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Articles filed in: Storytelling
The Last Thing You Should Rely On Is Your Resume
filed in Entrepreneurship, Storytelling
Your resume is not so much a testament to what you’ve done, it’s a timeline of where you’ve done it. The world doesn’t need to take your resume’s word for anything, it can find out more about you in three clicks of a mouse than you can tell in twenty perfect bound pages.
When I asked the CEO of a successful tech startup how he managed to find such great people to work with, he said, ‘Doers leave a trail’.
Good marketing is simply great storytelling. Great storytelling is not about telling at all, it’s about showing. Dream opportunities don’t land because of something someone read on an A4 piece of paper.
Make your resume the least impressive thing about you.
Leave a trail.
Image by Daniel James.
The Number One Marketing Opportunity You’ve Probably Overlooked
filed in Marketing, Storytelling
Yes I know marketing is one of those icky words. It smacks of snake oil salesmen, hard sell merchants and spammers who interrupt without permission. You don’t want to be in any one of those categories and you don’t have to be.
Marketing and branding is about turning up the volume on your mission, so that the right people can hear your message. Often it’s about gently reminding the people who do want to hear from you how you can help them and that receptive audience is right under your nose in your email inbox.
Are you getting the word out about who you are, what you do and why you do it to those people in your email signature?
12 TIPS TO CREATE A GREAT EMAIL SIGNATURE
1. Keep it short, simple and memorable, usually no more than three to four lines.
2. Identify yourself by adding your full name, company and role if appropriate.
3. Use pipes to neatly separate information, (Branding | Website design | SEO |).
4. Add your best contact details, avoid using a string of different numbers unless you really need to.
5. Link to your website or blog. The accepted way to do this is to provide a written URL to insure the link goes through with your message.
6. Include links to your important professional profiles or business pages on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc.
7. If you include your logo don’t make your entire signature an image because most email clients store images as attachments and block them by default.
8. If you’ve got room, add your tagline or link to any significant recent achievements or awards.
9. Consider customising the default email signature on your mobile device too; iPhone, iPad or Blackberry.
10. If you want to use specific formatting or graphic links think about using an email signature service like
Wise Stamp.
11. Separate your signature from the email content. The standard break most email clients recognise is – – – –.
12. Don’t be afraid to be you and show some personality in your signature. You’re not just selling, you’re building trust and likeability too.
What ways have you found to promote yourself in your email signature?
Do you have any examples of great email signatures to share?
Image by zen sutherland.
The Only Reason You’re In Business
filed in Storytelling, Strategy
The reason you’re in business is to make peoples’ lives better.
Every word you write, coffee you serve or pixel you paint is nothing without an audience to consume it, and more importantly care about it.
So here’s the question you need to ask.
How does what you do, make, serve or sell make life better for your clients and customers?
Tell me in just one or two lines. Go ahead, share your answers and links in the comments.
Image by clappstar.
How To Make Your Message Stick
filed in Marketing, Storytelling
I read an interesting fact on the last few pages of my friend Mark’s new book Return on Influence, apparently most people abandon a business book after reading one third of it. This is an audience who decided they believed in the idea, author or maybe the title and cover design enough to invest, only to abandon it just as she was getting started. We have so many choices now, that we even choose to abandon the things that we choose.
How do you hold people’s attention and get your message to stick?
Think about any book you’ve read, what you remember are the stories. I remember how Klout’s founder Joe Fernandez found himself housebound with time on his hands after he’d had his jaws wired, that this was when he began exploring social scoring and planning world domination. I remember Mark’s story about seeing a friend’s poor review of a restaurant he was at, and how that affected his experience that evening.
“People don’t want more information.
They are up to their eyeballs in information.
They want faith.
Faith in you, your goals, your success, in the story you tell.”
—Annette Simmons
Take a leaf from the book of one of the most successful non-fiction authors of our time Malcolm Gladwell. Make your facts real by painting an unforgettable picture with a story.
Image by darkmatter.
What’s The Purpose Of A Brand Story?
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
If you’ve got a great product or a killer service why do you need a brand story? You only have to look as far as your local cafe or boutique fashion labels to see that all brands are not created equal, and what usually separates the successes from the failures is a good story.
The story makes the product better
The Versalette story from {r}evolution apparel actually makes the product better in the eyes of the consumer. When she buys a Vesalette she can tell herself a story about what she believes is important. She can send a signal to the world about her values and she gets to be a trendsetter into the bargain.
Any business or brand can add a meaningless ‘me too’ tagline under their logo, but if it’s just pixels filling up white space what’s the point? If your story (not just the words your write, but your staff, values, user experience and so on) doesn’t make what you do better, then you’re missing a huge opportunity to help people care enough to invest in you.
Image by Lynda Giddens.
A Lesson From The Most Iconic Advert In The World
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
The Coca Cola ‘Hilltop’ advert created more than 40 years ago is known as “one of the best-loved and most influential ads in TV history.
In a recent collaboration Harvey Gabor one of the original creatives of ‘Hilltop’, worked with Google and Coca Cola to re-imagine a modern day version of the original. So what’s the biggest takeaway from the video of the process?
No matter what you’re talking about talk to one person
You might want to appeal to a hundred or even a million, do that by making your idea matter one person at a time.
Speak to that person.
The video is eleven minutes well worth watching!
Image by Meg Moggington.
Turn Up The Volume On Your Mission
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
Whatever your idea, whatever you market, sell or promote, whether it’s a cause, art, products or services, the way you differentiate from your competitors is by turning up the volume on your mission.
Products can be similar, but missions are unique
You don’t want people to buy your stuff, you want to matter to them. You want them to care about your brand. To believe in what you do. To ‘buy in’. Part of your mission is to get those people, not everyone, but the ones you care about, to care.
The mission of an artist isn’t to sell her stuff to the masses, it’s to sell the ideas conveyed in those things, maybe to just 1000 true fans. The artist buys into the idea that she not only expresses herself through her art, but that she can help others to do the same. Her mission is to shape culture, to communicate beauty, stimulate thought and make an emotional connection.
Starbuck’s mission isn’t to persuade the guy who thinks that paying $5 for a cup of coffee is a joke. Their mission is to be the ‘third place’, to “inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup, and one neighborhood at a time.” Starbucks was the catalyst that created a completely new coffee drinking culture.
Shaping culture over time is part of any brand mission. This applies to Etsy store owners, authors Burton and Dollar Shave Club alike.
Your product might be similar but your mission is unique.
All you have to do is turn up the volume.
Image by Jaanus Jagomägi.
9 Elements Of The Perfect Pitch
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
This image was captured in Marrakech at the largest open air market in Africa. On the day the photo was taken the market was apparently in full swing, complete with everything from average snake charmers, to exceptional orange juicers and trinket traders. The photographer captures how many of the tourists seem to be more interested in their maps and to do lists than the sights, sounds, and the smells of the bazaar.
It doesn’t matter how good your idea is if nobody knows. If you want to make your idea matter, then you’ll need to get better at helping people to understand it why it should.
9 ELEMENTS OF THE PERFECT PITCH
Preparation
It’s hard to sell anything without having a plan and putting some effort in beforehand. Even the guy who walks up to a girl in a bar has put on a clean shirt and rehearsed what he’s going to say.
Emotion
A pitch is based less on logic and more on tapping into emotions. It’s less about presenting information and more about persuading people deep down. Studies from the Journal of Advertising Research show that we are twice as likely to be persuaded by emotion than facts. You must make people care before you can persuade them to believe.
Story and Substance
Delivery is important but falls flat without a great story. The words you use and the stories you tell matter.
Passion
You’re not simply asking people to buy your idea, you’re persuading them to ‘buy into’ it, and you. This will not happen if you can’t communicate your genuine passion to the audience.
A Problem
Understand the problem you solve and communicate that.
An Answer
You’ve demonstrated that you know what the problem is, now reveal your valuable solution.
Simplicity
You’ve got nine seconds to convince them that you are the one. Don’t overload people with information, concentrate on what really matters to them.
Confidence
You’re asking people to bet on you, to embrace the fact that there is not certainty in most decisions they make. If you don’t believe in yourself and your idea how can you expect others to?
Practice
Delivery is part science, part theatre, part art, it can be learned with practice.
What would you add? What has worked best for you in situations where you wanted to persuade?
The Best McDonalds Adverts McDonalds Never Made
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
The golden arches might be ubiquitous, but now we can and do, choose to ignore advertising campaigns created by even the biggest global companies. We skip commercials and we switch off, while marketing departments spend plenty best guessing what might capture us for a few more seconds.
What fascinates us, what holds our attention in the moment is not the product itself, but how it in some way makes meaning in our lives. Marketing is the tough job of working out what makes meaning on seven billion different levels.
As consumers we are no longer waiting for manufacturers and marketing departments to create context for us, we are doing it for ourselves. The 50,000 best McDonalds adverts ever made, (and counting—hit refresh), were created by you and me.
The opportunity for marketers is that consumers are now creating content about that context and they are sharing it with their friends.
Image by hustle roses.