Don’t tell the news, tell a story!

Posted by adi on Nov 14, 2008 in Work

I’m currently reading Godel, Escher & Bach: An Eternal, Golden Braid (again) and the book makes excellent use of stories to help get across what are pretty weighty topics.  The book begins with the Zeno Paradox of the Tortoise and Achilles (you can read about the paradox here if you havn’t come across it before).  Douglas Hofstadter then re-uses Mr Tortoise and Achilles, with the odd cameo from Mr Crab and various other characters, to illucidate each chapter with a dialogue.

I’ve been a big fan of storytelling since university when John Seely Brown took on cult proportions during knowledge management lectures.  Seely Brown is the chief scientist at Xerox and has long advocated the use of stories in communicating ideas and sharing knowledge.

Ten tips for using stories in your brand communications

1. Stories come directly from the brand. If your brand has a great reason for being then making a story from it will be much easier.  Apple for instance have a great brand and regularly tell great stories with it.
2. Open your ears. Great stories are all around you.  Listen to your customers, your suppliers, your employees.  They’ll all have great stories about your company.
3. Amplify your customers. Once you’ve found a great story, make sure it’s nice and simple, then give it all your marketing support to get it out there.
4. Integrate your marketing. It’s one of those things that sounds so simple but is often neglected.  Each and every piece of marketing you do should reinforce the brand and tell a mini story of its own.
5. Get in touch with your inner child. As mentioned earlier, the art of story telling often gets lost once we enter adulthood.  Reconnect with your inner child and delve into stories to understand what makes them so special.
6. Don’t forget the purchase. The aim of the story is to get people buying so don’t forget the end goal.  For this you need to ensure that your story “ticks” the age-old behavioural triggers like emotion, contrast, egocentricity, the power of beginnings, etc.  Use them, and people will respond.  Avoid them at your peril.
7. Engage your body as well as your brain. Actions speak louder than words, as the saying goes, and it’s important that your actions toe the story telling line just as much as your words do.  Marketers often fall into the trap of focusing purely on acquisition but ensuring that customers are well serviced at every touch point is just as important (if not more so).
8. Leave some intrigue. People love a bit of mystery in their stories so don’t feel compelled to tell all of your company secrets.  Leave a little to the imagination and you’ll encourage people to try and solve the riddle.
9. Empower the customer. It might seem scary but once the story is out there it can often take on a life of its own as your customers get their hands on it.  Encourage this process as the more customers talk about you the more it shows they care.
10. Don’t forget to be real. It might be tempting to create a story that fits the message you’re trying to communicate, but people tend to have a pretty good bs sensor, so resist the urge to fabricate and stick with the stories that truely represent your company.

Tags: Douglas Hofstadter, Johann Sebastian Bach, John Seely Brown, Marketing, story telling

Timing is key to Digg success

Posted by adi on Nov 14, 2008 in Work

Image via CrunchBase

So says a report by Hewlett Packard anyway.  They analysed all the diggs submitted on the site in the second half of 2007 and came to the (startling) conclusion that most diggs were made during peak traffic hours on the site.  For instance, a story submitted at 12pm US time will get approximately 400 diggs in the first 2 hours, whereas if it was submitted at midnight (US time) it would get half as many.  Check out the charts below:

Diggs by time

Promotions by hour of the day

Based on this study here are the take away points for me.

1. Success breeds success

Considering some 72% of all Diggs go to those stories that make it popular, ensuring you submit your story at the peak time to enable this is crucial.

2. The importance of sustaining success

Some 11% of all submissions peak after just 1 hour.  That is, after 1 hour they have received all the votes they will ever receive.  The average voting time is around 7 hours, so you can see the importance of submitting at the right time to ensure votes are sustained.

3. Geting success in early

I think the last point is so important that it’s worth repeating.  Nearly all of the votes for a particular story will come within the first 7 hours of it being submitted onto Digg.  We’ve already shown that time of submission is key to getting your story off to a strong start and this merely reinforces that point.

4. Digg on an empty stomach

The majority of diggs seem to occur around lunchtime US time, so if you want to give your submission the best chance of success make sure you submit it around 12 noon US time.

Tags: Digg, Hewlett-Packard Company, Submission