Part OneSTORY: TELL IT WELL
1. WHY WE MUST SHARE
‘Those of you who think you are creating online content, take note: your success will be directly dependent on your ability to create excuses for people to talk to one another.’
– Douglas RushKoff1
Content isn’t king, but the conversation is. It always has been. We need to be social with other people. Don’t get me wrong; ‘content’ is important, but only because it gives us something to talk about, and a way to be social.
Many working in the business world today have never been required to be social with customers. Mass media marketing techniques took business people away from real conversations, replacing them with ad campaigns. But social media has brought those conversations back.
What we’re realizing for the first time in decades is that we need to personally return to the fundamentals of passing along stories of value to the public, stories that come from our professional expertise but that can then be passed along again and again. We must learn to share if we want to have an online presence that matters.
We are all newcomers to this online realm. My background is in print magazines. I still have a deep love for magazines, even though I know I can get their content in digital form. I like the feeling, the experience. It’s a bit like being a DJ who likes vinyl records. Someday these great bound collections of dead-tree pages and toxic inks will be consigned to a specialty store. Despite having absolutely no shortage of digital ...
