M a r k e t e r the seven plots all stories must follow
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WHAT IS ATTENTION WORTH? Content marketing strategies are only complete if they come with a clear idea of how content-led engagement will flow through into revenue; how the value that you’re exchanging for people’s attention will go on to create value for your business. LinkedIn recently took part in research into the impact of thought leadership content on business buying decisions. In the study, 52% of business decision-makers said that they use thought-leadership content to vet an organization before deciding to work with it, 37% said they had added a company to an RFP as a result of such content, and 45% said that it had led them directly to award a supplier a piece of business. That’s a powerful argument for the strategic value of thought leadership content and its direct impact on the bottom line. But it’s not enough for a content market- ing strategy to know such value exists. It has to know that the value is flowing through in the way that it should. Strategies have metrics and measures for this, and content marketing strategies should be no exception. That’s why LinkedIn has emphasized developing tools like Conversion Tracking, which connect exposure to content with eventual business outcomes.
Tracking impact and effectiveness matters because of another key finding in our study: that poor thought-leadership content can quickly damage a business’s prospects. In fact, 30% of decision-makers had removed companies from consideration because of content that disappointed them. The businesses that tend to deliver content that connects, impresses and creates value are the businesses that have done the hard yards in thinking about how content fits into their overall business model. They create value for their audience because they’ve considered carefully what that audience needs – and they’ve thought through how their business can provide it while enhancing its own prospects. They aren’t using content simply as an ad-hoc marketing tactic. They’re using it as a business asset and a revenue driver that they expect to track through to the bottom line. HOW TO SPOT A CONTENT MARKETING STRATEGY You can spot the businesses with a content marketing strate- gy not just by the fact that their content is worth consuming, but by the fact that they are distributing it regularly. After all, they’ve identified a role for content as a business driver – so why would they only use that driver intermittently? I’m not saying that single pieces of tactical content can’t be effective. A well-executed piece of content in the feed will often engage more effec- tively than a display ad even without a complete content marketing strat- egy behind it. A compelling piece of video storytelling often engages far better than a 30-second ad. These are examples of effective content being used as an alternative to other market- ing tactics. A content marketing strat- egy is at work when these one-off successes become a sustainable driver of growth for the business. You can’t buy an audience’s attention just by paying to interrupt them BACK TO CONTENTS PAGE 64 S o p h i s t i c a t e d M a r k e t e r What four “Best Picture” winners can teach you about telling Oscar-worthy brand stories OSCAR WINNING FILMS W0RDS BY JASON MILLER HOW WATCHING CAN HELP YOUR CONTENT MARKETING
CRASH BEST PICTURE (2006) Crash is an excellent study in storytelling. Set in Los Angeles, the movie shows how the lives of sever- al characters intersect around a single carjacking incident. As the plot develops, the narrative switch- es between viewpoints so that you see events unfold from multiple perspectives over a two-day period. Watching Crash, it’s easier to identify with some characters than others. While you may not agree with or understand some of the characters’ actions, you are forced to experience the story from foreign perspectives.
Examining your content plan from the perspective of your various audiences is critical. Your brand’s story will be more engaging when it is individualized to fit within the context of specific audience segments. As you work on content, think about the needs, inter- ests, experiences, and potential biases of the people you are trying to reach by truly immersing yourself in their world.
In this classic thriller, Hannibal Lecter dangles bread crumbs of information to Clarice (and the viewer) into the misdeeds of serial killer Buffalo Bill. Teasers pull the audience along as Clarice must tell Lecter about difficult parts of her past in exchange for infor- mation that may help her catch the killer. A kidnapping, Lecter’s escape from jail, and other twists keep audiences hooked into the mystery as more and more is revealed. LESSON: SUSPENSE You can add suspense within one piece of content or create a series of assets that progressively provide more information. Tease the launch of your ‘Big Rock’ content assets, and plan sequences of content that build towards revealing your value proposition rather than leading with it from the outset. The key here is relevance. To build suspense, your audience needs to care about the subject. You’ll also need to keep making good on your promise to provide value for the audience.
S o p h i s t i c a t e d M a r k e t e r 65 L O N G F O R M
Forrest stumbles through life and unknowing accomplishes more than most people ever try to do. Among his feats are showing Elvis Presley how to dance, being named an All-American football player, serving as war hero in Vietnam, meeting three presidents, and helping to expose the Watergate scandal. But the movie wins people over with the way it evokes emotion around interactions and events we all go through. Forrest Gump captures the joy of triumphs, the frustration of setbacks, and the heartache of loss, all through the experience of a person thought unable to acknowledge or under- stand it all.
Consumer brands have long made emotion a staple of marketing, but B2B brands have tradi- tionally struggled. However, marketers targeting businesses are making increasingly innovative use of content that connects with customers and prospects at an emotional level.
Don’t only look to successes for compelling stories. Addressing failures and lingering challenges can make for great storytelling while casting your brand in a more authentic light.
Profiling fictional Roman general Maximus Decimus Meridius, Gladiator is a hero’s tale. In the course of avenging the murder of his mentor, the Caesar, Maximus demonstrates love for his family and the men with whom he fights while refusing to pledge loyalty to the tyrant Commodus. The harsh hero’s journey that Maximus must endure includes imprisonment, exile, and the death of his family. Only with great trial and strength is he ultimately able to gain revenge on Commodus.
Just as Gladiator casts Maximus in a heroic light, brands have the opportunity to make their customer the hero. Your content marketing can paint a fascinating picture that accurate- ly depicts customer challenges, along with the hero’s journey. In some cases, that hero may be your brand, a key figure within your company, or one of your products. In many of the most important examples of marketing storytell- ing though, it’s the customer. Look for ways to include empathy, suspense, and emotion in a story that you know that your customers and potential customers will relate to. 2 1 4 3 BACK TO CONTENTS PAGE Ads.indd 15 17/05/2018 17:28 BACK TO CONTENTS PAGE S o p h i s t i c a t e d M a r k e t e r 67 Megan Golden examines the formula behind a compelling emotional rollercoaster that TV audiences can’t resist FROM THE MOMENT IT PREMIERED, NBC’s drama This Is Us captivated the hearts of viewers across the United States. Known as an instant tear-jerker, the hit drama covers emotional storylines riddled with betrayals, triumphs, and painful histories that viewers have become invested in. Even though we know it will be an emotional journey with plenty of ups and downs, we still watch because we care. As content marketers, we understand the value of creating a story that audiences don’t want to miss. It’s a worthy goal. How can we create something worthy of such a strong personal investment from our audiences? To help you create content that generates deeper engagement we took a deep dive into the world of This Is Us to share their evocative storytelling secrets. We shed many tears to bring you this advice, and hope you appreciate our emotional sacrifice. Craft Relatable, Relevant Moments Part of what makes This Is Us such a success is the way it tackles tough topics impacting countless lives. From suffering a miscarriage to battling weight loss to facing a fatal cancer diagnosis, the show addresses hard situations that anyone can relate to. Recognizing these common threads, the audience has greater empathy for the characters and becomes deeply invested in their storylines. Then, when something bad or good happens to the character, the reaction is all the more heartfelt. Encourage emotional reactions to your own content by helping read- ers or viewers see themselves in the stories you tell. Make them the protagonist or main character in your content by describing situations or experiences they’ve likely had themselves. You can also tap into their nostalgia by creating a recognizable setting or scenario. The more your audience can empathize with your story, the more emotionally invested they will become.
Symbols have universal meanings that elicit emotion in audiences, from joy to grief and everything in between. This Is Us employs symbolism throughout each episode to evoke such feelings. For example, the show used a washing machine to represent the Pearson family’s churning cycles of life. There’s also a scene where Jack is doing pushups with his son, Randall, on his back, which is symbolic of a father carrying his child through life. Use storytelling tools like symbols, metaphors, and analogies in your own content to trigger emotions from your audience. For the best results, incorpo- rate symbols that have universal meanings like colors, fire, night, water, and more. Symbolism goes beyond written content as well. Bring symbols into your video marketing, podcasts, or social images to build deeper connections with your audiences across several channels.
Knowing what your audience values makes it much easier to create an emo- tional rollercoaster. The team behind This Is Us does emotion better than most thanks to their intimate understanding of their viewership, and their personal struggles. This is really seen through the three main characters, a set of tri- plets that are easily identifiable for anyone struggling with their appearance, career, or identity. Sound familiar? People react differently and the only sure way to evoke the desired emotion is to know your audience. Before you create content, identify and define your audience personas, and craft characters that will be relevant to them. Content ideation shouldn’t stop with a relevant story. It’s a good start, but if evoking emotion is your goal, try telling your story through a relatable character. Subscribe to the LinkedIn Marketing Solutions Blog for a regular dose of content marketing inspiration T H E D E B R I E F How to Inject Emotion Into Your Content With
This Is Us BACK TO CONTENTS PAGE Ads.indd 15 17/05/2018 17:25 BACK TO CONTENTS PAGE S o p h i s t i c a t e d M a r k e t e r 69 All marketers tell stories, as Seth Godin puts it in the title of his classic 2012 book. However, not all marketers have the passion and dedication to a story that’s the hallmark of a great storyteller. Minter Dial, a former Senior VP at L’Oréal and the founder of the Myndset consultancy, is one that does. The commitment involved in telling a family story of heroism and tragedy has shaped him as a thinker and a marketer, and given him an insight on building brands through purpose- ful stories that few have.
T H E D E B R I E F The Last Ring Home is the story of Minter’s namesake and grandfather, and the Annapolis Naval Academy ring that he wore, and which miraculously made its way home 17 years after he was killed as a POW of the Japanese in WWII. Minter spent 27 years telling it. He first began digging into his family history when starting out as a marketer for an equities analyst. He kept digging, researching and piecing together the strands of this tragic and remarkable tale during 16 years working in the cosmetics industry. He finished it off while launching Myndset and building a reputation as a unique marketing thinker. The result is a critically acclaimed book and documentary film that has been winning awards at festivals across America. It’s a superb example of how committing to a story doesn’t just engage audiences, it changes the storyteller themselves. THE STORY OF THE LAST RING HOME Can marketers train themselves as storytellers? Minter Dial found a remarkable family story and then devoted himself to telling it right
P6-7_Contents_FINAL0517.indd 6 21/05/2018 09:56 BACK TO CONTENTS PAGE S o p h i s t i c a t e d M a r k e t e r 71 T H E D E B R I E F Are you tucked up under the duvet? Have you brushed your teeth properly? Then I’ll begin… Here’s how
in our own content marketing: handful of children’s books, including The Leprechaun Who Lost His Rainbow, The Bear Hug, and Shannon and the World’s Tallest Leprechaun), I came up with a unique approach to making the LinkedIn story as simple as possible: a bedtime story. I worked with illustrator Daniel Howarth — he and I had previously teamed to create A Wild Day With Dad — to produce The Marketing Genie. Using the conventions of a bedtime story, maybe the oldest of storytelling forms, The Marketing Genie tells the tale of an intrepid marketer who journeys to the ends of the earth (or at least to Las Vegas) to get the answers to three questions that are keeping her up at night:
The story borrows liberally from the classic hero’s journey as de- fined by Joseph Campbell. Like mythical heroes such as Ulysses, the hero in this story, a marketer named Liz Ceese, must go on a heroic journey, descend into a hellscape (in this case, an in- dustry conference) and return a changed woman full of more wisdom than she had at the tale’s beginning. We won’t tell you how the exactly story ends, but you can probably guess that it does involve a Marketing Genie, a happy marketer, and a few LinkedIn products. Want to know whether this tale has a happy ending? You can find out by downloading The Marketing Genie at lnkd.in/genie You just might find a piece of content marketing that you’ll want to share with your kids! W0RDS BY SEAN CALLAHAN CONTENT MARKETING AS A BEDTIME STORY t its most effective, the concept of storytell- ing puts your customers at the heart of the tale, empathizes with their problems, and ultimately provides a solution (ideally one that involves your product or services). At LinkedIn, we have purposefully included storytelling in our content marketing. We’ve told stories about effective digital marketing in a variety of formats: videos, blogs posts, case stud- ies, podcasts, and more. Last year, we were challenged to simplify the LinkedIn Marketing story. As a writer of children’s books (I’ve authored a
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S o p h i s t i c a t e d M a r k e t e r 73 he mission of a DJ is to engage an audience and provide fresh spins on content we might already be familiar with. A marketer can often have similar objectives. So it perhaps shouldn’t be all that shocking that one of LinkedIn’s very own market- ers moonlights as a popular local DJ around San Francisco, and believes working each of these jobs makes him better at the other. Ish Verduzco is Global Social Media Marketing Lead for LinkedIn Talent Solutions, where he has worked since 2014. His passion for DJing dates back further. “One of my friends, he’s been deejaying since he was like, 12 years old,” Verduzco recalls. “It wasn’t until 2008 or 2009 when I started asking him like, hey, this is pretty cool stuff, do you mind teaching me?” These days, Verduzco keeps a busy sched- ule, managing several social media platforms for LinkedIn by day and juggling his duties as alter ego DJ Ishh by night. He spends a majority of his weeknights practicing and promoting, then works as many as two or three gigs each weekend. He describes his sound as a mix of Latin (owing to his Mexican heritage), electronic, and hip-hop.
Hobby. Side job. Personal calling. Whatever you want to call it, Verduzco feels the DJ avocation blends perfectly with his main profession. T H E D E B R I E F “For me personally, I like to constantly be learning and growing,” he says. “I get that through social media at LinkedIn, because it’s a pretty big challenge at a huge global company. But I also like entertaining people and bringing people together, which I get through deejaying. So, in a weird sense they support each other because without one, I would feel like there’s something missing.” Not only do these dual roles make him feel more complete, they also complement each other in terms of applicable skills and goals. Yüklə 13,79 Mb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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