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What if the real reason your marketing isn't working has nothing to do with creativity, but rather that you're not creating those messages with a map? A map that not only shows you which direction you're going, but how all
Discover how a storytelling strategy and message map can transform your marketing, build trust, and create lasting customer relationships.
Key Takeaways
- A clear storytelling strategy acts as a map guiding all marketing messages.
- Building trust through authentic storytelling leads to stronger, longer-lasting customer relationships.
- Content marketing is multifaceted and should focus on delivering high-value content through appropriate channels.
- Random acts of marketing without a system reduce effectiveness and fail to build community trust.
- Search engines and video platforms remain critical for content consumption and discovery.
Summary
- Marketing often fails not due to lack of creativity but lack of a strategic storytelling map.
- A storytelling foundation connects all marketing messages and builds trust with the audience.
- David Edner, founder of Content Workshop, discusses building a content strategy system rather than random marketing acts.
- Effective storytelling involves narrative flow, character development, and emotional connection.
- Content marketing is more than social media posts; it includes blogs, videos, images, and other content forms.
- Google search, YouTube, and Google image search remain top platforms for content discovery and value delivery.
- Real substance in marketing builds authentic, repeatable relationships with customers.
- Small brands often miss foundational systems like message maps, leading to ineffective marketing.
- Longevity in customer relationships is the key return on investment from storytelling-based marketing.
- Content is everything from words to graphics, and delivery mechanisms vary widely.
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
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those messages are interconnected. That's what you need. A foundation of stories, a storytelling strategy. Well, luckily for you, that's exactly what we're going to talk about in today's episode.
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Welcome to the storytelling lab where we break down the art and science of storytelling. My name is Ray Bennett. I am your host and I'm a filmmaker and an author on a quest to understand how we can tell better stories so that we can
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do better work and make the world a better place. Each episode I host one of the world's best storytellers [music] to help you understand how to leverage storytelling to increase your sales, deepen your connections, and serve your audiences better. What's up
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storytellers? Welcome back to the Storytelling Lab podcast. This is episode 212 and today my guest is David Edner. David is the founder of Content Workshop. Is a creative writer and honestly one of the clearest minds I've met maybe when it comes to content
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strategy. That is what our conversation was about. Not storytelling structure, not how to optimize and go viral, etc., etc., about how to actually build an entire system, a strategy in your business so that it's almost not work.
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You don't go create your product or your service and then go shout it out to the world. You build a foundation, a system of storytelling that does the work for you. It informs and influences all of the messages that you will create
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because you have that foundation so strong, so intact. David has been in this game for over a decade. And he talks about something that's not often talked about in marketing channels, which is real substance. It's not about metrics or hacks. It's about creating
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something real and authentic and tangible and understandable and repeatable by your community. When you do this, it builds trust within your community. They trust you. It's a relationship. It's reciprocal. So, how do you build trust with story? Well,
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David talks about the difference in content and content marketing. And he talks about why so many small brands are caught up in these random acts of marketing and not relying on this foundational system, not relying on what he calls the message map in order to
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deliver their messages more effectively. But he doesn't skimp on his creative writing background either. We talk about narrative flow. We talk about character development. We talk about emotion in your marketing. And when you use emotion and when you tell stories and when you
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build trust, the return on your investment is longevity. Longevity with that relationship that you've worked so hard to build with your customer. David explains it so clearly, so simply, but it's profound when you understand it and you will immediately be able to go apply
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it to your business as soon as you hear this. So here is my conversation with David Edner and I hope that you love it.
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David, welcome to the storytelling lab. Thanks for having me, Rain. Well, I appreciate you being here. You have been at this uh storytelling game for quite a while, it seems.
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Yeah, my uh my hair was fully black when I I started doing this and now it's it's speckled gray quite a bit.
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Well, it still looks good, pal. I I've only been doing this for maybe eight years and I just lost all of mine. So, [laughter] you know, it hit some of us harder than others. Um, I have been storytelling for a long time, but but uh
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it was around 2018 where I realized like, oh, this is actually something that can can help people, not just filmmakers or writers necessarily.
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Um, so I'm excited to I mean, we were talking a little bit before we started recording about just how this translates to business, to branding, to the pursuit of anything we're trying to do and how it's not just this fluffy feel-good
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marketing tool. What I want to do first though, I mean people are very well educated these days. Uh but a lot of my listeners are uh overwhelmed, underresourced, maybe one person teams, maybe three person teams if they're lucky. So I also like to make sure that
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we lay the groundwork in the foundation. So to kick us off, let's just define content marketing for folks. That is a term that is used a lot. Yeah.
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And I suspect many people are like, "Okay, yeah, I'm creating content on social media. That's content marketing, right? And maybe it's a type, but could you just give me your definition just to kind of kick things off?
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Yeah, sure. I mean, everything is content. Content is everything. Unfortunately, as well as fortunately.
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Uh, so yeah, I, you know, a couple of my team members have this running joke where they at a previous agency they were working at, they were walking around the room and like picking up things like, is this content? Is this
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content? Is this stapler content? Yes. Uh, that's the answer. you know back in the day uh it was it was very like succinct that content was blogs was mostly written was mostly had some design elements but for the most part
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was written uh but content has exploded certainly uh because of all the tactics and mediums available to deliver content so I think it's important to differentiate what is content which is the actual words graphics video images things like that that's the content uh
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the delivery mechanism and the tactics vary immensely so yes you're producing content on social media. Social media is the delivery mechanism. The the tactic, let's say the content is the video, the content is the copy.
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So, what are other tactics? And I'm sure there are many. So, let's stick with the ones that like where what's your sweet spot? Like where do you like to spend your time? What platforms do you like to leverage?
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I still I'm old school brain. I still like Google. Uh, I still like searching for solutions and having highv value content delivered to me that answers my questions. That's still my go-to. Um, mostly because that's where most content
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is consumed. I mean, we talk about content on social and certainly there's there's plenty of content in your feed.
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Are you actually consuming it? Not really. Like, is it leaving an imprint on your mind if it if it rings true to you or has value? Yes, it does. So I think I try to focus most of my time and
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energy on what's the highest value impact that I can have with the content. The delivery mechanism is what it is from there, but nine times out of 10 it's when people are asking for asking questions and seeking answers. And a lot
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of that still happens on search engines, uh, believe it or not. And would that content look like a blog, for example, or what else might people find content-wise when they're just searching for an answer to their question on Google? very commonly. You
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know, it's it's important to know that Google search, the old school Google search is still the number one referring site um in the world. Um although it refers less traffic than it did before, it still refers tons. Number two is
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YouTube, uh which is also Google owned, of course. So like video content is extremely heavily induced with value, seeking answers, looking for solutions.
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How do I change a tire? Right? You're going to get way more value from YouTube on that probably than Google. uh Google's probably going to send you to to YouTube uh for that. And the third is actually Google image search is the
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third largest search engine. Um you know, so images, graphics, uh detailed graphics that are like infographics that outline schematics and and um show how things are done, a process and flow hierarchy. Still very very informative from a value point of view. So those
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three are pretty much the the core the core foundation. Great. Thank you for that. Um, I'm excited to kind of nerd out with you a little bit today personally and for my listeners, uh, because we have plenty of
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people on here to talk about how to develop characters and plot and, you know, storytelling structures and things like that, but I really want to try to get to the nitty-gritty in in the right state or process. Uh, um, but the
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nitty-gritty of marketing. So, not just storytelling, but using storytelling as a strategy. So let's start here for a small brand doesn't have you know necessarily a partnership with a a big agency maybe probably probably doesn't have a big budget probably doesn't have
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a big team what are the marketing strategies and tactics and maybe tools that go most overlooked by small brands that should be exploited or leveraged that the big brands know these secrets.
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Yeah. But what are the most common ones that small brands just like they're too much too much in the weeds to even consider that they should be considering?
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Yeah, it's unfortunate, but many small brands are measured on like production. Like how much can you produce as a marketer totally like uh and that's not the best way to start a marketing strategy. In fact, it's not a strategy.
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It's random acts of marketing, right? And I think that's where a lot of small small brand marketers are are um finding themselves. Um, so they're writing a social post, they're making an email, they're writing a blog, they're all one
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person doing all these things, but but might be missing the core foundation as to why those things work and who they should be for. You know, I would I would say before you start with any tactics and doesn't matter how small the brand
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is, I would start with target audience, understanding your target audience, building out some personas, um, also doing a message map exercise. The second you can get those out the door, then you can start creating any type of element
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of content that ties back to those elements and they're they're going to be more successful. They're going to hit truer. You're going to get maybe not as many people um engaged with it, but you're going to get the right people
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engaged with it, which is what really matters, right? So, that then can turn into many tactics, right? Many many tactics. Um you know, when we talk about storytelling and marketing, um you know, it's about cadence has a lot to do with
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it too. Yeah. You know like uh a narrative thread is about this happened then this happened then this happened then this happened because of those things this happened right so it's all because of because of because of not
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just errant things happening. So you can think about how that might work into a drip email campaign right if you're if you've got a potential an audience out there and you do a newsletter drip of value you could drip different pieces of
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value over time that kind of build that narrative cadence for them. You can do that certainly in articles on your website too. you can tell longer stories on social media. I think the key is if you truly want to deploy storytelling
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from a marketing tactic point of view. Um don't think um short term and little sprints. Think I would think a little bit more broadly in kind of a campaign style because I think that's where true storytelling can really can really work.
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Uh real quick, can we dive a little further into the message map? I think that's the word that the expression they use and explain to me what that is and what it looks like. Yeah, absolutely. I think it's the most underutilized
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resource for for marketers and storytellers. You know, you've got uh your personas, right? And and most people know what those are, right?
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They're they're they're uh fictional like placeholders for your target audience. Um so you've got your persona, you know who you're targeting. What a message map essentially does is it kind of builds a mathematical equation out, right? You have audience A, they have pain point B.
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when you um deploy solution C which is your products and solutions as a brand solution C the outcome is X right and when we talk about what that outcome is it's like what are the benefits what how's their life better um you know what
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are all the the positive outcomes for the the people that you you solve um through that equation and if you can start to understand that better you really understand why people engage and and and buy your products and your
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solutions you can start to build a better story that's around them and not around do where a lot of brand stories fall apart is that they're about the company or they're about the founder and not about the audience, which is like
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the exact opposite of what we're trying to do. Um, so regardless of the size of the brand, any brand, one person to a thousand people can do that effectively.
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Um, and what we like to do is kind of build out that message map kind of framework. It's like a grid, right? A plus B plus C equals X. We do that for every solution that the brand offers the
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market as well as every persona that they're trying to target. So eventually you get this this large grid that kind of like maps out all of the um all of the benefits of their solutions to the target audience. And now that doesn't
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sound like messaging. That sounds just like kind of some some basic solution mapping, but your messaging starts where that equation ends. That's where the messaging starts. Build messaging around those benefits, those outcomes, and how people's lives are better. um then you
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can really start to roll uh on the storytelling front. [clears throat] That's good. Thank you. Um that's just that little nugget right there is so valuable for folks. Um so I'm glad we we took the time to do that. Now let's go
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back to where we were about um spending time doing the messaging map. Um and effectively what you were saying is like because you were we were talking about everyone's so focused on production.
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Yeah. And so effectively it sounded like you were saying spend some time listening, right? like getting to know your your your uh target audience, doing the message map, etc., etc. I mean, all the best storytellers are are really great
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listeners, aren't they? Right. Um, so let's think about that this in term of this in terms of the timeline.
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So, I'll ask you the question, which is it sounds like to me what you're saying is you need to spend a significant amount of time not necessarily producing yet and just ingesting, right? just input input input which is hard for folks because we
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measure everything by output output output right so uh this may be hard to actually put a time stamp on this but I'll just tee it up and you can address it how you want to let's say we're we're
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giving ourselves a year roadmap for our MVP or minimum viable product y um before we launch we'll just put it that way and I've got my CEO who's like all right get on social media start posting stuff start posting stuff how much of that
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year more or less. I'm not going to hold you to this. Do you think we should spend in the beginning learning, listening, receiving input, creating the the message map, etc.?
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Yeah, I can easily answer this question. Actually, you can hold me accountable to it because we do this for our clients every day.
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So, 8 to 12 weeks. 8 to 12 weeks is the right amount of time. At least that's how much it takes us. And we're we're pros. We do this all the time. So it might take you a little longer if you're
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by yourself and you don't have the resources, but it takes us 8 to 12 weeks to really understand the personas, build the message map, build kind of like in that time, we actually usually build some sort of cornerstone content that
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answers those questions, those broader [clears throat] questions, long form pieces that live on the site, pieces that we want to send a ton of traffic to inevitably pieces that like answer a lot of great questions. Um, we'll do that in
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the first 8 to 12 weeks before we start producing anything else and other tactics. Would that be sorry to to jump in there, but would that be like white papers or something? What is a what would a long piece of content look like?
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Yeah, usually what we do is build it as a page on the site and we're talking like 2,000 to 3,000 words. And I know that's a lot. It's a long page, right?
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Um, we break it up. We make it concise. We we we allow there to be like navigation on the page and things like that, but like the layout is actually really important. In storytelling, you lose people the second they see a huge
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body of copy. And I know, you know, I have a master in fine arts degree in creative writing. I had to read a lot of books, very dense books in grad school, so it's just all bo, you know, blocks of
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copy, but you lose your audience pretty fast. So, it's important layout is important and all that, but we build these cornerstone pieces that are essentially kind of like the hubs in a hub and spoke model of content strategy,
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which is very successful. They're the hubs, right? Spokes are all an like different pieces that support that or about similar topics that that touch it.
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Um, so it's the best place to start and then you can start to branch out into social content and and all those really could tie back to one of those hubs, right? If you really think about it. Um,
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so yeah, it's it's uh it's tested though like this this really works. It works really well.
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It's good to hear that because I've been a part of teams. I've worked with teams or you know served them and and I hear these stories all the time whether it's you know people I know my wife etc. of just exactly what you laid
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out is like you're we're measuring things based on production and so you think the answer not you but one thinks the answer is to just jump in there and start producing throwing stuff against the wall hopefully hopefully something sticks and then
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we'll just keep doing that whichever one stuck without really understanding why it's stuck and if it's stuck in the right place and so I I like to hear that because it's it is hard I think for some folks
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who are actionoriented and progressoriented and and and and productionoriented to be like, "Okay, let's just take three months, just listen, just chill." They I don't know, they view it as maybe passive, but it's like that is the process. And so, I'm
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glad I'm glad we outlined it so clearly. Yeah. Um, talk to me about I think that storytelling often, maybe this is changing, hopefully folks like you and I are helping change this, but I think it often gets misconstrued. We've already
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touched on this as like a marketing thing, but what I'm seeing now too, when you started doing this work, uh, very few people were in the storytelling space.
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Yeah. More or less. Right. Now, there's lots of us. Mhm. Even since I started in 2017, 2018.
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So, it's no longer a secret that like you should be telling stories in your market, right? Everybody knows that. In fact, it's it's, you know, it's it's all over the place and and misused at times, but that's fine. But everybody knows
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that concept. But what I'm much more interested in is storytelling as a strategy and not just the tactic. I.e.
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like I'm not so worried about like how to tell stories well for brands specifically. Okay. If we're trying to write a short story, then sure. But talk to me about the difference in storytelling as an overall strategy, a
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system for your business versus just the tool or the tactic of like here's how you tell a story effectively.
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Yeah. And really it comes down to that the strategic element of storytelling is all about emotion.
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So so as a brand you have to be bought into the concept that emotion matters.
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How people feel about you matters as a brand, not just how many people buy from you and how much they spend. That's that's the cornerstone of storytelling truly is like building an emotional connection with an audience. That's that's what makes storytelling a form of
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art and not just uh you know a tactic, right? So you know if you can buy into that on a strategic level that will infiltrate everything. It'll infiltrate the the values that you espouse as a brand that's extremely
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important to your story. Right? What you put on your website is like these values are important to us. they better be because the second you they come into question and you don't you know stand behind them then you're in trouble right
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um and if you can build that as a strategy like how people feel about our brand is important to us and how we help people is really the core of what is important to us and not just how much
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money we're making then things open up and things change completely because now you start measuring tactics differently right you start measuring trust as the primary tactic and not and our metric and not clicks um or uh views or
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impressions or time on page. All of those might be indicators of trust and they certainly are, right? Like we can back into that.
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But I think we get a little bit too overwhelmed certainly as Americans. I've been spending a lot of time in Europe lately and just it's intoxicating like how things move slower and people don't like their career isn't the most
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important thing to them. Do you like it or dislike it? I love it. I love it. I love both actually. I like having both. And I'm proud to be an American. When I come home, I'm like, "Yeah, our economy is
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moving twice the pace of yours because of these people. Look at these people going frantically from one thing to the next, good and bad.
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Yeah, you're right. But, you know, we get a little too tied up in metrics that don't matter.
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Short-term metrics that are just on a page. Um, like we have to hit a certain number of leads, a certain number of views, a certain number of of clicks.
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When in the end, really from a business point of view, we just care about how much revenue are we generating and how much revenue are we projecting? And trust and emotional connection is a great projection of revenue. It's hard to put
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a number on it, but you know that when people are in a buying cycle, they're going to buy from you if they trust you.
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So anyway, it it's a little kind of like I went way high level on it from a strategy point of view, but I think it's got to start there. If you're executives don't buy into this concept and don't
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buy in that they're not the story, that the story is the audience and that it's more important that they present value and help people than that person actually buy something right now or in a short period of time, then you know, you
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can really go anywhere with with storytelling. Wh why should they care about trust and brand and what people think of them if you know the numbers is what keeps the lights on and and the doors open and let's say like what is the actual
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return there? Let's say the business is successful and they're selling their widget and they're they're making uh money, you know, they're making profit off of that.
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Why should they care? Yeah, that's a that's a good question. And again, talk about like the the the difference between like how Americans approach business versus like the rest of the much of the rest of the world. But like
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why you should care is that it feels good. Um I'm I'm like I know that that's a really hard metric to to measure and nobody wants to hear that. Certainly not when they have to report their earnings next quarter for their uh um for their
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stockholders. But like at the end of the day, helping people feels better than just taking from them. Um, and if you have a whole team that's bought into this concept of building trust and helping people, then they're going to
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perform at heights that you've never even seen before. I can attest to this here at Content Workshop where I work.
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We have these this foundation we've built of of these things are important. We also have a mantra around here that no one needs to get rich. And when the the CEO and the owner is saying that that's like makes people feel good um
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across the board, but it's also true. Now, I realize this is more of a strata across like business, you know, ethics and morality more than it is about like paying the bills at the end of the day, but you know, the one begets the next.
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Like when people feel good that they're helping people, they're more likely to stay in a job regardless of what they're getting paid. When they feel like they are contributing to something larger than themselves, they're going to work the extra hours. The the outcomes, we
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end up rewarding the outcomes um instead of rewarding the behaviors all the time in marketing. um if we focus a little bit more on the behaviors and say, "Hey, like maybe the outcome didn't go where we wanted it to go, but like the way you
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approached that, the way you were tenacious about working toward it, I can apply that in other ways now." Um so anyway, apologies again for going like super high and uh but this is uh this is heavy on my mind lately.
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What what I'm glad I'm I'm excited to dive into this with you. When you just said that, you know, like focus on the behaviors and and not the outcomes, this is a little bit of a tangent, but it
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applies. It made me think of my daughter's really good at soccer. She loves it right now. She's seven. She's young, right? But she she loves it.
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And you know, and I played I still play and and so I try to help her. But that's this is the approach I take with her.
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It's like, okay, it's not really about making or missing or or whatever. It's about what was your thought process?
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Like what, you know, what was the behavior that that you showed there because the lesson is is in there and that's where I want to focus with her.
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Not just did you score because if you accidentally like just toe poked it in and score like okay you got the result but you can't replicate that and it was you know what I mean? So I'd much rather
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you take a good shot and miss than score with something that you completely didn't mean to do. So that that's just where my mind went as a as a parent right now. Um but let's get back focused on on the topic at hand. I got a
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question for you though. So I agree it feels good. You touched on something in uh when you were going through that about uh not not necessarily loyalty but essentially when you're talking about uh internally like your your uh employees
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your team wanting to stay around with that company and I think there may be something let me know what you think do you think that this idea of emotion and trust and branding and and being a you know respectable uh dependable company
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for those that you serve do you think it's directly tied to longevity perhaps perhaps like so yes you might not make the dollar today or you may make be making the dollar today but in terms of these long these legacy brands that
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stick around it's relationships right now you were talking about internally with the with the employees and team and such but do you think that applies externally too is like if you consistently show up for decades as a solid brand there's perhaps more of a
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chance of sustainability as a company versus just making the maximum dollar for this year or this quarter you're smiling yeah like there's there's There's no way that there's not a correlation between between those two things. Um, you know,
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Simon Simon Synynic, I forget which book it was. It was a recent book that he wrote about how like the the average company's longevity on the S&P 500 used to be like 70 years. Like they would they be on the the S&P 500 for 70 years.
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Now it's like 13. Um, so companies are failing and merging and getting acquired or whatever it may be at like an alarming rate. Um, and I think a lot of it has to do with like our overall goals and what we expect
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from companies is that they're performing at specific metrics that are short-term um, and don't really have a lot of a long view play. Look at like just stock prices. Like all you have to do is look at the stock market to
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realize that that's that's true, right? um the more we look at longevity and we more we look at like we're not so worried about our success this year. Of course we want to be successful but like we want to set oursel up for success
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five years from now. Very few brands are doing that. Very few brands are are marketing that way. Um that means hey [snorts] like I should have a glossery of terms on my website and we have a glossery of terms on our website because
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I want to educate the person who is not in a buying cycle who is just learning what content marketing is and brand storytelling is. And then 10 years from now when they're in a decision-m place, maybe they'll buy from us, maybe they
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won't, but probably they will if they if they have the budget, right? And I'm going to still be here in 10 years. I've been here for 13, right? Uh it's going to happen. This is what I'm going to do
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until they put me in the ground, right? Um you know so there's certainly a correlation between um focusing on these this trust uh focusing on our presence in the market focusing on our ability to perform for people and helping people
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and being a value first brand is is definitely measured to to longevity and like we said the same thing is true with your staff and your internal team members too and and how they perform has everything to do with how your success
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as a brand. So, if you're a CEO and listening to this and not just the marketer, um, you know, I would think I would think hard about how how you can help entice them for those behaviors and not just outcomes. I would think there's
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this there's a study called the broaden and build theory, but essentially it means that like positivity when we have more positivity in our life, when we think about positive things, it it essentially releases certain chemicals like in our mind, right? Which actually
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help us to kind of like broaden our thought horizon. we we think about things more broadly and more things when we have more positivity in our lives and also by doing that it also helps us uh build essentially the things that we
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know and the knowledge that we have stacks up now. So if you can start to focus more on on positivity and your workplace and and providing that to your team members as well as providing that to your target market through the
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marketing that you provide, you're only going to see long-term effects from that. It might take a while but it's going to happen.
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The broaden and build theory. I like that. you said some uh not you said something I believe it was on your website but uh so correct me if I'm wrong the the the expression was um something to fuel your content engine
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I believe and let's go back to this the idea of this kind of long form piece this flagship piece that you were talking about that that you create and you you touched on this a little bit you say it kind of
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influences the other pieces that kind of spawn from it you didn't use those words Talk to me about that idea of I think some people struggle especially small brands with waking up and like okay what do I create today? What
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content do I create today? But if you do it right it sounds like you have this engine that is running or that you can pull from or that will answer that question for you every day. So you don't
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necessarily have to sit there be like what do I create? I get caught in this just as a personal brand like I need to post something today. I need to output, I need to execute. So then the the I'll
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just use myself. I'll be a marketer here. Then so the slippery slope that I fall uh into onto whatever from that is like all right, it's less about what I'm putting out and just that I put out something. So what are you going to do?
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You're going to put out the cheapest piece of crap that you can that Right.
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So as a business, what is the process to building an engine? Yeah. That that uh or how do you fuel that content engine?
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Yeah. This is actually where that message mapping function comes into play quite a bit. It's really a foundational piece of of all marketing. But if we understand what those common pain points are for that audience and we understand
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what they're looking for and what they need help with, that's your key right there, right? Like how do we make these people's lives better? Um what's the ven diagram, which is like their pain point, um what's important to them right now
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and the solution that we can provide. Like where's that what's in the middle of that?
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That's your content all day long, right? Um, and there's probably a lot of stuff in there, right? Something that you have an expertise on that you can demonstrate for them, but also saves them time, energy, and and and provides them
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knowledge. So, uh, you know, if you build that that message map correctly, you can start to see what those common pieces are there. And and as you start to build your pillars around those common pieces, you can branch off in a
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thousand different ways. We've been writing content for some brands for years, and we're talking like 12, 15, 20 pieces a month. we're not running out of of things that we could write about. Um, on top of that, start
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to layer in like recent events, right? Um, what's going on in the world and and you'll never run out. Um, yeah.
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And we're actually I know this is not the topic of conversation, but like we're starting to build our own software at Content Workshop because with the the onset of AI, we now have the ability to do things at scale that we couldn't
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before. And I'm not talking about storytelling or creativity. I'm talking about the collection of information.
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Yeah. And the processing of that information. I saw where you were going. Yeah. And and we're building this tool.
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We're calling it Chatter, but essentially it's like a content aggregation tool where you can feed it your personas, your target solutions, your um you the keyword phrases you're trying to reach, and it will essentially, you know, scour an index of
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of articles that have been written in the last 24 hours and show you the things that are relevant to your audience. So then you can start to say, okay, well, what should I write today?
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Well, what's relevant to my audience today that I'm also a subject matter expert on? Well, here's 15 things, right? So, that that I think could be helpful to provide more. You could do this today without our tool. You should
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buy our tool when it comes out. But like, you know, you can do that today.
Speaker A
It's like Google Alerts on steroids. Yep. That's that's exactly it. That's exactly it. Yeah. Um, but dude, no, I mean now that is a Okay, because as an artist, right, we are in this really troubling time and this this tugofwar
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between like generative AI and replacing [laughter] I saw something the other day. I was like, we were supposed to create the machines to do the manual labor so that we can go off and create art, not the robots to create art so we
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have to go do manual labor. [laughter] Yep. Yeah. And I'm like, oh my gosh. Exactly. So, we're in this struggle. So, so I talked to lots of people on the show, especially because we're mostly targeting brand storytelling on, you
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know, AI tools that are out there. I do believe they are a tool. I do not believe that they are the devil.
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Um, but I really love that idea of using it for for input like we talked about, right? and scrubbing the internet to feed you and then you know you can use your human you know brain power to create to to create this story because
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often it's what we're seeing a lot of David and I'm sure this is not a se you know a secret to you is you know we're all using the same tools and if me and any other storytelling person or if I'm
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a brick layer me and any other brick layer are spouting out the same content about brick laying because we're using AI tools to do So I think that is a really helpful way to do the types of type of work that you do to use the
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tools that are inevitably you know uh going to be more and more ubiquitous and and that we have at our disposal now in in a positive way. Um besides finding I think that's such a great tip finding what's relevant and
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also you just you just do get more eyes when you're talking about a current event that people are already talking about. I mean, it's it's a great uh tactic to use. Still thinking at uh through the lens of a smaller brand,
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what data should they be really hyperfocused on? You know, we've we we didn't say the term vanity metrics, but you basically said like it's less about, you know, that, but I often think, again, I'll fall on the sword here, uh as a soloreneur, as a
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small business, you get consumed and caught up with production and you don't often do the the the the retrospective work to look back and really analyze your data at the level like when I work with a bigger company
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at the level they do right so for that solopreneur small business what are the data they should really be focused on in terms of growth in the manner that we're talking about like I want to be respected I want to be
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trusted I want to help people and have a sustainable business and brand what are the data tools that they should be leveraging focusing on.
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Yeah, I think the the master the master metric if I have to pick one would be time on page.
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Now they they have other tools that will show you dwell time in other instances, right? But like if you really think about it, the amount of trust it takes for somebody first to get to your website, that's that's quite a bit. uh
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second to actually spend time consuming that specific piece of content is is a pretty big indicator that that person is getting value from from what you're producing, right? I think that's a huge metric to measure because overall total
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time on page really means total trust built, right? Um, now you can I think I am not as up to date with all the metrics that are out there, but I think a lot of social media tools are now pro
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providing dwell time like time actually seeing your post to per versus the number of impressions. Impressions mean nothing. Clicks mean something, right?
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But impressions mean nothing. And and just in total like the ability then to drive somebody to your website from that piece and then actually consume something is is pretty pretty amazing in this day and age, right? whether no
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matter what tactic they come to your site from, there's a lot of different ways to drive them there. But the idea that they see that much value, I think, is pretty huge. So, I would focus on that because I think that's an indicator
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of long-term success. Um, I don't think it's I mean, clicks and and form fills are short-term success certainly. um you know even uh it's it's odd to say this in this time but like even keyword ranking uh on search engines because to
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to be deemed an authority in these times in which there's so much content out there is actually extremely relevant um because people are are they're kind of navigating the sea of sameness. It's just like all this junk that's out there
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like to find something that is an authority on a topic is actually pretty enlightening. So uh focusing on the ability that more people can see your content in other institutions as well as other sites are linking to you because
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you're a reference on that topic that's extremely important. So essentially overall topical authority is uh it can be measured by ranking and a few other things too but then time on page would tell you about trust factor I think
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there's all sorts of like you could do all sorts of scoring you could ask people to take surveys you can do all that but that's expensive like most most small brands don't have that money.
Speaker A
Yeah. And and it doesn't always fully give you the information you need. It's a it's a it's a tough one. It's helpful, but it doesn't it's not really the the full answer from my experience.
Speaker A
Uh with your background in creative writing, how does that inform the work that you do daily now? And part two, what are the primary differences in the storytelling you were doing then versus the the storytelling you're doing now?
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Yeah, I might take those in reverse order if that's okay. Um, you know, creative storytelling, it's all creative. Let's call it artistic storytelling. Um, because they're only the only goal in artistic storytelling is to build emotion. There's no
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financial uh specific goal. Now, obviously, there can be downstream, but that's not usually the ability uh that you're looking to to achieve. The artistic storytelling is all about emotion. Um, for me as, you know, somebody who studied that for many, many
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years in school, I focused very heavily on what emotion do I want to impart on the people who read what I write? What do I want them to feel? Um, what emotion do I want them to feel now? And then
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what do I want them to like? Great art allows you to recall an emotion, right?
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Like in the future when my story pops in their head, I want them to feel the same thing. And I think that's truly what makes it a work of art, right? Is that you can recall the emotion. and it's
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like a it's imprinted um on your mind. Um the tactics there a lot of like obviously narration uh character development um you know just scene development, world development um dialogue um all of those things are very artistic but have a direct correlation
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to their commercial side, their commercial friend which is content, right? Um and those skill sets translate completely uh in very different fashion.
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And this is actually the the core concept of our entire company. And when we founded it 13 years ago, I was in graduate school learning these things. I was like, wait a second, like this stuff applies and I can sell this to people,
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too. I can also make money with my art as well if I want to. But you know, narration, narrative flow is perfectly correlated to all content. Every piece of content should have narrative flow to a degree. Um character development is
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brand building 101, trust building. um you're a voice in an um in a void, right? That's that's all the same thing.
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Um dialogue dialogue is everything. Um dialogue shows there dialogue is character development, right? On the art side, but on the commercial side, how you speak to your audience is everything about how they they you know engage with you. the thing, the word choice, what
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you say when you have so few words available. When you read a piece of of of artistic uh storytelling, you're gonna you're going to see blocks of copy, sure, but like dialogue is usually pretty pared down, right? You want to do
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a lot with a little because it tells more about the person about what they leave out. So, as a brand, when you want to share information with people, um how precise, concise, um deliberate you can be with every word choice really
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matters. Um and helps build that long-term relationship and that trust. Right. So, anyway, those are that's I've I've used all of those skills on both sides, uh left and right. Um and today, to your first question, I I use that
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mostly in conversation, um conversations like this that we're having right now. I get to be on like many podcasts and share my thoughts. Um I I'm on sales calls for for my company. I still run sales which I really enjoy because we
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have a we have a saying around here that um helping is selling. Like if I can help this person, not only is that good for marketing with all the other things we talked about, but like I'm just trying to help this person on a call.
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And that might be like them buying something from me, but it might just not be. It might just be our friendship. And we have a saying here that our friendship is always free. So we end every sales call with that. like if you
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want to just be friends and ask me questions from time to time, you can.
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So, a lot of the storytelling tactics, even how I formulate our brand story um and how I try to like build a narrative thread and and build emotion with people in conversation is really how I apply it today. I don't write anymore for the
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company. There's we have way better writers than me here. Uh there this the team is so much more skilled than I am.
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That's a sign of a good leader as far as I'm concerned. Uh you know, the things when I think of a story and what a story does like the power of storytelling. The the words that come up are words we we've already
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said here today. We didn't say empathy but that is a is a quick one. We have said trust a lot.
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We're building a connection right through emotion. That's another word that we've said a lot. Um, and even like you you were just saying with the friendship is free and and and sales would you say sales is helping more or less selling is helping.
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Those are still storytelling principles as far as I'm you know as far as I consider and you're you're nodding your head in in agreement. Um, so my question is, does one have to be a good storyteller per se to
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leverage storytelling as a strategy for their business? Yes. But everybody could be a good storyteller is what I would say. Say more.
Speaker A
Yeah. So like story, we all are storytellers. Come on. Like I the reason I got into storytelling to begin with is I was a I was a wee little lad, right?
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And I was in the kitchen um almost every day. My mom's cooking dinner, right?
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She's really busy with there's five of us, so like she's just constantly like moving from one thing to the next. So I would tell her about my day while she was cooking and um she would like be like listening, but it's hard to tell if
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she's actually like listening. So I would start to make things up about my day. I'd start to tell her fantastic things that were happening. Complete fantasy, right? Uh, and I would just wait for the moment to when she would
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stop like, you know, shucking the corn or snapping the green beans and look down at me and like, "What?" Uh, and that's was that's what my reward was was that ability to kind of like convince her or take her out of her mode. So, it
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was my way of like connecting with her. Um, so we all do this. We all do this in some degree. How we tell stories at parties, when we meet new people, um, how engaged of a listener we are is
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actually a very present way to be a good storyteller. talked about listening, but like even how you encourage and ask questions of people instead of just telling people why what they just said relates to you, right? Like why what you
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just said is important to me, but like ask questions and be inquisitive. Um, builds those relationships and those bonds. So do the same thing. Um, you know, there's plenty of great resources online to how to be a better
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storyteller. There's tons of free stuff out there. Um, and my friendship is always free. You can go to our website in the chat bot and I'll talk to you about it, right? But in the end that that helps apply across all abilities uh
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in sales and marketing and running a business. Being an effective storyteller, sharing an emotional connection, imparting with empathy and helping people, all storytelling tactics all good for the other side, too.
Speaker A
Let's talk a little bit. We we started touching on this in the beginning of the conversation when we were defining content marketing, what that looks like.
Speaker A
Is this content? [laughter] I love that. Um, something I noticed on your on your site, uh, is the the variety of ways that you help your, um, your clients. And I want to keep picking at this a little bit to help my audience
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understand what it is, what it isn't, other ways you can market, other ways you can use storytelling. And what I was really excited to see on your page is the amount of uh in-person live experiential work that you all do. Not just social,
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not just print, not just video. Um, so this is kind of a big broad v vague question, but I want to get people thinking outside the box because I I know that they think social media almost first and foremost for many people.
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Uh so we've established some of those other things uh other versions of content marketing but let's talk about some in-person things that they can do because what I want people what I want to try to help people understand is like
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what works for one company or one brand doesn't work for everyone else. So you know therefore let's find the types of marketing that does work for you that is aligned with your brand narrative and what you want to stand for and how you
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want to show up in the world. And sometimes that is thinking outside the box. And so again, I know this isn't a very direct question, but I want to talk about just the in-person uh live experiences that you help your clients
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create in in the hopes of like sparking some ideas in my audience's minds. You know, every opportunity you have for your brand to engage with somebody is an opportunity to impart emotion and essentially build the brand, your your
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brand story. That's every opportunity. Now, we get a lot of opportunities online certainly on the internet. Um, tons in fact. Uh, but we also get the opportunities in person which they can actually be more impactful because we're more we're spending more time and
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attention when we're directly talking to somebody or see them uh physically. Um, this can happen a lot of different ways, but think about like again what emotion do you want to impart when people engage with your brand? What do you how do you
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want them to feel? How do you want to help them? those translate to inerson events as much as they translate to your website, right? Or social media. Um, we're talking about like building some sort of like virtual reality experience
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or booth uh or something like that at your next trade show where people can engage and get helpful information. You want people to leave the experience not just thinking, "Oh, that was cool." But thinking, "Oh, that was helpful." Right?
Speaker A
Because that when you have a positive emotional experience with something, it does build, like we said before, it it imprints on your mind. Emotion tied to events is what builds memories, right?
Speaker A
So, you want to be remembered the second they walk away. Uh, and the best way to do that is to build both uh an emotion and an action together and and inerson events is the best opportunity to do
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that. Now, it's difficult to do and usually kind of expensive, but there's definitely less expensive ways to do it, but you can go as wild as you want. Um, we've talked to brands who have built these giant like display boards. They've
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built 3D that use like LAR and radar to build kind of like typography and maps and as you move through a space, the space moves with you, right? Um, there's people who are pumping specific scents into an area, right? To build that
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emotional connection. Um, Weston Hotels does this really well. Every Weston in the world has a specific smell.
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Every time I walk in there, I'm like, "This smells good." Uh, so it builds that emotional connection. So, again, the there are no uh limits on what that could be. There are so many different things. Another thing to think about is
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like old school tactics like direct mail, right? Like uh I was uh on another podcast, Rain. I won't say which one um or if I like them better than you. I'll leave it I'll leave that to the You definitely don't. Come on now.
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Uh but but I'll give you this. They mailed me a box of brownies after being a guest on the podcast. And I was like, who sent me brownies? This is the weirdest thing. And then I started thinking like, oh, this is a fantastic
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opportunity for them to impart their brand story with me. I don't know why specifically they sent it to me, but like think about that on a marketing tactic point of view, right? Like being able to build those like, wow, that was
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impressive moments uh in person are a lot easier. And that can be through direct mail. That can be there's so many different ways to do it, but events are a great ways to do it, too.
Speaker A
Yeah. It's funny and you I was looking down at my notes from earlier. You said great art makes you recall the emotion.
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It's the same thing here, right? It's just how can you be memorable through emotion right?
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And so that can happen in person and that and that can happen um virtually, that can happen anyway that you conjure up these emotions and folks.
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Um before we go, as you're forecasting into the next few years, um where is your focus for your brand? Are you looking to leverage something new or are you I find people are either like in a transition and about to do something new
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or either like doubling down in their current efforts and sinking into the ground a little bit deeper.
Speaker A
Yeah. I I don't have any type of loyalty to how things are done unless they're as long as they're ethical and moral, right? So, when we talk about AI, you know, I've studied my entire life to be a writer. Uh I and we have a little
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saying that we're classically trained storytellers and we have the student loan debt to prove it. Like I spent a lot of money to learn how to do this skill and now a lot of people are devaluing it because they think AI can
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do it for them. Now, there's definitely a difference with my abilities even uh today as a writer and the output from AI, but like if you spend enough time tweaking, editing, revising, right? Like you can get some good content. Um it
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might not be as good, but it's good and it'll just get better. It's not going to get worse, right? So, in the end, whatever we produce has to help people.
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That's the metric. Is the quality high? Can we be proud of it? Can it help people? Um the other side of this is like what about all those people that are now seem to be you know relegated like they're just like they're they're
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not important anymore all these skills that they learned. So we're trying to develop through through the we talked about the software that we're building.
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We're kind of taking some of our process that we've been honing for 13 years about how to create great content. That chatter thing is the first step like what should we write about? How do we ideulate new content? But like we're
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going to build different agents for different parts of the process too. But all of them are built in mind with the fact that human creativity trumps all and like you've you decided what step in the process the human steps in does
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whatever part that they want to do or or you know must do for the quality to be there. I think it's important for people to not stop doing the things that they love to do. Let them do the things that
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they love to do especially if the output is good. But outside of that too, our goal is to make sure that marketers keep their jobs and and I think right now a lot of marketers are worried about their
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jobs because there's been a lot of layoffs and there's going to be more and a lot of them are due to AI efficiency. So there's a lot you talk about people wanting to produce to show their worth. That's happening right now
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at volume. Um, so why can't we build a tool that gives them the ability to do that at a high quality that they can be proud of and they're still part of the loop and they're seen as, you know, a
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value a value asset and a value ad to the team. So, we're we're trying to work through those lines and actually give people a tool in which to do that and we're proud of that. We feel good about
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it at the end of the day. Um, it's expensive and it probably won't be super profitable, but that's fine, whatever.
Speaker A
Um, what's the timeline for that more roughly? Yeah. So, the the Chatter um agent is is our goal is to have a working beta by the end of the year. Um probably early December. Um so people can like sign up to be a part of the
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beta. I would love to have an MVP by then, but that's probably not likely.
Speaker A
And then uh the every time I say that, my team, they're like, "Hey, the fact that I'm talking about it on a podcast, they're going to like lose their minds." Uh I've also been showing like potential clients like renderings and stuff and
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they're like, "Stop doing that." I'm like, "I'm just excited." Um, so that's probably by the end of the year. And then the second agent is going to be more of like helping people brief and build like subject matter expert input
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into topic ideas. Um, and then the third agent is going to be like an actual composition tool.
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Um, so we're building them in order that essentially the process that it's best to develop content. Uh, the other agent two and three will probably be next year. Um, probably close to the end of next year. Um, again, my developers are
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probably um their ears are burning somewhere. Um, yes, I'm gonna email them as soon as we get on right now. We are doubling down though on the things that work though, too.
Speaker A
Like, if something works well and it helps people and, you know, we're going to keep doing it. Um, you know, we're just going to keep doing it and we're going to build other things to to broach other markets, too. But this idea of
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giving up on what works or what brings value to go over to this shiny thing over there, it it's I don't see a lot of long-term viability in in those types of moves.
Speaker A
Gotcha. Well, I love the work that you're doing, man. And now that I've gotten to know you a little bit, I got to say, and I'm not just uh just saying this, like seeing how you lead with your
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heart genuinely is incredibly inspiring for someone like me who's trying to do similar work. Um, I love the way that that uh that you lead yourself and and your team.
Speaker A
Thanks, R. I appreciate that. It's it's a lot of work and it and sometimes it doesn't feel like it pays off as much but at the end of the day like I feel good about myself and you know I only
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got so many days left, right? So like I'm going to end them feeling good about myself regardless of the financial outcomes. That's kind of my my goal.
Speaker A
Well, I I think that the the the concepts that are leading you and the ones that you clearly care about matter and I think that I think that you're going to achieve those. Like do I feel good? Am I helping people? We talked
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about longevity. You're not compromising yourself ethically. It's admirable. Uh but you're still doing great work at scale. It's absolutely admirable. Um I appreciate you being on the show and sharing your perspective. I mean, I got a ton of value just from like each
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answer. So, I know my audience will too. But, uh thank you so much for being here, my friend.
Speaker A
Of course. Thanks for having me, Rain. Absolutely. [music] My name is Rain Bennett. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed that episode, do us a favor and subscribe to the [music] podcast. If you're already a subscriber and you're enjoying the show,
Speaker A
give us a review and let us know the value that you've gotten from it. We love to hear from our listeners and learn about the benefits that they're getting from the show. That's what fuels [music] us and that's what fuels the
Speaker A
show. And if you've already subscribed and you've already reviewed it and you think there's someone else that would benefit from listening to this show, please, please share it with them. The more we grow, the more we can help you
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grow. [music] And that's what we're here to do. Join us next time on the Storytelling Lab.
Topics:storytellingcontent marketingmessage mapmarketing strategycustomer trustcontent strategydigital marketingbrand storytellingmarketing foundationcontent creation
