Failure. Point to a movie or a book that captivates, and I’ll show you failure. Shrek. Absolutely. Something more high-brow, like the best-selling novel “A Little Life.” Again, failure underpins the story. For it’s the failure — something going horribly awry, the more pain the better — that creates the tension in a story. As …more
Look at the construction of any major feature story in Fortune, Bloomberg Businessweek, The Atlantic, Wired, take your pick. What element is likely to underscore the narrative? Here’s a hint. It starts with an “F.” Failure (if you guessed frickinmess, you were in the ballpark). Something going terribly wrong — the bigger the “train wreck,” …more
I’ve advocated that PR sits in the best position to lead the organic search charge or what I prefer to call “earned search.” As Google continues to squeeze the technical gamesmanship out of SEO, the signals most valued by Google in determining what to serve up for a given search tend to fall within the …more
I’ve said this before and continue to believe it. The PR profession under-appreciates interviewing expertise. It starts in college. Try to find a curriculum for mass communications or PR that offers a class on interviewing. Good luck. Every journalism program in the country tackles the art of the interview like this one from the University …more
Storytelling is the new “black” when it comes to business communications. To understand the plight of storytelling, consider the chart put together by our crack research group using Factiva to search on the number of articles containing the word “storytelling” in general and business publications. .. The data doesn’t exactly quantify the communications profession embracing …more
Last year Buffer published the post, “Want to Improve Your Social Media Sharing? Harness the Power of Positivity in Social Media,” that evangelized a keep-it-positive message. Among the research supporting its position, the post included data from a Facebook study that showed when people read positive updates, they too tend to publish positive content. When …more
The reason PR fails at storytelling often has nothing to do with understanding the makings of a good story or writing expertise. Instead, the root cause can lie in the interviewing process for sourcing the content. If you don’t get this upfront step right — pull out the type of content that the outside world …more
It’s amazing how survival has a way of tuning one’s senses. That was the situation for our U.S. operation back in the 2011/2012 timeframe. It calls to mind the famous line from Albert Einstein: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.” It was time for …more
As a PR nerd, when I read a story in a publication that vacuums my attention, two questions immediately come to mind: Was PR the catalyst for the article? What storytelling techniques carry the narrative? Such is the process I went through with the NYT piece, “A Chinese Billionaire Spinning Research into Investment Gold.” As …more
