How to tell your story effectively

By now, we have all heard that we need to tell our story if we want to communicate powerfully with our supporters and wider audiences online. Hopefully this is now a given, so our challenge becomes how to do so most effectively.

A lovely new piece published by NTEN and written by the filmmaker, Danny Alpert, tells us what he believes are the key features of an effective story. He’s somewhat of an expert himself - but shapes his advice around a series of fabulous quotes from some of the masters and mistresses of storytelling. I won’t repeat them here (but do read Danny’s article to read them all – it’s worth it). What I would like to cover, though, is his list of key features, because they are spot on:

• Keep it simple – both in messages (just have one) & in the execution.
• Create identification & aspiration – it needs to matter to your audience & (ideally) paint a picture of how things could be.
• Inspire action – always include something that your audience can do next (this is the web, after all!).
• Make it personal – most people make connections with people, not policies.
• Feelings make people act – if you connect with your audience emotionally, the rest will follow.
• Make it authentic – it’s scarily easy to spot a fake.
• Be the moon - aka don’t blow your own trumpet – get others to do it for you!
• Connect your story to the zeitgeist – it needs to be relevant in order to connect.

And having said that I wouldn’t quote the quotes, I’m actually going to go back on that and finish with one of them – by John Steinbeck:

“We spend all of our life trying to be less lonesome. One of our ancient methods is to tell a story begging the listener to say - and to feel - ‘Yes, that is the way it is, or at least that is the way I feel it.'”

Read more about digital storytelling

• Danny Alpert’s article for NTEN: http://www.nten.org/articles/2012/tell-your-nonprofits-story-more-effectively-with-the-help-of-a-few-masters?roi=echo4-17884305299-14935124-ebabfe79644d69f50e61306b872fa261&utm_source=ntenconnect&utm_medium=email&utm_content=program&utm_campaign=feb12
• 10 tips for writing effective web copy (keeping it simple): http://www.suefidler.com/resources
• Tell me a story (with some useful links to further reading): http://www.charitybuzz.net/2011/04/tell-me-story-effective-online-comms-5.html
• Or then again, maybe don’t tell me a story: http://www.charitybuzz.net/2011/05/or-then-again-maybe-dont-tell-me-story.html

Why (& how) you should remove duplicate content

A really interesting and timely reminder has been published by dotSearch: Duplicate content - 8 common pitfalls (and how to overcome them).

Duplicate content can really jeopardise your search engine rankings (or even cause your site to be removed from a search engine altogether), so it’s worth making sure you’re doing everything you can to avoid it.

What is duplicate content?

Content that is either very similar to – or exactly the same as – content on either your own website or another site.

Why is it a problem?

Search engines aim to deliver search results that are:

• Relevant
• Useful
• Diverse

... so if the content of your page duplicates a page the search engine has already stored, your page is likely to suffer, either:

• falling in the search engine’s rankings; or
• (worse) getting listed in the ‘similar results omitted’ category (thereby becoming almost invisible); or
• (worse again) being removed from the search results entirely if the search engine decides the duplication is malicious.

How do you know if your content is duplicating other content?

• Keep a close eye on the structure of your website and make sure you aren’t already duplicating any content.
• Make sure any content is fresh before publishing it.
• Make sure you don’t plagiarise other content.

Various tools are also available to help you check for duplicate content, including Google Webmaster Tools and Copyscape.com (an extensive list is included in dotSearch’s full report (see below).

What can you do about it?

dotSearch recommends various actions including:

1. If the duplicate content is on your own site, you can use Canonical Tags to show which page you want the search engines to note.
2. Edit any plagiarised content so that it is written in an original way on your site.
3. Get your page re-indexed if it plagiarises and has already been indexed. You can do this by resubmitting your sitemap to Google.
4. If another site is plagiarising your content, ask them to credit you, creating a link back to your original page. Alternatively, you could ask them to change it.

Read more

This is a really important subject for anyone running a website. To find out more:

• Download Duplicate content - 8 common pitfalls: http://www.dotsearch.co.uk/resources/download-duplicate-content-pitfalls-to-avoid.aspx
• Great infographic from dotSearch showing (in diagram form) how to remove duplicate content: http://www.dotsearch.co.uk/resources/duplicate-content-infographic.aspx

Getting your message across to teenagers

Quite a few of our clients want to know how to develop relationships with a younger audience. Traditional communications tools don’t seem to reach them and, understandably with trends often appearing to change so rapidly, nobody wants to invest time, money or energy investing in the wrong tool.

So a recent piece on NTEN, From Phones to Facebook: How to Engage Youth on the Front Lines of Social Media, is wonderfully pertinent. The writer, Jason Shim (who works in Family Services in the USA) has been researching the best ways of communicating with young people, looking at data and talking about the topic with groups of young people. The impact of his research has been amazing for the organisation: changing their approach has led to their saving over 3,500 working hours in the past year!

What did Jason find out?

1. Facebook is the main communications tool used by high school (that is, secondary school) students.
2. Most teenagers don’t check their personal email inboxes regularly (if they even have them at all!). The exception is older teenagers at university & college, who are given email accounts to use for their studies and tend to check those fairly frequently. Instead, computers are most used to access Facebook, YouTube, Tumblr and Twitter.
3. Teenagers with mobile phones are prolific users, sending an average of 1200-1500 texts per month.
4. Teenagers with smartphones (for example, Blackberry & iPhone) send fewer texts, preferring to use their phones for Facebook, iMessage, Twitter etc.
5. SMS is particularly effective for sending reminders to teenagers.

Jason’s research was carried out in the US, but as the parent of a British teenager, I can certainly confirm that his findings are accurate for the UK, too.

Knowing this, what should we be doing next? Well, we always say to our clients: find out where your audience is and go there. And armed with this research, you should feel clearer and more confident about where to go if you want to communicate with a younger audience...

Read more

• From Phones to Facebook: How to Engage Youth on the Front Lines of Social Media - http://www.nten.org/articles/2012/from-phones-to-facebook-how-to-engage-youth-on-the-front-lines-of-social-media?roi=echo4-17436443756-14546676-255eabdfa3991c193e50432fb76aa452&utm_source=ntenconnect&utm_medium=email&utm_content=program&utm_campaign=jan12
• Guardian article: Youth culture: teenage kicks in the digital age - http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jun/26/untangling-web-krotoski-youth-culture
• Telegraph article: The young generation are addicted to mobile phones - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/8458786/The-young-generation-are-addicted-to-mobile-phones.html
• Mintel Youth Technology report 2010 (overview free, full report has to be bought): http://store.mintel.com/youth-technology-uk-october-2010.html

New ideas for a new year #2: the new frontiers of digital storytelling

At the start of 2012, we promised an occasional blog about new developments that might be useful and/or inspiring. This one is potentially both, I think...

If you’ve followed this blog over time, you’ll know that we have (well, all right, I have!) a bit of a thing about the need to tell stories online if we are to connect with people as effectively as possible.

So I was very interested when I came across a tweet pointing to a mashable article about the latest developments in digital storytelling. The article talked about the development in 2011 of The New Frontier Story Lab (as part of the Sundance Film Festival). The idea behind the Lab was to encourage the development of a new style of media production, matching the way audiences’ preferences are changing from traditional, linear, passively enjoyed films to new, increasingly interactive narratives.

The article picks out 4 of these productions, each of which features multiple points of entry across different platform and all sorts of technologies including: facial recognition, augmented reality, geo-location, motion sensors, data visualisation and just about every social and mobile platform you can think of.

The results are stunning, a sort of film-meets-computer-game-meets-the-Internet in all its glory. We get to actively engage with the narrative, reshaping the stories ourselves as we go.
My favourite right now is Welcome to Pine Point, a poignant recreation of a mining town in Canada, which was not only demolished but all signs of it removed after the mine closed down. Part film, part book, part online gallery, it is more than all of these. It is incredibly touching and, not surprisingly, has won numerous awards, including two Webbys.

All of this is being heralded as the start of an innovative new era in entertainment. If you have a moment, take a look/have an explore for yourself and see what you think. How could we use this in our sector?

Read more

• 4 inspiring examples of digital storytelling: http://mashable.com/2012/01/31/digital-storytelling/
• 2011 New Frontier Story Lab: http://history.sundance.org/events/1123