Storytelling For Your Brand

1. Introduction: Hey, guys, welcome to storytelling. What brand journalism? My name is Stephanie Chan and I have been working in brand journalism for the past six years. I'm currently the editorial producer Force Discos, the network site where we tell stories about Cisco in a way people can really understand and relate to. So in this class, you learn how to identify your business is key themes have sourced stories and how to write authentic pieces. You'll then use these skills to create and publish your very old first blawg, which is really exciting. You may want to take this class if you're an individual or business looking to start a company block, maybe expand your bread storytelling strategy and increase your social engagement. And you can find value whether you're just starting your company's content strategy or you already have experience in managing blog's. And another great way that you may be able to utilize the skill is writing personal stories or other content on a portfolio or on a personal blogged. Learning how to write content authentically is crucial and many different fields, and by the end of this class, you can learn how to pinpoint key stories to share. You can write in a mackerel blawg, and you can share it effectively on social media. So really looking forward to spending some time with you in this class, and I'll see you for the next lesson. 2. What Is Brand Journalism: Hey, guys, welcome to the first class of storytelling for your brand. It's crucial for businesses to understand how to create a content strategy, because if your company is not the one out there telling your story, then who is so brand? Journalism is all about creating timely and original content that helps your brand build connections with your customers. Creating blog's and a brain newsroom is a great way to have that original content, but in a low cost way. Bren journalism should never be overly brand market E. It is not a commercial. It should be authentic, and it should be driving your key messages to begin the content strategy process. Start by asking yourself the company's communications objectives. Thes objectives become a filter through which all of your content and your social efforts flow. So is it to shift perception? Is it to create more of an awareness? Or is it to gain a share voice? The next question you want to answer for yourself is what are your company's key themes? For example, African Silicon Valley. A lot of companies you're focused on driving innovation and engineering, but there are other themes. Plenty of businesses want to focus on. These include people culture, inclusion and diversity. Corporate social responsibility, maybe of a bakery and you sell cookies, and it's from an old family recipe. So you want to focus on relationships and building connections through food. Or maybe you haven't make a brand that has a lot of different colors. You can focus on fullness and inclusivity. So what are your key themes? What amazing things do you want your company to be known for? Like I mentioned earlier, you always want to strive for authentic content. This should be about creating those personal connections that your readers care about. And you can do this by telling them a purposeful story that shows them what happened rather than tells them. But we can dive more into this in the next class. So now I just want to show you some examples of company newsrooms that you can see just the wide range of possibilities out there. This 1st 1 is from Hewlett Packard HP. So this is called the garage, and I encourage you guys to check this one out just because it is so visually striking. They have just such an awesome design. I they're so awesome inspiration from that brand. The next one is from Apple, and as you can see here, it's very white. It's very in that traditional apple aesthetic, and the 3rd 1 I have is from Ari I, which is like a sports store and their brain newsroom. It's really cool just breaking away from the tech industry museums for a bit. But I encourage you guys to check these all out. I really hope that this has been helpful in terms of creating inspiration of what your brand news room could look like. And I urge you as you begin your journey and creating your content strategy toe, ask yourself about the company's communications objectives and your key themes. Thanks so much for joining me for this first class, and I look forward to seeing you next time. 3. Create Compelling Blog Posts: So in the last class, we discuss what brand journalism is and a couple ways to get started on creating your content strategy. Right now, I want to talk about bringing that strategy toe life through the actual content. And blocks are just one of the best ways to get your story across your customers. But you have to think about what you're going to write about. So let's talk about how to source stories. One of the most effective ways is should meet with us Many different teams across the business as possible. Meet often so that you constantly have a pulse on what's happening at the business. Because everything that happens is a potential story. So did your company hold an event? Did they celebrate an anniversary or lunch? You can tell us about the company's founders and about their passions, or you could even share an employee story. Another great way to source block content is by writing customer success stories. So let's say a startup used your service, and now they're seeing some amazing results. That is a really powerful story to share with other potential customers. So once you have figured out the topic of your blawg, then explore how you can write it here. Some tried and true frameworks for your stories that you can try out. There's a love story so you can talk about how much you love your customers, how your company has such a great place to work, how you have a lot of perks and how you love giving back to the community. The underdog story is talking about how you started off with challenges, but now you're here and you have risen above a success story. Is he as how this person or team has become successful and some tips for the readers? A service story is about the causes that you support a failure. Stories about some career pitfalls and roads to redemption. Transformation story is about personal metamorphosis. How you or the team totally changed yourself or something. So in every story that you write, remember what you're trying to do is create an emotional connection to your customer. You want to shape and experience for your reader, haven't discover something new or make them care about something that you are passionate about. Finally, I don't want you feel confined to just a written block because There are plenty of content types that would fit in a brand newsroom, including videos, infographics art uh, Q and A's people profiles. So feel free to think about the way in which the content would be captured best. Thanks so much for joining me in this lesson, and I will see you guys next time. 4. Navigating Social Media as Amplification: so you have your blawg post written and it's published and all that good stuff, but it can't just sit there. Amplifying it on social media is how you're going to send your blawg out into the universe . So it's important that you know your social audience in your social tone of voice so that it could tailor your social tactics accordingly. Who are you speaking Teoh. And are you taking on a more serious business voice or more personal, one that uses some casual tone and maybe some meats? You want to keep in mind that a piece of content that would work really well for LinkedIn may not work as well for Twitter. So on Twitter and Instagram stories say you could natively upload a short 12th video on, and that would work really well there. But maybe it wouldn't perform as well on instrument proper. So you want to find out who your social audiences and keep them in mind. If you have other teams within the business, work with them to amplify your content on social media. Look into your employee base to be ambassadors for the business. By sharing the brands content, you can also reach out to influencers on Twitter, instagram YouTube and share your block content with them in hopes that they will share it as well. And in terms of influencers, try to find someone who has a good social presence and who was also in your specific industry. You can put some money behind certain social posts in order to increase the post chances of being seen by others. So she and I want to show you an example of a newsroom content that I thought performed really well on social media. This one is from Ari I. And if you remember from the last class, I talked about Ari I a little bit. And here we see in this example, there was one from Twitter, which says the angle should be a Q. T on. And then there's one from Instagram, where it's completely different social copy and a different image. But they're both talking about National Hammock Day, so here we kind of just see the different tactics that are EI is using to share their block content but tailored for the specific platform. So I encourage you guys to go and check out brand newsrooms and also their social feeds and just see what they're doing out there to get some inspiration. Thank you guys. So much for listening. And I hope you see, guys, except 5. Create an Editorial Calendar: So what do you have? More of your block posts and pieces of content in the pipeline? It's important to create an editorial calendar for a newsroom to keep things organized. Not only will it include the publishing schedule for your blog's, but it should include some other really important basics as well. So include the content. Whether it's in a word, doc, maybe a link to U R L image warbler include the team leader. So who's in charge of this piece of content Company dates? Maybe you have a company launch coming up. You can keep all of the important dates in the calendar, so their blawg content aligns to the company's events. You're blawg, and your content strategy should always be in conjunction with your company's focus areas of the moment and also include social copy had in your editorial calendar. If you're using social, to amplify your blog's and editorial calendar is a really great way to organize all of your social copy as well. So here I just want to show you an example of an editorial calendar, and this is the one that, um, we use on my team. So as you can see I'm just showing you a couple weeks, but we have all these great blue pills, um, in line for each day. And basically, those are the blog's or pieces of content that are going to publish that day on the newsroom. And if we click into the certain days we have links to the actual content, we have word docks who's in charge of it and our social copy. And here, just a few options of sites that you can also use to create your own editorial calendar. You can see Google Calendar, Excel, work front smartsheet asana. These are all really great, but I encourage you to do some research and see what works for you. And as we saw in the first lesson, there are also many different ways you can set up a blawg site or a newsroom. Some companies build them on their own, But if you don't want to you or you don't have that capability, here are some Web sites that you can use them to create. Ah block site or newsroom on your own, really, really easily. So there's medium WordPress, blogger wigs, squarespace, Weebly and Tumblr, and I've used a few of these, um, not all of them. But I would say medium is really, really easy to use if you're looking for a simple first blogged to put up, and they also have a feature that helps you build your own publication. So they build a really beautiful newsroom for you in really easy steps. So please check out these recommendations and look up what might work for you in terms of calendars and blocks on. Thanks so much for joining me. I will see you next time. 6. Bonus: Create Compelling Video: hi guys. So in this class, and you're going to be talking about how to create compelling video. Forester says that a minute video is worth 1.8 million words, so it could be crucial to incorporate some compelling video into your newsroom or to your social media strategy. Um, here are some tips to making the most out of your Brandon video Before you start thinking about how to execute your video, make sure to boil your story down to one sentence. If other teams air coming to you and asking you to make videos. Make them also tell you their story in one sentence so that everybody is on the same page in terms of messaging. Having a thesis statement controls the subject matter and really summarizes why this story is so important and worth sharing and worth caring about. That being said, if you were interviewing people for your video, make sure you listen closely to your interviewee. Often these folks are sharing parts of their story that can help enrich the video, whether that be ideas off, new locations to film or something that really supplements your thesis, Or maybe they have an entirely different story that they start to share on, and you can keep that in the back of your mind for any future projects. Make sure also to find interesting backdrops. Try to avoid conference rooms. Switch up locations from time to time. If you can. You should definitely make sure that the set has enough space so that there's a gap between the subjects and the camera. I also suggest finding bright, vibrant backgrounds or fun furniture places with art or plants. Definitely find somewhere quiet. Good audio is almost more important than getting clear video and make sure to do some sound checks before filming just to listen to be acoustics, it's important to to find somewhere with good lighting. And sometimes offices aren't the best place for that. You can try to find a balance between too much exposure of sunlight and too much exposure of artificial light. In that same vein, talking heads can be good, but make sure to use different methods to telling a story that just someone talking straight to the camera. Often this kind of video isn't engaging enough to keep an audience, so instead you can try having that person walking and talking while they explained, Maybe they're walking through an interesting space or make maybe you can have that person conducting an interview with someone else and that, in the information, comes from a dialogue between those two people. You can also set up a second camera so that when you're editing, you can have the option of switching. The view on. You can also vary the depth of field by switching between really tight shots on Ben. Wider shots also, of course, add B roll. Make sure that B B roll video corresponds to what the person is talking about. There are many ways to make videos more interesting, more informative. You can also add slides like we do here. If you have budget, spend the bulk of that on quality video and you can achieve quality video in some really easy ways. You can invest in something like a video stabilizer if you plan on filming off your phone. This makes the video left shaky, and it actually gives it a really seamless, high quality look. The one that I'm showing you here is called the D. J I Osmo, and you can buy it for around $100 If you're looking to make easy edited videos for your newsroom or social media, you can use a tool like loom in five. This is a social media tool that analyzes the content of your blog's and then automatically creates a video storyboard for you. And then it recommends relevant images or videos that you compare, and you can drag and drop that into your video. And you can't forget about live streaming. Ah, life shooting on YouTube, Facebook or LinkedIn could be another way to produce easy video content. You can conduct interviews, event coverage and behind the scenes content. These are all really awesome for live streaming. So I'm hoping that these were some helpful quick tips on how to create compelling video for social media or for your newsroom. I hope it helped thank you so much and see you next time 7. Recap: that you guys so much for taking the time to be in this class with me there just a few important things that I want you all to take away with you. So here is a recap In our first class, we first took a look at what brand journalism is and why it's important for your company. Brand journalism is all about creating timely and original content that helps your brand build those important connections with your customers. Brand journalism should never be overly brand market e. It should be authentic, and it should drive your key messages. Next. We talked about identifying your company's key themes. So what things do you want your company to be known for? Whether it is inclusivity, fullness, innovation. And then we talked about the many ways that you can create this content, including blog's videos. Infographic are two comics Q and A's People profiles. Just think about your story and think about the ways in which you can come to life in terms of social media. We discussed the importance of knowing which platform will be best for each piece of content and then tailoring your social copy and your tone of voice to that piece of content . You can also leverage the influence of your employees, your executives, even people in your industry to share the post that you made on social media. We also talked about keeping your content strategy organized with editorial calendars. In these calendars, we want to include the piece of content who's in charge of the content, any important dates in the company and, of course, the social copy. Finally, I gave some suggestions of awesome and easy blawg sites and newsroom sites that you can use to publish the first piece of brand newsroom content. So I'd love to see the guys that you guys have been working on the work that you guys have been working on. So feel free to get started on your own content, strategy, journey, and I look forward to seeing it. Thank you 8. Conclusion: So as we're wrapping up this class, I just want to say thank you so much for participating and for falling along with all of the assignments. I encourage you to finish your block posts for the final project, and I look forward to reading what you guys came up with. Well, read and turn it in the document. Or even if you want to publish it online in a block post, feel free to send it to me as well. If you're feeling stuck, or if you feel like the blawg is pretty difficult to finish, one way to make it easier might be through changing the content type. So maybe it's more of an impactful question and answer with an exact or an employee. He or maybe you even want to film a fun video for your story. Um, if you're still working on your block, you can eliminate some of the writer's block by trying some free writing on and just seeing what emerges from that, you can also just try getting some more quotes from different people in the story. That's a really good way to expand, you know, the length of the block and also bring it to life. So, in conclusion, um, great job. Please feel free to add me on Twitter or linked in. And I hope to see you guys soon.