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Why You Need to Use Stories in Your Nonfiction Book by @JaneTabachnick

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Why You Need to Use Stories in Your Nonfiction Book

by Jane Tabachnick | Featured Contributor 

Our brains are wired for stories. They can create an emotional connection and are easier to remember than text or facts.

Your nonfiction book will be much richer if you include stories in it. You may have a compelling methodology, philosophy or message; the reader will benefit more and remember it longer if you include stories.  A rich, textured, multisensory experience with a beginning, middle and an end, is much more enjoyable and memorable than straight theory.

I don’t remember a lot of what I learned in history class, but the stories my teacher shared with us about a historical figure, have stuck with me long beyond any textbook learning. The same will be true for stories you include in your book.

It’s important to carefully select the story or stories you include in your book; choose a story that your ideal reader will identify with, as well as one that showcases your best client work and results.

Here is how a story can enhance your book:

Demonstrates how the rubber meets the road; your book outlines a message, concept or theory that you are telling the reader about it. Showing is more compelling than telling! Your story shows the reader your concept in a real-life situation, making it easier for them to relate to it.

Allows readers to see themselves in your story; a well-chosen story is relatable to the reader as it helps them walk in the shoes of your client/hero and see themselves working with you.

Provides social proof. Your story shows how you helped a client go from problem to solution easily and quickly, providing proof that serves like a testimonial. It shows that you have done it successfully for the client in your story, and your reader will now know you’re capable of doing it for them.

Demonstrates to the reader you can help them go from where they are, to where they want to be, as evidenced by your well-selected case study. A well-written story will be so real that the reader can taste the result. They will see you as the one who can help them get the same result for themselves.

A well-chosen story is relatable. It confirms for the reader that you understand them and their problem. It shows that you know the solution, and have helped others working with you, overcome their challenges and obstacles.

Remember, as the native American proverb says, ‘She who tells the best stories rules the world.’

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Jane TabachnickJane Tabachnick is a digital marketing and publicity consultant, and book publisher. She works with savvy entrepreneurs and enlightened professionals to help them tell their story, become published authors, and create greater visibility, buzz and profits.

Jane is eternally inquisitive and working on perfecting her gluten free baking. She has been named one of the top 100 people online by Fast Company. As an ambivert who has often been featured or quoted in the media, she sill prefers to help her clients get visibility.

Jane is the creator of a program on Sustainable Design Entrepreneurship at NYC’s Fashion Institute where she is also an adjunct professor. Her next book, Irresistible Influence will be published in Spring 2017.

Connect with Jane: Facebook | Twitter | Linkedin

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Every Brand Has A Story To Tell…What’s Yours? by @TheRoguePea

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Photo Credit: jseliger2 via Compfight cc

Photo Credit: jseliger2 via Compfight cc

by Nancy Ceresia

The ultimate in content marketing has gone old school

In today’s social society, the emphasis on content creation, curation and sharing via social platforms has been preached ad nauseum. I’m not sure about you, but I’m kind of tired of social media being heralded the be all and end all marketing tool that everyone should be focusing on. It is great – but it isn’t the only medium out there that builds engagement.

There is something to be said for more traditional media. I’m not a believer that anything old is not worthy of being part of today’s modern marketing arsenal – in fact, quite the opposite. I think we can learn a lot about connecting with our audiences by taking a page from magazine publishing.

Magazines & storytelling: a natural fit

What other medium…

  • Can build a loyal, devoted following of which people are proud to be a member? (Ex. Vogue & The New Yorker represent a segment of society, not just the casual reader)
  • Has people dreaming of being on the cover? Rolling Stone and Cosmo, anyone?
  • Is excitedly anticipated to be received in the mail? Quite the rarity in this day and age of privacy and spam, isn’t it?
  • Do people keep and cherish like heirlooms? Think of the ‘special’ keepsake issues of Hello! and People, and you know you still have sentimental issues of Sassy magazine lying around somewhere!
  • Shows not only events in history, but illustrates the human side that really weaves the story of the events that shape our lives? Who can forget the images and stories that told the real story of 9/11?

In short, magazines are powerhouses of epic storytelling

I predict the notion of brand storytelling will be picking up steam in the next few months, as businesses and marketers realize just how important authenticity and relevance is if you really want to build an engaged army of loyal and raving fans. This will be the marketing of the future – the powerhouse of building brand equity in your best customers so they can advocate and promote your brand because they want to and it matters to them. It’s the stories that bring life to situations, events, and products; they create relevance and empathy. They build dialogue and characters – they make us want to be part of something. Magazines are really one of the very best ways to do this, and that hasn’t changed in a century.

Technology + magazine publishing = a beautiful marriage

Thanks to ever-evolving technology, you no longer have to be a publishing maven to get your own magazine out there. Heck, you can throw one together in a couple of hours if you really wanted to, and at virtually no cost to boot. I have started doing a review series of these technologies on my own blog in case you want to have a peek.

Technology really is the key for independent businesses: harnessing this medium, and having the ability to create a stunning publication on a dime is not only feasible, it’s realistic! Sure you can spend a ton on custom photography and hiring writers, but you can also put something together that resonates with your audience by gathering up what you already have: take your best social content, elaborate on a blog topic that your readers got into, and publish a few photos from your FB page that got the most comments and… ta-da! An instant foundation on which to build your first issue!

The possibilities are endless: get creative with your storytelling!

Your magazine can be whatever you want. There is no 140-character limit or standard structure like on a blog. Mix it up: have in-depth articles and interviews alongside quick-reads with bullet-point lists, and mix in a couple photo-heavy spreads. You really have free reign to do what YOU want – what tells your story the best.

So what are you waiting for? Get out there, grab technology by the horns and tell your brand story to the world!

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The Rogue PeaNancy is owner and founder of The Rogue Pea Marketing, and is passionate about magazines, publishing and the written word. A magazine maverick and fixer-upper, she loves helping passionate independent business owners tell their story and build their own communities, while mentoring and supporting them throughout the learning process toward becoming independent self-publishers. Nancy lives just outside of Ottawa, Canada with her husband, two girls and their Chow Chow named Buddha. Follow her on Twitter @TheRoguePea or on her blog.

Make Your Brand Your Anchor. 3 Tips for Brand Consistency by @iamronii

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by Ronii Bartles | Featured Contributor

What do you think of when I say the word branding? Your logo? Your brand story? Your official colors? The font you use?

According to Dictionary.com a brand is:

noun: kind, grade, or make, as indicated by a stamp, trademark, or the like: the best brand of coffee. a mark made by burning or otherwise, to indicate kind, grade, make, ownership, etc.

verb: to label or mark with or as if with a brand. to give a brand name to: branded merchandise. to promote as a brand name.

Recently I was moderating a roundtable discussion on ‘Branding Across Multiple Medias’ for our Charleston American Marketing Association (shameless plug alert!), which I’m currently the President of this year. During one of my sessions I got a really great question. One of the ladies at the table piped up and asked me the bold question, “What’s the difference between marketing and branding?”

What? That’s an interesting question.

Do you know? Can you guess? I just told you the formal definition of a brand but what does that really mean?

My answer: Your brand is the anchor for your marketing.

Short sweet and to the point.

What does that really mean though?

So your brand is the core of all your promotions. It’s more than just your logo. It’s why you exist. The story you tell, the visual identity that represents that story and the culture (or lifestyle) you create with your brand.

This is your anchor and it rarely changes.

Your marketing, on the other hand, is the creative muse for communication that places your brand in front of your customers’ eyeballs. Marketing is the messages and promotions you create to help convert sales. Your marketing messages can change frequently. They are here to support sales. But they are always anchored by the brand.

Here are 3 ways to anchor your brand message.

  1. Include your logo on all your communications: Including your email, social media, print advertising, everything! Don’t forget about those operational communications like invoices and memos too.
  2. Use your brand story as your elevator speech: We all that 30 second elevator speech that we use for networking to capture people’s attention and quickly tell them who we are, what we do and why we do it.
  3. Mix in brand messages and elements into your marketing messaging mix: When developing copy for marketing communications incorporate some of your brand elements like small pieces of your story or by using your colors and fonts.

Its easy to get confused on what’s your brand and what’s your marketing messages but keep this one rule of thumb handy: your brand is always the constant and your marketing message is the fresh and zesty message that drives sales. Happy anchoring!

Photo Credit: stayathomejobs via Compfight cc

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Ronii Bartles – Marketing & Branding Expert from Bartles & Associates – Charleston, SC

Ronii Bartles HeadshotRonii is Bartles & Associates’ self-proclaimed Chief Rockstar. She has a whole list of amazing (but slightly boring) credentials like a Bachelor’s Degree from Shepherd University, a MBA from The Citadel, The Lowcountry Business Network Advisory Board Member and is President of the Charleston American Marketing Association, where she was also a 2012 Marketer of the Year Finalist. She loves to go around telling people that she actually is one of the Most Influential Women in Business in Charleston and a 40 Under 40 winner because the Business Journal told her so. Professionally, Ronii grew up in the marketing research industry and has been Director of Operations at ARG and W5. She took all that experience and started Bartles & Associates and roniibartles.com where Ronii and her team work with creative entrepreneurs and small businesses on developing branding and marketing strategies around what they do best, which they lovingly call Operations Marketing. B&A helps businesses uncork their potential by uncovering their WHY and then crafting that message into concise, memorable brand stories and marketing messages. Ronii is an active volunteer with Big Brothers Big Sisters for over twelve years, and won Big Sister of the Year in 2008. Originally from West Virginia (you can take the girl out of WV but you can’t take the WV out of the girl), she loves beer, college football (Let’s GOOO Mountaineers!), pizza, jeans and a t-shirt, and designer high heels. You can connect with Ronii on Twitter or LinkedIn or email her.

The Secret to Exceptional Content Marketing by @JenKaneCo

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by Jennifer Kane | Featured Contributor

Secret

An editor once told me, “Jen, you gotta show more than you tell in your writing.”

It’s a tip I wish he’d share with content marketers, too.

A lot of the content marketing you read these days consists of companies telling and telling and telling… all about themselves, all in exactly the same way.

And, a lot of the posts you read about content marketing are the same way.

I aim to change that, right here and now.

First, I’m going to tell you that, in my opinion, exceptional content marketing does three things:

1.    It tells a cohesive story...
2.    With a collection of shareable assets…
3.    In a way that is surprising and memorable.

Now, I’m going to show you what that looks like…

1. Exceptional content marketing tells a cohesive story. Your company’s story is the thread that stitches together your content marketing into a cohesive brand experience.

For this post, my story is a simple one…

Most content marketing is bad because it tells instead of showing. So, I’m going to explain how to make your content marketing better (exceptional, actually) by teaching you how to “show” more. To give you a sense of what “showing” looks like, I’m going to give examples in the post you are reading right now.

2. Exceptional content marketing includes a collection of shareable assets. To extend the reach of a story, try to augment it with additional content assets that support it in different ways and in different mediums.

Ideally, each of these assets can also have a life of its own, separate from (but still connected to) its source material. (Kind of like when you blow a dandelion into the wind to spread its seeds and create new patches of dandelions somewhere else.)

For example, in addition to reading this post, you might also choose to explore (and share) other assets that support this topic, like…

…sharing the (pin-friendly) title image above on Pinterest…

…or watching this video with four tips for establishing a consistent voice for your content…

 

 

…or reading another post I’ve written on brand storytelling that explores systems for organizing additional content assets.

…or sharing this quote of mine from above…

 

Thread Quote

 

These additional assets/resources don’t all simply repeat what I’ve already said.

They are a family of elements that support and tell my story in different ways, using different approaches, words and images.

Together, they tell a richer, more fully realized version of my story and give my audience more ways to engage with my content and share it with their communities.

3. Exceptional content marketing is surprising and memorable. Sure, for my final post in the content series I’ve written for She Owns It, I could have chosen something basic like, “Five Ways Content Marketing provides ROI.”

And maybe you would have even read that post. (Though, I seriously doubt it.) But you wouldn’t likely remember it the next day.

If you want to create exceptional content marketing, you need to set the bar higher.

You need to surprise people. (Heck, you need to surprise yourself.)

For example, in addition to taking an unconventional approach to this topic, I also wrote you a poem* about content marketing, using the dandelion metaphor I mentioned earlier.

(Yeah, I know. A poem! Crazy huh?)

Why? Because I’m pretty sure you’ve never seen a poem about content marketing before.

And, I want you to know that I care so much about you as a reader to have actually made you something, totally original, that no one else will give you.

poem

You see, the “exceptional” thing about exceptional content marketing is how it makes your audience feel.

And that doesn’t require a degree in journalism or a huge budget or a giant pool of authors.

It requires thoughtfulness, effort and guts.

You take that thoughtfulness, effort and guts and infuse them…

•    …into your story
•    …into your supporting assets
•    …into your surprises.

…and you show your audience you care about them.

THAT is the biggest secret to exceptional content marketing.

*I am in no way a professional poet. That was just me being wacky, trying to make a point. So forgive me if it kinda sucks.

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Content and Communications Strategist – Jennifer Kane of Kane Consulting – Minneapolis, MN

JenKaneJennifer Kane is an entrepreneur and marketing/communications strategist with more than 15 years of experience working with B2B and B2C companies through her firm, Kane Consulting.

Jennifer conducts training sessions, teaches and speaks nationally on topics related to social media, content marketing, change management and digital communications. Combining humor, tough love and passion, she’s known for giving it to people straight — from the hip and from the heart.

In addition to writing for her own blog, The Social Cyborg, Jennifer is part of the author community at Steamfeed, has guest blogged for BlogWorld and Mark Schaefer’s blog, {GROW} and been syndicated on BlogHer. She is also frequent guest on the Next Stage Business Radio Network podcasts.

Jennifer is mom to one active eight-year-old and two lazy Basset Hounds and manages the “Spinal Fusions Suck” social community on Facebook. In her spare time, she thinks a lot about the zombie apocalypse and the awkwardness of writing about oneself in third person.

 

The Secret to Telling a Compelling Brand Story by @JenKaneCo

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by Jennifer Kane | Featured Contributor

OnceUponATime

This post started out as a mess – which is fitting, since that’s where a lot of stories begin.

I had gathered together a host of salient thoughts, deep quotes and pity insights. But, none of them fit together or made any sense — kind of like two boxes of puzzles had been mixed together and then stuck back on the shelf.

It’s a problem entrepreneurs run into when we’re crafting our brand stories, too.

We’ve got an elevator pitch here, a testimonial over there, and maybe a compelling anecdote in our back pocket. So, we stitch all those ideas together, call it “our story” and start sharing it with the world.

But, just like how that mess of words on my screen wasn’t a blog post, a bunch of ideas cobbled together about your brand isn’t necessarily a brand story either.

No, a story is something else.

Stories are something that translates your passion. They make your customer or clients’ need feel real and your purpose in fulfilling it, urgent. They give your audience something to care about.

But, in doing all of these things, the stories you create about your brand can be a little scary, too.

Time to get naked.

Unlike elevator pitches, testimonials and anecdotes, stories have a narrative arc and a hero who faces a conflict, test or challenge. The hero resolves or overcomes that challenge, which, in some way, changes him or her.

The scary part here is the words, “conflict, test or challenge.”

Conflicts, tests and challenges are things we generally avoid talking about in business conversations because they might suggest to our audience, that…

…Once upon a time, we didn’t have our act together.

…Once upon a time, we made a mistake.

…Once upon a time, we wrote a horrible first draft of this blog post.

And, who wants to admit something embarrassing like that?

But, ironically, those embarrassing, vulnerable moments are the most important part of your story.

Moments like that sit at the center of all of the great stories that we tell…

Vulnerability is what makes your story worth listening to and remembering. (Nobody’s dying to learn more about a brand whose story goes like this: “We were awesome. We did something new. We ended up even MORE awesome!”)

It’s also what makes people buy your product or services (which the point in telling your story in the first place.) Science backs up the fact that storytelling is the ultimate weapon at your disposal for connecting with your customers or clients. It has the unique ability to get your audience to “drop their intellectual guard” so they are more receptive to what you want to say.

To see this in action, check out Chipotle’s Back to the Start video…

It’s a beautiful story, simply told in just over two minutes.

Admittedly, it is also a bit of a vulnerability cop-out for Chipotle, and that works against them. We may finish watching this video and be receptive to Chipotle’s message, but it’s the farmer (and the pig!) for whom we really feel. He is the memorable hero of this story.

So, put yourself in the farmer’s shoes, not Chipotle’s, when you sit down to write your brand story. Make it simple. Make it unique. Make it honest.

And don’t be afraid to say that, once upon a time, you were a little bit lost, but you charted a new course and found the way to your happy ending.

Just like I did, typing the final words of this post.

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Content and Communications Strategist – Jennifer Kane of Kane Consulting – Minneapolis, MN

JenKaneJennifer Kane is an entrepreneur and marketing/communications strategist with more than 15 years of experience working with B2B and B2C companies through her firm, Kane Consulting.

Jennifer conducts training sessions, teaches and speaks nationally on topics related to social media, content marketing, change management and digital communications. Combining humor, tough love and passion, she’s known for giving it to people straight — from the hip and from the heart.

In addition to writing for her own blog, The Social Cyborg, Jennifer is part of the author community at Steamfeed, has guest blogged for BlogWorld and Mark Schaefer’s blog, {GROW} and been syndicated on BlogHer. She is also frequent guest on the Next Stage Business Radio Network podcasts.

Jennifer is mom to one active eight-year-old and two lazy Basset Hounds and manages the “Spinal Fusions Suck” social community on Facebook. In her spare time, she thinks a lot about the zombie apocalypse and the awkwardness of writing about oneself in third person.