Five Steps to Create Compelling Content

Love, love, love your post today Gini.  The only think I'll add... tell those stories using quality video storytelling and you'll only amplify the results.

Is that self-serving?  Duh!  But that doesn't make it true! :-)

--Tony Gnau

Definitely agree that customers and people in general can tell great stories and that Marcus Sheridan is surely right about transforming questions into posts.

BTW, if someone wants to ask me a question I'll do it. :)

And I especially like great stories coming from "normal" people. Talking about real heroes for example I know a man now in his eighties who while working has taken care of his mother first, his mother in law second and then of his wife. Around fifty years of caring more or less completely of these three women who were stuck in bed most of the time.

And he's still able to smile at life even if he hasn't been that lucky. Isn't he amazing?

I decided to create a whole new marketing genre called incontinent marketing after seeing that cartoon.

Southwest Airlines has done an incredible job telling stories - their stories - through employee features and testimonials. And they've been doing this since 2009. This is a small snippet of what they do, but there is an incredible hour long piece on YouTube somewhere that delves deeper into the company's ethos, the way they've promoted employee stories, and how effective they've been from a staffing/marketing perspective. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEhnx183xiY

I want to "dig a little deeper." How do you teach (or at least persuade) others that they can't hide behind the company brand/image, and they need to make a human connection with their audience?

Great content ideas. But I like the potato planner :) I have more than one client with a collection of products and no guide as to the circumstances under which their customers should consider them.  Last month I built a "selection" tool for a client (who really understood this idea), where the visitor enters their production details and then the tool generates a list of adhesives that would work for the job. I've done these kinds of things before but your post gives me the seed of an organizing principle for this kind of service.

At the next level up, each of us consulting types needs a "potato planner" to help our clients see which of our services best organize their offerings for their specific customer's "personas" :P  Maybe we get that message out through posts, tools, graphics, videos, etc.  At some level, it's all story telling.

And your post gave me a great idea for one of my new prospects :) Thanks !

Write for people and not for SEO. Ordinary people do extraordinary things, but you have to spend time talking to them and asking questions to find out what those are. 

Oh, man, the Franklin Day Planners. I remember when co-workers got into that. I was like, "Wait. You're attending an all-day workshop ... on how to use a calendar????" I was told, of course, that the "system" was so much more than that. But I resisted.

Anyway, love the emphasis on "harvesting" customer stories. I find people get intimidated when they think about constructing a story -- what is it? Where do I begin? In writing classes I was taught a simple formula that I still use today: a story is a character working to achieve a goal in the face of a challenge or obstacle. Those are the three building blocks of stories that you can't do without.

So you go looking for your customers' challenges and see where you can find a solution (a product or service) that helps them overcome that challenge. Make your company the character or hero. Or collect stories of heroes among your customers or employees who are overcoming challenges of their own and share them. The key is to find great, relatable characters. It sounds simplistic, but I find a little structure gets people thinking in the right direction.

I LOVE CONTENT.

Really great post, Gini. Whenever somebody writes about writing the stories about the people that make up the company, I get really excited. And this is a prime example of how us lowly PR people can create something tangible that shows our value to the organization. 

I hope all of us have our Bayer Potato Planner moment at some point in our career.

I agree with the great image and am pretty sure this will be the only thing I read today that uses the word "bailiwick" so yay on both counts. This is a slight tangent, but ...... our organization (which does health insurance for uninsured children through the national SCHIP (State Child Health Insurance Program) .... for quite a long time had a call center located out of state. When a new call center was hired, it was located here in Florida. For ths first time ever, there were contact center reps who HAD BEEN ON OUR PROGRAM. Although they didn't "tell their stories" to the people who called in, having lived similar stories I am convinced their effectiveness was magnified by the fact that they had lived the same story themselves.

Absolutely Spud-tacular post. I believe a wise ninja prophet once said, "You can try to make biscuits out of potatoes, but they will never be as good as hashbrowns." The steps laid out here and focus on finding and telling the organization's OWN story is an amazingly actionable example of that mantra.

Gini,

You are a true gardener in your heart of hearts! Anyone who can put together a crop spraying program for Bayer & keep farmers on it can grow anything from bulbs to business. You're my hero Gini Dietrich!

Susan Fox

Gini, you brought to mind my first newsletter gig as an intern at the Art Institute of Chicago...writing the employee newsletter Behind the Lions (not sure what it's called now). Talk about some interesting people  stories to tell. And me just a farm girl. (That may also be why I love your potato planner story.) 

Loved this. I am working on a new initiative to help tell the tale of the Faces of Brand Connections...I was very inspired by a conference about this last week and your post just hits it home for me. Thanks!

@T60Productions Thanks, thanks, thanks!

@Andrea T.H.W. That IS amazing. Wow.

@Howie Goldfarb No marketing for you!

@belllindsay I recently listened to a really good SocialPros Podcast with the Social Media Director from Southwest... also an hour... good insight into big brands doing social media and content well (talks about their very active blog)

@belllindsay Southwest is AMAZING at telling stories. Getting to hear Brooks Thomas speak at Ragan was really inspiring.

@belllindsay Love! I wish more companies did this. Not necessarily videos, but highlighted their  employees/customers. There are some really great stories that can make a "boring" industry fun.

@ChristinaHuerta It's hard, right? But I think you can appeal to most people's sense that people buy from people they like and trust. Pretty much everyone agrees that's the case so you can use case studies for organizations that do it really well. Whenever I speak with business owners in a group setting, I use examples from organizations in their industry that tell stories really well. That always seems to click the lightbulb on.

@Glenn Ferrell Hi Glenn! I really like your idea for us consulting types. This is VERY interesting. Now you have me thinking.

@Joshua Wilner/A Writer Writes I think part of it is people always say, "Oh come on! No one wants to know I do that." When, in fact, they do want to know. Very much.

@RobBiesenbach LOL! I never took the classes, but I'm a big to-do list person and loved their page where you could write in the things you had to do and then check the little box when you finished.

I really love this story structure. You should write a guest post for us on it! cc: @belllindsay 

@bradmarley Who are you calling a lowly PR person!? As if.

@biggreenpen This reminds me of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. When a widow is called by an insensitive company about her cable bill that is in her husband's name, she breaks down. But then finds herself coaching that call center on how to relate to elderly customers. When we can relate, we find the humanization.

@LauraPetrolino You are such a nerd. LOL!

@LauraPetrolino I am pretty sure Confucius said that!

@gagasgarden Except I can't grow bulbs...but that's why I have you!

@Word Ninja You interned at the Art Institute?! I'm so envious! I have to get over there before Picasso leaves!

@katskrieger Was it the Ragan conference?! Or was it dinner with @kateupdates and me? LOL! The Faces of Brand Connections. I like it!

@ginidietrich @Howie Goldfarb  Wait a minute... I think Howie's on to something... a whole PR approach dependent solely on news leaks...

@yvettepistorio @belllindsay WE CAN DO THIS!

@ginidietrich @ChristinaHuerta Ideally a brand is positioned to make a human connection to begin with. The branding projects I do  start with the objective of finding a brand's simple truth, versus manufacturing an image not grounded in the reality of how the brand honestly connects with people. Help your clients find their simple truth as a foundation and it will be only natural to build on it with open, honest human connections and communication.  Easier said than done, of course, when clients are used to paying to present a precisely concocted and control image and message

@ginidietrich @belllindsay I would love to! Though I wrote something with a similar thrust for PRSA's PR Tactics in January. 

In my first job, the Franklin Planner people were like a zombie cult. I refused to be assimilated. (To mix several sci-fi metaphors.) But I do love checklists -- I keep daily, weekly, and long-term lists.)

@ginidietrich I meant lowly PR person in the highest sense of the term. :)

@ginidietrich @biggreenpen Yes! Saw that movie! :-)

@Howie Goldfarb Yes, yes! I believe you are right. I wasn't sure if it was Confucius, Lao Tzu or Kermit the Frog (I always get those three mixed up), but frogs don't like hashbrowns...duh! Sometimes I honestly don't know where my brain is! 

Thanks!

Gini,

Truth be told I have never planted a single bulb! HA! Rose bushes & plant girl all the way, those tulips I took pictures of we're here when I got here!

Your Fan Club!

@ginidietrich @Word Ninja Sorry for the late reply...have been remodeling in Kentucky. Yep on the AI. It was great to walk around that place on my break. I still have copies of the newsletter I made (with grid paper and rubber cement). Oh, geez, I'm dating myself...

@ginidietrich @katskrieger I remember you talking about this I think ... Hopefully it was the conference conversation not dinner ... HA! I'd like to schedule one of those dinners quarterly (at least) please. 

@RobBiesenbach You can email me at LBell@armentdietrich.com - I look forward to it! 

@belllindsay Hey, Lindsay, what's the best way to contact you to follow up on this? I looked for an email address in your profile and on the site.

@biggreenpen Such a good movie!

@ginidietrich @Joshua Wilner/A Writer Writes @LauraPetrolino @Howie Goldfarb

I ran into @thejackb during lunch, had a nice debate with him about things that we cannot speak about in public, such as Killer Dolphins, attack squirrels and spiders the size of a man's palm.

I asked him to help promote a couple of posts and he told me that he is retiring. Of course that dude comes up with the craziest stories so who knows what to believe.

And did I ever mention that the Bain Do Soleil tribe in the lower Amazon makes a very tasty dish of Manah-Manah. It is a real delicacy.

@Joshua Wilner/A Writer Writes @LauraPetrolino @Howie Goldfarb Paging @thejackb . Where are you?!

@LauraPetrolino @belllindsay @Joshua Wilner/A Writer Writes @Howie Goldfarb been watching episodes of the muppet show with my 22 month old. She learned what Manah-Manah is today. And she couldn't figure out why Roger Moore was rebuffing Miss Piggy's advances.

@belllindsay @Joshua Wilner/A Writer Writes @LauraPetrolino @Howie Goldfarb Crap! This is totally what I get for skipping philosophy class in college. 

@Joshua Wilner/A Writer Writes @LauraPetrolino @Howie Goldfarb I'm pretty sure it was Grover. 

@LauraPetrolino @Howie Goldfarb Toads don't like hashbrowns, frogs do. 

I believe the wise Samuel Clemens wrote about it in his academic treatise on the jumping frogs of Calaveras County and their eating habits.