When telling a story how do you make it a worthwhile read? How do you captivate your audience? Reflect on your daily activities to look for life experiences to help reach and engage with your audience. How do your use your life experiences to shape your story?

One thing to keep in mind when writing your story is the focus. As storytellers we can easily go off on tangents and get distracted. Stay on track by sticking to the focus of your story. If your having trouble finding your focus then stop and think….

and think…

It’s easy to forget a fundamental key in storytelling…thinking.

After some reflection and thought the focus may come to you once the story’s been told. The focus is what the story is about…why it was told.

Ask yourself four questions when preparing your story:

1. Why does my story matter? Why are you telling your story? You think it matters but who else does? This goes hand and hand with understanding your audience and telling them a story they’d connect with… emotionally.

2.What’s the point? What’s the purpose of the story. To teach something? To share an experience that changed you? This is your focus. You should be able to define what that is with only a few words.

3.Why am I telling the story? Original content comes from people who are simply willing to tell their story not attention seekers. So what’s your motivation behind the story?

4.What does this story say about me? Does it reflect you in a good light? Does it tell you audience who you are? Does the story flow? Is there a clear understanding? You want to make your story understandable and relatable. You want to be liked but you want to leave them with something to chew on.

By answering the four basic questions… your audience may be able to make a real connection with your story and ultimately you (your brand).

Why is it important to focus? Because we want to know what the story was about.

We want to know why that story was shared.

We want to take something away from it… connect with it.

Stories are life. Stories are built off of every day occurences and the little things that happen in life. Where did we… as marketers… go wrong when telling the story? All businesses and products are built off of a story. What is the main point of marketing… Is it fulfilling a need? Is it creating a product that actually helps an individual? Is it selling your wares… period?

A story is something that creates a safe haven for an individual. You are building a message that should be involved in the story of your customer’s life. It should (and must be) the connection that brings in additional customer and evangelists for your brand.

You want your customer to get to a place… a place where they agree with your terms and conditions. A place where they say, “Yes. I do need, want, or should have that product or service.”

A place where they approve your service and believe/know it will work for them… in any capacity.

What is the series of events that drive a person to a specific point: buying your product. What are you telling your customers? Is your story bland… Boring… Normal?

I see normal marketing everywhere. Brochures… Smiling billboards… Postcards… Facebook updates…It is normal and plain. There are no new story lines. There is nothing to pull me into the brand. The stock photography you bought in 1980 is not going to sell me on buying a house. The telemarketer that just left a message on my cell phone is not going to trick me into buying your magazine subscription.

And… the direct mail piece you just sent me asking me about my retirement plans… is definitely not going to pull me into your luncheon.

My friends and MY preferences are going to sell me on your product. I want to pull your information at MY will… at MY discretion. Notice a trend here?

It is about me… how are you speaking to me? Nay… how are you listening? Do you know what I want as an individual… are you allowing me to interact?

If you are not…

You have a long way to go… shift that paradigm and interact.

We need you to be safe and courteous when using Twitter… period. It is important for all of us to remember three important rules when jumping into the world of tweeting.

1. Don’t Drive and Tweet

We should all know by now not to text and drive. Come on people! When Oprah says it… it’s LAW!

Yet we’ve still managed to find a loophole and (much to our grandmother’s horror) we’ve taken social networking to the streets. Although it should be common sense to not tweet and drive… sometimes you have a tweet that can’t wait. However fast you are at tweeting the consequences can be dire… like your car wrapped around a tree. This was the case for plastic surgeon, Dr. Frank Ryan,  who was tweeting before his fatal car crash on Monday,August 16. This is an issue that has received a ton of attention but not much has been done to prevent these texting/tweeting related accidents.

Unfortunately, teenage drivers are not the only offenders. Texting while driving is a serious issue for ALL drivers.A recent report from Pew’s Internet and American Life Project found on Mashable… reported that 47% of adult drivers admitted to sending or reading text messages while driving. Legislation has tried to create a ban on texting by implementing fines for doing so. Yet the threat doesn’t outweigh the urgency behind getting tweets out or answering a text. So in a situation where you get the itch to tweet and just can’t wait, don’t scratch….pull over.  The other drivers on the road, greatly appreciate it, as would your grandmother.

2. Personal Information

There’s such a thing as TMI: too much information. I don’t’ need to know certain things… as your follower… don’t get too graphic here so keep your personal business to yourself. Be careful when sharing information that could be potentially be embarrassing or even dangerous.

3.Give Props When Due

Tweeting can be a great way to share the love. That being said… give shout outs and retweets to others that have helped you out in the past. This will create good “Twitter Karma”… and we all want good Twitter Karma.  Also when blogging about something you read be sure to give that author the credit for their post. Don’t claim ideas as your own. A retweet is intended to give proper ownership so follow suit and give props to rightful creators.

What do you think about this? Is it a soon to be epidemic?

Facebook and Foursquare at war?

Well, not really but Facebook has launched their new Facebook Places… trying to create a product that could become a leader in geolocal-applications. Foursquare stands on its own as the most popular or most heard of geolocation based application…however their biggest problem is Facebook’s size… over 500 million users. Foursquare must do something big and fast to compete with Facebook. So what’s next for the original pioneer in geolocation based application? What are you going to do Foursquare?

Do you really have to do anything?

Facebook has the tendency to copy sites that have early success in different ventures including Foursquare and Twitter. I remember back in the day of the Lacy household… my mother would always tell me that people loved you if they copied you. Truthfully, I haven’t figured out whether or not she was right… but Foursquare must be doing something right in the world of social media.

Imitation is flattery… technically.

Dennis Crowley, CEO of Foursquare, recently shared with Mashable his opinion of the two services:

“Facebook is about sharing experiences that you’ve had. Foursquare is more about the present tense and the future tense.”

I appreciate his opinion but it is truly how the user interacts with the application… not what the CEO’s opinion is of the competition.

What do you think? Where are you loyal? Do you even care?

By: Ike Eicher

Some of you reading this probably don’t remember this Bruce Springsteen hit or how 57 channels seems so “pre-U-verse” when this was released in 1992.

“Well now home entertainment was my baby’s wish

So I hopped into town for a satellite dish

I tied it to the top of my Japanese car

I came home and I pointed it out into the stars

A message came back from the great beyond

There’s fifty-seven channels and nothin’ on”

So almost 20 years later we have every kind of multi-media, social media, mobile media, blank-blank media to keep our shortening attention spans occupied. But to a certain extent, is there really nothin’ on?

In some cases I do feel that this sensory overload has warped our sense of time. We want instant gratification and short message spurts to communicate our wants or needs. We rarely watch “live” TV and the thought of having to actually wait for our online streams to load and play is crazy. And we want to take this all with us, all the time. So we have mobile devices now that are essentially super computers in our pocket.

I am guilty with all of the above, but it does make me think. From a communications standpoint is this bad? How has this changed how we deliver our message, brand promise, and call to action?

And that is where I find peace. All of these tools are simply new channels in our arsenal. And all the old rules apply. Know your brand and what it promises, know your audience and what they want and need, and don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

The other big message here is that in the past, for the most part, we had to only deliver a message. Now we can engage our customers, create a two-way street, and even remedy a problem… right now. The power of instant gratification goes both ways. If the customer tweets a bad experience and you are there immediately to fix it, everyone wins. No calling a 1-800 number, no filtering through an FAQ section of a website, and certainly no sending in the UPC code in a self-addressed mailer. So when the customer feels supported on their channel and we are listening and then reacting, what a brand champion we have created.

So, I’d change the Boss’s classic to 570 channels and yes, there is somethin’ on, let’s just hope we are sending a signal.

What’s on in your world?