I‘ve been speaking at a web day today in Oslo –I’m writing this at the airport!- held by one of Norway’s finest web companies, InCreo.
InCreo were celebrating the launch of a new CMS and they asked me along to talk about Online Communication – building trust with social media.
It was a lot of fun talking to so many people in Oslo. In the coffee break I got a lot of interesting questions about how to get people to read Intranets, how to use social media to build a tribe, as well as lots of questions about how to create cool content that engages an audience.
Tusen takk to Hallgrim and the team for inviting me! You’ve got a great product there.
Storytelling & Content Creation
Sitting here at Oslo airport I’ve been thinking afterwards about how powerful stories can be in the creation of content.
As human, beings stories are such a big part of who we are and what we do. After all, how many people tell the story of their day when they get home after a day’s work? Stories permeate so much of who we are and what we do.
As businesses trying to connect online with customers and other businesses, we can use the narrative strategy of storytelling to engage readers as we tell them about the development of products, the challenges we face, the story of the people behind the product or company. Stories carry our interest.
As a consumer, I don’t want to buy from a corporation. I like to buy from people. As we build cool websites and a business presence on a variety of social media platforms, delivering great content, helping our customers and genuinely winning new friends along the way, lets not forget the story of what we doing. And our customers unique stories.
So many of the people I spoke to in Oslo today were telling me the story of growing their business, of tackling new challenges. Sharing that with your audience whether its through your blog, vlog or Facebook Fan Page or whatever can get people listening.
And that can’t be a bad thing.
Related posts:
I always believed storytelling is powerful in anything from sales copy to blog posts. A realization for me is that it is more easier said than done. I have a couple storytelling post drafts sitting and waiting for completion but it is definitely an art that has to be practiced.
I like to refer to a great article from Problogger which has some good pointers for storytelling.