Looking over my notes from the Online Marketing Summit hosted by CickZ, the talk that set off the most fireworks in my writer’s head was by Joe Pulizzi of Junta42 and Z Squared (http://blog.junta42.com/about.html ).
Pulizzi’s talk was titled “The Three Keys to Social Media: Content Marketing, Listening and Distribution.” One recommendation he made was that companies hire journalists – to help shift their voice from marketing and one-way broadcast to publishing and dialogue.
Journalists shape their stories by listening and interviewing, impartially communicating other people’s voices as well as their own. Pulizzi’s portrait of social media storytelling – as shifting away from one-way broadcasting to a dialogue of listening and responding – made me think that cutting edge social media are tapping back into (aha!) Storytelling’s Deepest Roots.
The Campfire Wiki
Around the primordial campfire, storytellers listened and responded to their audience. Most old folktales – the fairytales which still make Disney et al millions every year – are a layered accumulation of years of back and forth between a storyteller and their audience – an evolving dialogue that is more open source Wiki than copyrighted Great Novel.
Social media is taking us back into a deeply engaging, deeply familiar, deeply satisfying form of storytelling in which everybody is a participant, and in which taking credit is less important than keeping the discussion, the story, rolling forward (folktales don’t have bylines or copyrights).
But to participate, there must be something to participate in. While Pulizzi embraces the dissolving of one-way broadcasting into open dialogue, he still sees a need for storytellers. For your social media content to be engaging, he says, it must have a story behind it. A social media storyteller, like the campfire storyteller, can’t just listen and respond, but must also guide the narrative.
The Agency as Storyteller
So what is a social media storyteller? Not just an expert in the vocabulary of their community – skilled in tweet and video and design and blog – but a leader. A successful social media story must still be a campaign – have a strategy, vision and coherent voice – as well as being an open dialogue.
So, despite the way social media enables everyone to participate, there is still a compelling need for a robust agency to lead the dialogue – while always remembering that the most revered leaders don’t dominate their community (one-way broadcasting), they serve their community. They listen to current needs, and they are also out in front, anticipating needs the community doesn’t yet know it has, providing help and guidance, and inspiring.
Look at one of the most successful social media-enabled stories going – the Obama presidency. (Check out their recently opened Office of Public Engagement: http://www.whitehouse.gov/ope/)
Pulizzi had a lot to say about the authenticity, consistency, humanness and transparency that social media storytelling demands, why the C-suite is scared of it, and what elements a successfully engaging story must contain. But this is already too long…part 2, Story and Social Media …
John Thompson
Senior Copywriter, OTOi
http://www.otoi.com
Tags: Branding, Psychology, Social Media
Hi John…thanks for the kind words. Glad it resonated with you. You are right…strategy comes first. So often we lose direction by focusing on the shiny new object of social media.
[...] Thompson, senior copywriter at One to One Interactive, answers the nonfiction question when he cites “one of the most successful social media-enabled stories going — the [...]