Next week, you’ll see in these posts daily perspectives about storytelling and messaging — and how it is both easy and hard to communicate effectively and build trust and relationships with the words you write.
We’ll start with my initial failure. A few days ago, I invited Matt Handal to suggest some content for an upcoming issue of Canadian Design and Construction Report (cadcr.com).?
He responded:
This is probably my best piece I?ve written recently.
http://www.helpeverybodyeveryday.com/marketing-101/2670-company-overview
In it, Handal (correctly) advocates for a client-rather than corporate-centric overview, and even gives a simple formula to achieve it.
“Hey, this is great,” I thought. ?And then I set out to try to write the story according to the model — using the KLT — Know, Like, Trust — hook.
And I couldn’t. I was stymied. What ever seemed to emerge from the keyboard seemed hackneyed, dishonest, and otherwise ineffective.
This is doubly frustrating, because I’m supposed to be competent as writer/journalist. (That’s another story — my six year journey from naive university undergraduate with no social or journalistic writing skills to the celebration of my lifetime as a foreign correspondent in the eye of an African civil war hurricane.)
But the words just didn’t flow — the connection didn’t work.
And then it hit me. You can outline the rules, you can set the principles down, but sometimes, you may need a little help in doing it.
That’s what this week in the life of the constructionmarketingideas.com blog will be about. How can we find a way to frame and develop your story to make it truly effective from a marketing perspective and, if you need support, where should you go for help to achieve the standards?
(Maybe me, but right now I’m going to need some help from other experts to learn how.)
If you would like to participate in the journey, let me know. Send an email or comment. We’ll discover a market-solving conclusion together.
