand new game” and “be authentic.” In our marketing, we focused on golfer stories. This is where I first learned the importance of a story and storytelling in marketing.

From there, in designing courses for the government and military, I learned about scenario-based interactivity in online education, almost like gaming. I even designed a course around the “Choose Your Own Adventure” premise. People (and learners) relate to stories with intros like “you are a 14 tango in the deserts of…” or “you are a strategic debriefer and you are meeting with a defector from a radical terrorist org who potentially has info…”

With the emergence of social media, I really learned about micro-stories to tell and share. I started promoting bands on MySpace in the tribute band scenes. Facebook came along and everything moved there. At first, it was words and pics and evolved to video interactivity and engagement.

Video was and still is a great way to tell stories. Videos are highly engaging, very shareable content. YouTube became an entertainment and information venue where people went to be entertained, laugh, and listen to music. YouTube became a huge resource for how-to content and product reviews. It still is. 

Blogs have always been among the best and my favorite storytelling tools. Text is very search engine friendly so blog content gets you traffic. Some people think blogs are outdated, but they are still your best SEO in a lot of ways. Search engines pick up on text, so even in a video, they look for the title, descriptive, and alt text. Don't discount blog content, and the many content options blog platforms offer. Do a video blog! Do a podcast blog! Always include text transcripts for SEO though.

Right now the hottest and fastest-growing storytelling medium is podcasting. Anyone can start a podcast, there are few barriers. The rise of in-home voice assistants like Alexa and Google home will only increase the adoption of podcasts and voice marketing as well. Platforms like Spotify are making it easier to launch, host, and record podcasts. 

When telling your stories don't forget the content cycle. I love the idea of maximizing your content, making it evergreen and reusable. From a long-form video pull clips for social, and screenshots. Pull the audio for podcasts, and the text for social and your blog. You get a ton of content pieces from one higher-level piece. 

I've worked with a lot of sellers in e-commerce. They have stories like how did they get there? How do they source? What else do they do? What did they use to do? All stories. I know an amazing seller who used to be a roller derby all-star! That's so cool! That alone is probably a hundred stories! Now she is an awesome mom who sells online full-time! I know a seller who started selling online to get enough money to adopt a child. Now he and his wife foster kids, have a family, sell online full time, and are opening a brick and mortar collectibles store! How cool is that? Great stories!

Tell stories in your content and in your marketing. People love stories and everyone loves a good story. They can be big or little stories. Stories are meant to be told and heard. People will read, watch and listen to your stories. What stories have you told? Where are you telling them?

What's YOUR story?