What’s Your Story?

If you’re ever stuck for conversation in a bar, at a cocktail party, a dinner party, wherever, drop that question into the mix and you’re sure to get some conversation going. Back in my day (yeah, yeah, I know), the bar conversation starter was always “What’s your sign?” I always found “What’s your story” to be much more effective.

Story is something that goes back to the time when we first learned to communicate. Whether visual or verbal, we as humans love to tell stories and, maybe even more, love to be told stories. What’s that got to do with your business? Everything. What’s your story? Your company’s story? Your employee’s story? Your product or service’s story? And, how well are you telling them? Are you even telling them at all?

Two blog posts that came through Google Reader this morning, on the heels of several from yesterday, and a Ping commercial I saw watching The Solheim Cup this weekend, have brought story front and center for me. The very best PR and Marketing efforts tell stories. The better your story, the better you are able to tell it, the more successful your business and brand will be.

But I’m a business person, I hear some of you shouting, not a writer. How do I go about telling that story? I don’t have the budget or resources that bigger companies do, that my competitors do, [insert whatever is driving your angst about story here]. We’ll try to answer all of those questions and more as we move forward. For the moment, let’s look at one of those posts from earlier this morning.

Social Media Excellence and a Side of Fries is the story, as told by Jay Baer, of Mary Moss, a “headset wearing brand ambassador” for McDonald’s in Chandler, Arizona. To the rest of us, she mans (womans?) the drive thru. But, Mary is so good at what she does, that a Facebook fan page with 722 followers (before Jay’s post, that number could be through the roof by now) was started without her knowledge. Yep, you read that right. She had nothing to do with it. Other than providing great service of course. Service over and above what any of us have come to expect from a drive thru. That they get the order right and give us correct change works for most of us, right?

And understand too, that the McDonald’s she works for doesn’t have a following in any of the social media or networking spaces. Jay points to a story in the Arizona Republic about her, McDonald’s drive-thru worker gains online fan base. It’s a wonderful story! Yep, that’s right, story. Something that we as people have connected to since way back when and continue to connect to through this day.

Jay talks about how businesses struggle to find the find the perfect social media strategy and he is so right about that. He goes on to say, that by simply looking within your business processes, to find out what you can do to exceed your customer’s expectations, and by delivering something exceptional, starting with the smallest of things, you can create a “viral” event. And he is so right about that too.

I would encourage you to follow Jay’s advice to be sure, but, I would also encourage you to look within those processes, to the people who drive them, and find the stories, like Mary’s, that you can tell and use to connect with your customers and your prospects. Great stories make great content and in this day and age of limited attention spans, great content, great stories, drive customers to connect with your business, your brand and your people.

We’ll talk more about story telling and how to use it in your PR and Marketing efforts in upcoming posts. In the meantime, what stories about your people come immediately to mind? What stories might lie just beneath the surface waiting to be told? Tell us about it in the comments if you’d like to share.