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Create your brand story: Newport Interactive Marketers

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Jamie Palmer, senior practitioner at University Business Consultants, taught Newport Interactive Marketers how to create an effective and personal brand story for online and offline platforms.

“78% of people are visual … if you can build a story, people will remember you.” – Jamie Palmer

What’s your brand story?  Are you telling it so listeners will engage?

Create your brand story

Return on investment
  • Build trust + engagement  = ROI
  • Once you’ve built trust and engagement, you can sell (softly)

Pillars of storytelling

  • Build structure and reframe your stories based on how the other person responds
  • Keep it simple: Have a specific theme, use strong words, be positive and/or funny
  • Be sneaky: Tell stories that show your expertise without overtly saying it
  • Use chunking techniques: Keep any stories less than 3 minutes, 2 would be ideal
  • Can only have 1-3 characters in your story: Don’t lose your point in character development

Create a metaphor, paint a picture that illustrates your offerings

    • What does the product do?
    • How would I describe the product?
    • How does the brand make me look and feel?
  • Utilize strategic intent

Tips

  • Have meaningful conversations
  • Bring in a third party to help tell your story instead of always talking about you
  • Make real-life connections like Newport Interactive Marketers

Twitter tips

  • Sometimes you tweet just to help SEO
  • Be careful what/when you tweet
  • Twitter counter measures counts up/down
Remember: Wherever you go, you are marketing your own brand and creating your own story.  Take Jamie’s strategies to create a story that uses the pillars of storytelling and paints a compelling picture to connect with your audience.

Check out University Business Consultant’s Connected movie trailer

Thank you @seangw, @carloverkat, @KevinTVine, @chrissheehy, @RIBloodCenter, @SidewalkBrand for adding your insights via Twitter to this #NIM event.

Understanding influencer characteristics: A case study at OMMA Social, part 2

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Continuing  the OMMA Social post, How Do Marketers Influence the Influencers? A case study at OMMA Social, let’s at the different characteristics that define influencer segments and how brands can engage them.

Source: Social Influencer segmentation study for the mom market, presented by Social Media and Communications Consultant Dina Freeman and Joshua Grossnickle, VP of Consumer Insights and Analytics, at Johnson & Johnson-owned BabyCenter.

Overall share of influence on social media

  • Field experts: 8% of social moms and have a 33% share of influence
  • Lifecasters: 8% of social moms and 34% percent of the influence
  • Pros: 2% of social moms and have an 11% share of influence overall — most influential as individuals
  • Butterflies represent 16% of community but wield 7% infleunce

Characteristics of Field Experts: Stay-at-home moms focused on parenting

  • Lots of posts but few direct friendships
  • Experienced stay-at-home mom
  • On BabyCenter or in groups, she shares robust info
  • Has faced specific challenge that turned her into a passionista: twins, problems breastfeeding
  • Writes really great product reviews
  • This group contributes 200 posts a week
  • Field experts’ content attracts 950,000 page views a month — very influential

Brands: Utilize and find the best “Field Experts”

  • Engage with her based on her expertise
  • Send samples
  • Don’t just blanket the blogosphere with product samples
  • Partner with sites that let her share her wisdom
  • Understand she’s compelled to make life easier for the next person

Lifecaster characteristics: Millennial moms sharing their lives

  • Driven to share
  • Taking a year or two off to raise kids
  • Posting about broad range of topics
  • Lighter sharing than the field experts group
  • She’s a maven, loves to connect people, lives life publicly on Facebook
  • 500 to 1,000 followers, lots of friends and comments
  • Everything funny and light

Brands: Let “Lifecasters” post deals

  • Ebagage with them lighter: user-generated content, photos, contests
  • IKEA: upload room shot, the first person to tag it, gets it
  • Baby milestones: desire & guilt to recognize milestones, connect via Facebook and e-mail

Pros’ characteristics: Bloggers who earn a living from social

  • Gen X Mom:  Self-employed
  • Engaging and entertaining tone on her blog
  • Does extensive research before posting anything
  • 50% have been given products or paid to post
  • 10,000 followers on blog, earned right to call themselves mini publishers
  • They poll followers to see what to write about.
  • Respect their editorial voice and loyalty to their audience

Brands: “Pros” engagement example

Verizon sponsored 5 of women in a “Bucket List” campaign. Each woman wrote about her experiences doing things she’d like to do before she dies. Verizon wrapped branding around it these stories.

Butterflies too busy to be social, for now

The fourth category was much smaller and less influential. Most women in this category are expecting their first child, working full-time, and have less history in the community. She’s very social and in many cases will morph into another influencer category as she has more life experiences to share with the BabyCenter community.

Charts & more highlights available on BabyCenter.com

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