Everyone’s got a story, and your organization may have thousands. But too often, we scramble to find good content to fill our social, web, and media channels. In that scramble, we may end up publishing content that doesn’t engage our audiences—or help our organization’s brand—the way we need it to.
In support of a rebranding effort, we set out to solve this challenge. By creating a "story pipeline," we've captured more story leads and better shaped our story output to represent our organization. The lessons we've learned will help anyone seeking to expand storytelling for their own organization.
What you’ll learn:
• What stories are and aren’t and ways to get your team to come together around a definition that works for them.
• Assessing your current story output to make the case for change.
• Introducing your creatives to the ideas of workflow and content ops.
• Creating formulas that make storytelling easier.
• Bringing story content into non-story formats.
6. AND ONE BIG ONE
EVERY SCHOOL HAS
THOUSANDS OF STORIES
7. WHY STORIES?
THOUSANDS OF STORIES ALL AROUND YOU
▸Successful students
▸Athletic stories
▸Research projects, publications, and grants
▸Lives and communities changed
▸Alumni giving back
8. WHY STORIES?
THE ONE BIG ONE
▸ This is what everyone “already knows” about your school
▸ Great academics
▸ Individual attention to students
▸ Great values/principles
▸ Creates leaders
▸ A great value
▸ Makes the community better
▸ Lots of research, distant professors
▸ Party school
▸ Really hard to get into
▸ Not diverse
▸ Mostly about sports
▸ Super expensive
9. WHY STORIES?
THE ONE BIG ONE
▸ This is what everyone “already knows” about your school
▸ Great academics
▸ Individual attention to students
▸ Great values/principles
▸ Creates leaders
▸ A great value
▸ Makes the community better
▸ Lots of research, distant professors
▸ Party school
▸ Really hard to get into
▸ Not diverse
▸ Mostly about sports
▸ Super expensive
10. Your school’s big story is your brand.
Not your logo.
Not your messaging pillars.
It’s this story.
42. THE EFFECT WE’RE REALLY LOOKING FOR HAPPENS
INSIDE THE AUDIENCES’ HEADS.
43. THE EFFECT OF ONE STORY CAN BE LIKE THE
EFFECT OF ONE DROP IN A RAINSTORM.
44. ASSESSING YOUR CURRENT STORIES
PROXIES FOR STORY SUCCESS
Quantitative
▸ Views of stories
▸ Percent of story watched or read
▸ Engagement on social: likes, comments,
shares
▸ Sentiment tracking
▸ Readability levels
Qualitative
▸ Does the story show o
ff
brand
characteristics?
▸ Strong narrative present?
▸ Nature of comments on the story
▸ Other factors
45.
46. ASSESSING YOUR CURRENT STORIES
WHAT WORKS?
Videos tend to get the most (page)views
Star power can matter
Fewer words means more of a story gets read
The topic of a story may matter the most.
51. We decided to do one brand
story per week.
That leaves a lot of untold
stories.
52. CHOOSING STORIES
NOT EVERYTHING HAS TO BE A STORY
You’re still going to have lots of
announcements to make. Just don’t
mistake them for (brand) stories.
54. CHOOSING STORIES
WHAT FITS YOUR BRAND?
What stories do you have that
speak to your brand?KEY MESSAGING PILLARS
When thinking about our audiences,
we always ask, “Why should they
believe us?” The answer lies in these
four key statements that begin to
break down who we are as a university
and what makes us tick. Look to these
statements to help guide and bolster
your messaging.
Who we are:
Self-actualization providers
What we do:
The hard work of transformation
How we do it:
Personalized belonging
Why we do it:
Diversifying opportunity
Equipping students with a level of support that
produces critically thinking, confident individuals.
We expand the realm of attainability by taking our
sense of belonging and growing it in academic rigor.
We serve students who desire rigor but need direction by pairing
intimate experiences with robust academic opportunities.
An IUP education ensures your adaptability
in ever-changing times.
56. CHOOSING STORIES
WHAT RESONATES WITH YOUR AUDIENCES?
Stories no one reads don’t
help.
But not everything that’s
popular will help change
your big story.
76. WORKFLOW AND CONTENT OPERATIONS
TECHNICAL PROCESS
We use Asana to track the story’s development
Then GatherContent to collect all the things we need
86. According to the studies we reviewed, when there are no
constraints on the creative process, complacency sets in, and
people follow what psychologists call the path-of-least-
resistance—they go for the most intuitive idea that comes to
mind rather than investing in the development of better ideas.
“Why Constraints Are Good for Innovation”
Oguz A. Acar,
Murat Tarakci, and Daan van Knippenberg, Harvard Business Review
FORMULAS FOR STORYTELLING
95. TELLING STORIES AT SCALE
A WORK IN PROGRESS
▸New email newsletter
▸New website
96. TELLING STORIES AT SCALE
WHAT WE COVERED
▸ Why stories?
▸ What’s a story, anyway?
▸ Assessing your current stories
▸ Choosing stories
▸ Shaping stories
▸ Formulas for stories