The Art of Storytelling

On this episode of 1000 Ways to Market Your Business, Samantha Scott, APR, is joined by Kinfay Moroti, Storytelling Strategist at Better Together.

Learn why storytelling is crucial for both businesses and nonprofits, how to effectively communicate your "why," and tips on integrating emotion into your marketing strategy. This episode covers everything from creating an engaging brand narrative to the importance of consistent visual storytelling and measuring campaign success. 

Have a question or feedback to share? Visit www.getpushing.com or one of our many social media channels. We look forward to hearing from you.

#marketing #business #communication #strategy

Transcript

0:05

Hi everybody, I'm Samantha Scott, APR. Welcome to another edition of 1000 Ways to Market Your Business. I am so excited to kick off season three with my good friend, Kinfay. Samantha Scott. Oh, it's good to be here. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk storytelling, which is cool. I'm a storytelling strategist. That's something that I love to do. Done that for about 25 to 30 years. For about 20 of those years in newspapers. Did storytelling around the world in different themes and different formats: war, political conventions, dustups locally, school board meetings, but then also did a lot of socially impactful work, spent time in the foster care system, capturing moments, unpacking some of the challenges that families face and things of that nature. After that, I started Hopeful Images, which was an initiative designed exclusively to help nonprofits share their story with the documentary feel to it. Worked with a lot of nonprofits in Southwest Florida and throughout the state. And one of the nonprofits that kept me busy was Better Together. They help keep children out of foster care, I grew up in foster care. So this past April, I joined them full time as a storytelling strategist. And so, just really excited to do that, to dedicate myself to one organization and see how that storytelling consistently has an impact. So, excited to be here, but the greatest person on the planet is most definitely Samantha Scott. Hardly, hardly, but I'm so, so delighted that you're here. I've been looking forward to this because when we came up with this idea of storytelling, I think it's just become such a buzzword, and I want to unpack what that means, and why it's valuable, and how businesses and nonprofits can use that, and I couldn't think of anybody better than the one and only Kinfay to do that. There we go. So, I want to dive into this. So, what does storytelling mean for an organization that could be a nonprofit or a business? What does that mean if we're trying to define that? Well, let's break it down this way. Every organization, every business, every nonprofit, your existence itself began with a story. And so to not continue to share that story, as you do business, as you grow, it's unconscionable. Like, in order for you to grow as an individual, you share your story. In order for your business to grow, for your organization to grow, lead with your story. It's the most important thing that you can do. You gotta get that story out there so people can know what you're doing. Would you say, that's almost like saying, it's communicating your why. Yes, it is communicating your why, but your story evolves. True. So your why evolves, you see. So when you are sharing your why, you share it as authentically as you can with the messaging that is authentic. That's not drawn from cliches. Once you identify what your story is, then that's going to inform your why. It's kind of like what comes first? A vision or the mission? Like, which comes first? Now, I think the vision informs your mission. I would agree. Your story is forever informing your vision. And that, in turn, informs what you actually do. So, prioritizing your story and making sure that it's clear. And I love how you explain that, that it evolves, right? Your story is kind of the beginning, the seed of everything that goes forward, but then it grows and changes like a plant grows and changes and evolves. I love that. So let's talk about some of the ways that you can share that story and do that storytelling. I mean, you are a master at doing that through visual, but also you do that with words. I mean, your posts are beautiful and convey such emotion. How can businesses and organizations effectively do that? Okay. Well, I think the first thing that an organization can do is after you have like a brainstorming session, you might say, where every idea is okay. There's no judgment going on. And once you get that story, once you find out what your story is and you find out how you want to convey it. Then you begin to do that and that can take on many, many forms. And it should. It should be multidisciplinary. Oh gosh, yes. It has to be. It has to be. So let's get some truths out there. Yeah. We are an aesthetically, visually driven community, world, society. There are a lot of visuals competing for the eye's attention and for your attention. You have to figure out how to insert your story in that space so it can get attention. Yeah. So how do you do that? First you do that if I were doing it you do that with a logo or branding that peaks curiosity. Doesn't answer all of the questions about what you do. Messaging is the second thing, the actual words that you put out there. That branding, the logo, the messaging is one of the first entry points that customers or supporters are going to have to your organization or to your brand. You follow that up with humanity. I love that. You follow that up with humanity. Whenever you can, include moments of people living your story, of people affected by your story. You share those moments in pictures and in videos as often and as strategically as you can. Just don't throw a bunch of pictures up there. Spend a little money. Hire a documentary storyteller to come and find out how you can visually share that story and be consistent with sharing visually the impact of your work with your audience. Then, sure, you do that in pictures, you do that in videos. But here's another way you share your story. It's when you or your employees or your teammates are out. They should have messaging almost like in their pocket. It's going back to the elevator pitch. Yes. If you've only got three seconds to get your message across, you have to be able to do that succinctly. Yes. Exactly. Have your employees, your team, don't give them scripts, but make sure that they have some messaging that they can always pull out and use. And here's the last thing about how you do it. Your exuberance is magic. When you share that story, share it with as much exuberance as you can find. Passion. Yes. Yes. If you're having a bad day before you start to share that story, go to your car and take a five minute nap, right? Do a power pose. Yeah, exactly. To stop that negative energy from infecting the sharing of your story. I think you touched on some really key points that I want to elaborate on. The strategy part I think is super important. So our core is really strategy, testing, measuring and really getting at the story and what you're trying to accomplish and you gave some really fantastic examples from a nonprofit perspective. I tie that to a for profit or a business perspective. Oh, yes, they apply everywhere. Absolutely. And so making sure you're strategic about your story and your differentiators. How you can communicate that really really clearly. You know, we do a lot of that with Angelina's Ristorante, for example. They're a fine dining establishment. They're Italian, but they're not like an Olive Garden or somebody else. And we're really, really clear about what their differentiators are in their story. Why was this created? What are they trying to accomplish? How do they want to make you feel? Exactly. And I think that is so powerful as you talk about images and video and then leading into the people, right? And we do a lot of testing and measuring. That's the other side of our house. And so a lot of that can be proven through the data that we're seeing. When we share images, and I'll just use even our company, for example, images or photos of our team, the engagement is substantially higher than the best post we could come up with, with the most tips on how to do everything under the sun, right? Like, we're giving away the farm and all the strategy, but if I share a picture of a team member, and celebrate them, even if it's just something fun, the engagement is so much higher and it's people. You know, I like to say that social media was started because it was meant to be social. Oh, that's good. Right. Social is social. It's pretty basic, but businesses have gotten hold of it. And now they just make it sales, sales, sales. And they've lost that social connection. And it's so, so incredibly important. So I agree on all fronts there. I think you're exactly right about that. And here's a cool tip about stories. If you are a business and you have your business page and you share your stories on social media. That's an algorithm that's not going to be prioritized in a lot of personal feeds. So if you can get your team to share, if businesses especially, can get their team to share their stories on their personal pages. Don't make it mandatory, but say,"Hey, would you mind doing it?" You see, then that is going to put that story in a better algorithm for more people to see. Absolutely. More reach. Exactly. Yes. All right. I just wanted to get that out there. Absolutely. And we've talked about that on this podcast before, that it's not an if you build it, they will come with organic content. And you have to use all of your tools at your disposal. That is a great example of one. So I want to talk about maybe an example of a really successful campaign that did storytelling well. I'll start with one because I've peppered you with questions already. So the first one that comes to mind for me is Dove, and they did a really fantastic campaign that was called the Self Esteem Project. And I don't know if you're familiar with that, but it was really, really well done, and basically showed real life people. And you think of self esteem and you think of deodorant or other body products, maybe don't go together, but they did such a really great job of leveraging storytelling in that campaign that felt people, made people feel like rather they were connected to it. I can see myself in that. I've experienced that particular thing. They've done a number of other campaigns that I thought were really compelling. I don't know if you're familiar with that or if you've got one maybe that you can share that you thought a company did a really, really great job with storytelling. I have to start with Better Together, and not because I'm contractually employed or anything like that. But when I began Hopeful Images, they were one of my very first clients, and Megan Rose bought into the idea immediately about having a documentary storyteller working with them and sharing their work. I didn't have to sell hard. Right. You know, she had the vision. She got it right away. So one of the very first stories we did was about Jack and Crystal, a mother who was trying to keep her son out of foster care. And we followed them for six months and we began sharing that story on my social media page, which had a really good following. And then as we shared that story more and more and more, all of a sudden the community became more and more aware of Better Together. Who's Better Together? What's Better Together all about? Did you see the story about Jack and Crystal? Now the Fort Myers Police Department is buying in. Other nonprofits are buying in. But it also galvanized the Better Together staff because they see,"Oh, wow." You know what I mean? We now are seeing our impact. Yeah. We're not working in a vacuum. Others are part of it. Yes. People are seeing it. And then Megan continued to allow me to do storytelling for her and for the past four to five years, you know, storytelling for Better Together is constantly elevating them and then also making people more aware of what they do. It blossomed into, after, here's a good example, after Hurricane Ian. I normally go out and capture moments of underserved communities that were impacted by there. Megan Rose,"hey, we're going with you." Yeah. Wherever you go and find stories, that's where we're going. It's a beautiful symbiotic relationship. Exactly. Because they could help the people in the moment. Exactly, for sure. I love it. I went, they followed, sometimes they found a neighborhood, I followed, we worked, we got those stories out there all the time. They were documentary, they were real, and that not only uplifted the community, but it gave us a good financial boost that we could continue to do that work. And so the work that I've done with them, the stories that we share, they are constantly cited by donors. That's awesome. All of this, all the great examples, thank you, are really shining a light on emotion. Of course. And emotion is such an incredible part of marketing. Whether you are working for a gym and the emotion is you want people to feel pumped up and want to go. Right. Or if you're in an emotion of I need donations, so you're trying to pull on heartstrings. But emotion motivates people. So we tie that back to marketing. How can you incorporate emotion and storytelling for your organization, and I think you've given some really awesome examples. Oh, through pictures and videos. That's it. Yeah, you know, logos and branding can evoke emotion. And interest, but not the same. But not like a documentary moment captured. Nothing, nothing can beat that. Nothing can beat that. We've talked a lot about kind of the softer side, the concept of it, the performance of it, and I want to just tie that back to application for people that are listening or watching. So one of the ways you can do that is looking at what's performing, right? So we look at performance reports and we say which images, which video are performing best, what's getting the most engagement, making sure that you're paying attention to that. Because we can create really powerful things and we think they're going to work and some perform better than others like your story of Crystal and Jack that performed incredibly well, right? So I would just say, marry the concepts and the creative with the other side of making sure that we're testing how is this performing, is this working, and then leverage that so you can create more really, really great content. I think it's a really powerful way of just making sure that both sides are working together and you're monitoring as you go forward. I'd also say consistency. So stylistically, you have a very specific style, the way that you capture images, which is incredible. So if you're doing it on your own, or if you hire a different kind of documentary videographer, photographer, make sure that whatever you're sharing is consistent across the board. If you have, you know, X photographer do this, and then you have Y photographer, and it feels very disjointed, that's going to hurt your brand. Right. So making sure that's consistent. Oh yeah, most definitely. I like to say this, you can't have a room full of Frank Lloyd Wright's or Frida Kahlo's or Virginia Woolf's, right? All these creatives. You gotta have some Benjamin Franklin's in there, right? I'm Ben. You gotta have some practicality to it. So you're exactly right. An organization should not get caught up in the abstract story, right? You do have to measure how that story is hitting. Right. How is it landing? Right? And then you have to drop your ego, creative. Yes. And change your story or change the way you're telling it. Yes. In order to have a greater impact. I have to put my ego aside and follow the numbers. And that's a great example of paying attention to what your audience is interested in. Exactly. And I think that's also we have to take a step back even as marketers and creatives to say, I'm not necessarily marketing to myself. I'm not trying to tell the story to myself. But who am I trying to motivate? And how can I best do that? A good friend of mine named Erica de Leon, she taught me this phrase that I use when I am thinking about metrics or when I'm thinking about how to share the story, what's the intended outcome? Yes. What do I want this piece of content to create? What do I want it to do? I'm not going to be able to control how it lands on everybody. Right. But what's the intended outcome that I'm looking for? I'm open to a more profitable or a more outstanding outcome than what I'm thinking, but I do have an outcome in mind. Yes. I do have an idea of where I would like for it to land in a community, with humanity, right? So I use that question a lot when I am actually putting together my stories. What's the intended outcome? If I have that in mind, then I can craft that story to where it satisfies the Frank Lloyd Wright in me, but then also the Benjamin Franklin in me. You see? Absolutely. The very practical side of it, because businesses, you have to pay bills. I agree. We start our relationship with any of our partners by asking the question, what does success look like to you? Exactly. At the end of this engagement or in three months or six months, whatever those milestones are, what does success look like? Because you're exactly right. If you don't know where you're going, you never know if you get there. I do want to say this, that's very important is, metrics, your numbers, the engagement, not only do they let you know what's working, they also let you know if how you are telling that story is working. And you'll be able to see that play out consistently when you put out that particular style of story. So if videos are going really good in this season, double down on the videos. Full steam ahead, exactly. Right, and if it's not going pretty good, then you might want to come back with a picture story, you see, or you might want to come back with a graphic. Yes. I think that's important to remember, too. Yeah, absolutely. We look at that, so it's what type of content. Is it a link? Is it a photo? Is it a video? And then, what type? So, stylistically, was it different or the same? But then also, which channel? And then, what time of day? What day of the week? I mean, you can get as granular as you want. And I would just marry that by saying, just because one doesn't work doesn't mean you should scrap it all together. Oh, no. You know, do it for a little while, give it some runway to see how it goes, and then you can make an adjustment. It's not a one size fits all. No. You can use data to inform decisions. Right. But it should not rule everything. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. This has been so, so, so incredible, and I am really, really grateful. Kinfay thank you so very much for joining us. Oh, thank you. You know, whenever I get a chance to talk about stories, I think it's really great. And I'm just going to encourage everybody out there to like, to get your teams together. And this applies to businesses, not just nonprofits. You see, I think what I do applies to everybody, but get your team together and get a whiteboard and empower them to share their ideas. Ask your employees. Yeah. Ask your business partners What's our story? What's our story? Let me just wrap this up before I finish. Let me say this. It's very important you tell your story in all of these ways. That's very important. What's more important is that you literally know what story you are telling, not the story you are intending to tell. That's totally different. The story that you intend to tell is not the story that you actually tell. And you have to get as close to the intended story as you can with the actual literal visual story you put out into the world. That story 99 percent of the time looks vastly different than the internal story that you're telling. So you must be able to literally look at your literal messaging and say, what am I actually saying in this post, what I'm actually saying in this tagline. That is so important because you cannot put your intention out there. You have to have someone in your organization that has the ability to see. And the courage to tell the leadership what you are actually saying. If you can nail that. Then your story will just absolutely be true. I think you're right, because as business owners, we can get really caught up. And even, you know, marketing leaders, you pour so much into it, you care about what you're doing, that you can become a little bit blind. I would compare that to, or kind of translate that as making sure your mind is always on the benefit or the problem you're solving for the end user, versus what you're trying to sell. That is just a really, really great point. Thank you so much, Kinfay. Oh, yeah, it was great. It was fun. Thank you for tuning in to another episode of 1000 Ways to Market Your Business. If you've got questions, please feel free to comment. And we look forward to the next one. Stay tuned.