Fortune recently covered Jack Dorsey’s latest venture, a service that promises to cause heartburn for the banking industry by essentially transforming the smartphone into a credit card reader. From a communications perspective, the following visual caught my attention. Click here for a larger version of this graphic. The illustration reflects a classic storytelling technique we’ve …more
I’m not a fan of the phrase “be authentic.” It sounds too clinical. Can’t we just say “be yourself.” That’s exactly how Millie Garfield approaches her blog, which has served the 85-year-old blogger well. Millie was kind enough to talk with me about her writing. I published the first half of the interview yesterday; here’s …more
Spend 10 minutes cruising the Net on what makes for a winning blog and you’ll find the same advice repeated again and again. Develop a distinctive voice. Share personal experiences. Communicate a point of view. And, of course, the mantra of the digirati: Be authentic. If you want to see these theories put into practice, …more
We’re working with one particular client which targets an older demographic. They were convinced the “older crowd” does not participate in social media. Just for the heck of it, we took five current customers and plugged their names into LinkedIn. It turns out four of the five had LinkedIn profiles and two of them also …more
Advertising, not public relations, embraces storytelling techniques. Usually. I came across an ad for the country of Georgia with the headline: Georgia, The World’s number 1 in fighting corruption. While not a fan of Styrofoam-finger advertising, this sounded promising. Anytime you have good fighting evil, a potential story lurks around the corner. Unfortunately, the people …more
Business needs more storytelling evangelists. They provide a counter balance to the “Corporate Drivel-ites.” Even before picking up the book “Tell to Win,” I’m thinking that Peter Guber serving as the face for the storytelling movement is a good thing. He’s got the street cred, having penned “The Four Truths of Storytelling” for Harvard Business …more
I’m pleased that two of our account professionals in our Tokyo office, Sayaka Kitamura and Haruna Kawamoto, have contributed today’s guest post on a topic dear to my heart, the importance of tailoring stories to a given market. I give Sayaka and Haruna credit for making the intellectual argument for investing in local content. Here’s …more
This should have been the title for my session on corporate blogging at SoCon11 on Saturday. That’s the greatest frustration for bloggers. Forget getting people to care and engage. The question on everyone’s mind: How do I simply attract a meaningful audience? Here’s the deck that framed the SoCon11 session on blogging. The words “Content …more
Bloggers can face what appears to be conflicting objectives. They want to tell fresh stories. At the same time, they can feel like a slave to the SEO master in the quest to bring in more readers through search engines. My three cents – Keep it simple. No one expects you to be an SEO guru. Who wants to …more
