In the first of a new series looking at how organisations can plug the content gap and develop material which triggers action, Jane Lee examines how to find compelling stories within your company
Whenever I remind clients the importance of mining for stories within their organisations to feed the ever-hungry content marketing monster, I invariably get cries of “We don’t have any interesting stories to tell” or “Where do I begin to look for stories?”
Stories can be found anywhere and everywhere if you only knew where to look. Here are four ready sources.
1. Employees
The most obvious, accessible and easiest place to start is with your people. Begin at the top with the founder or the CEO. They’ll be happy to tell you why they started the company and the challenges they faced when doing so. Remember, everyone likes an underdog-made-good story.
Next, talk to the people in leadership. They’ll be able to give you the big-picture view and, more importantly, connect you to their managers. If you can, extract a promise from them that there will be no repercussions for employees who talk. This is also probably why story-mining is best done by an outsider. Employees may feel safer talking to a third party. And insiders tend to be so familiar with the company that nothing feels fresh anymore.
The middle-level managers are your jackpot of stories. Because of their hands-on role, they tend to have many pithy anecdotes to share. They have their ears on the ground and will be able to direct you to others with stories to tell.
Finally, we come to the worker bees. How do you find stories among the masses, especially if you have a factory of 5000 people? As mentioned above, get the middle managers to recommend some to you.
Or enlist HR for help. They should be able to identify the longest-serving employees, the ones who spend their free time helping the poor and needy, the employees with interesting hobbies and so on.
2. Other Stakeholders
Customers are arguably the company’s most important stakeholder. Because they interact directly with your product or service, they definitely will have something to say about your offerings. Customer testimonials are great stories and a wonderful way to spread coveted word of mouth.
Comb through the digital space and listen in on what customers are saying. Are they using your product in creative ways or as a life hack? These can generate story ideas and are good opportunities to insert branded content into the conversation.
Suppliers, distributors and investors tend to be overlooked when it comes to story-mining. While they are not technically within the organization, they do offer another perspective of the company. Talk to the suppliers and distributors who have stuck with the company through thick and thin, and tease out the war stories. Chat with the shareholders, both big and small, and you might find human interest stories behind why they chose to invest in the company.
3. Company Archives
If your company has been around for more than 20 years, there should be a trove of materials sitting in storage somewhere. Look through all the old photos, video footage, newspaper clippings and use them to tap into the nostalgia trend, which has proven very successful in wooing Millennials. Seed old images on your social media channels with #TBT or engage your audiences with fun contests using little-known facts from the past.
If your company is relatively new, here’s a gentle reminder to consistently document all your milestones or your wins and to meticulously store them in both digital and physical forms. These materials will definitely come in useful later.
4. Annual reports
Numbers disclose stories. Learn to read the balance sheet and the cash flow statement to give you insights into the company. Scour the annual reports to as far back as you can and keep an eye out for trends, and for peaks and dips. What or who caused those? What did the company do well to increase profits? Are the current liabilities higher than the current assets and why? Ask the leadership team these questions to get behind-the-scenes nuggets and a fuller picture of the company’s narrative.
Now that you know where to start finding stories, next time we’ll look at how to actually unearth the stories.
—————————————————————————————————————————————————————-
Jane Lee is the Editorial Director of The Content Kiln, a content design and production house that crafts effective words, visuals and videos for you to connect with your audiences to trigger action. For more visit The ContentKiln website
