The Sustainable Enterprise Conference is a day-long learning and networking conference dedicated to helping North Bay businesses, academic, government and non-profit organizations transition to economic, environmental, and social sustainability. TrimTab Media will be holding a session on brand storytelling at this year’s conference.

–> Register for the conference today!

iHUB SESSION: Storytelling for Sustainable Brands

Mischa Hedges, Chief Storyteller, TrimTab Media

Friday April 26, 2013 – 11:00-11:15am
Sustainable Enterprise Conference
Sonoma Mountain Village, Rohnert Park, CA.

Telling stories about your organization’s staff, customers, practices and offering can help you connect with your customers and supporters in a more meaningful way. Mischa will present examples that show how sustainable brands are using video storytelling to build strong relationships with their customers and further their positive impact on the world.

We helped The Center for Responsible Business at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business tell 4 stories about their community of students, professors and corporate partners.

We helped Grimmway Farms tell the story of their commitment to sustainable farming by producing five videos about their people, practices and products.

We worked with DigiSight to tell the story of how technology is helping doctors and patients collaborate to monitor their vision between visits.

Watch our Storytelling for Sustainable Brands presentation.

Mischa has given this presentation at the San Francisco and Los Angeles Green Festivals, the Venture Greenhouse, the Sustainable Enterprise Conference and several other events in the past year to show how effective storytelling methods can help connect companies and non-profits with their customers and supporters.

Thanks to the Sustainable Enterprise Conference for capturing this presentation video!

We captured the story of Grimmway Academy’s Edible Schoolyard and kitchen, where kids learn how to grow and prepare healthy food.

Ever been to a Green Festival? It’s an amazing place that connects people, companies and non-profits that share values of sustainability, community and connection. Tickets are just $10 in advance (from the Green Festival website) and $15 at the door. We’ll be at the Los Angeles festival this weekend leading workshops about how brands and non-profits can tell their stories and connect with people who share their values. Come say hello!

WORKSHOP – FREE FOR GREEN FESTIVAL ATTENDEES
Storytelling for Sustainable Brands
Mischa Hedges, Founder + Chief Storyteller, TrimTab Media
Stories are how people connect with one another. Telling stories about your organization’s staff, customers, practices and offering can help you connect with your customers and supporters in a more meaningful way.Mischa will present case studies that show how sustainable brands are using video storytelling to build strong relationships with their customers and allow them to increase their reach and further their positive impact on the world.

LOS ANGELES workshop
Saturday November 17, 2012
2:00-2:45pm on the Green Business Stage at the LA Convention Center
RSVP and come say hello at booth #111

Come see Mischa Hedges, TrimTab’s Founder and Chief Storyteller present at Green Festival in San Francisco. We’ll also be at booth #826 – so be sure to stop by and say hello!

Sunday November 11, 2012
3:00-3:45pm on the Green Business Stage

WORKSHOP – Storytelling for Sustainable Brands
Mischa Hedges, Founder and Chief Storyteller, TrimTab Media
Stories are how human beings connect with one another. Telling stories about your staff, customers, practices and offering help connect with your customers and supporters in a more meaningful way.

Mischa will present case studies about how sustainable brands are using video storytelling to build strong relationships with your customers and gain their trust and support, which leads to increased success and positive impact on the world.

RSVP for the presentation or just show up!

“Once an organization decides to start using online videos in their marketing mix – how do they become social? “

Social video parallels the “viral video” distribution model – in which YouTube videos become an overnight success – generating millions of views (think about all those cat videos on YouTube). Where it differs is that it’s a little more thought out – actually, a lot more.

Developing an audience

The first step in content marketing is to develop an audience. While an audience can certainly be developed from distributing social videos online, it helps immensely to already have an audience there, watching. Many brands have already begun this by developing blogs, email lists, Twitter and Facebook followings. If you haven’t, check out Facebook’s guide to pages and the Twitter for business guide.

Research + strategy

In order for a brand to create content that is valuable and relevant to their customers and supporters, they must understand their interests, needs and values. Most brands have already performed some of this in the form of market research, which is a nice first step – but it has to get a bit more personal.

From there, a storytelling strategy can be developed to ensure that the right stories are told – so that the videos aren’t just interesting, but resonate with and inspire viewers, increasing the likelihood that they’ll be shared. Remember that with social video, the viewer ultimately controls the distribution – so skipping this step is not an option.

Producing + distributing stories

After bringing aboard the right people to produce your social video campaign (we’ll talk about this in the next post), it’s time for distribution. Utilizing existing email marketing, social media and blog channels is a great place to start. Influencers can help your stories to thrive online, and expand to new audiences.

Identifying appropriate influencers (prominent bloggers, Twitter “stars,” loyal fans or customers, celebrities), sharing content with them and/or tagging them in posts can increase the effectiveness of a social video campaign’s launch. There are also several new agencies that specialize in launching content produced for social sharing. Sharethrough is doing some excellent work in this space.

It’s not an exact science

Throughout this process it’s important to remember that, by its very nature, social video is an ever-changing medium – there are no formulas for success – at the end of the day, content is still king. No matter how intelligent and innovative the distribution strategy, videos of cats and babies with NO release strategy will still garner hundreds of millions of views. Because people like cats and babies. The most important part of the social video landscape is the video itself.

Have you or has your company launched a social video?

We’d love to hear about some of your success and/or failures at producing and distributing social videos. After all – we’re all still learning.
Image by smemon licensed under Creative Commons

Part two in a series on social video and storytelling.

Since the success of a social video is dependent upon on-demand viewing and voluntary sharing – videos must be appealing enough for people to choose to watch them – and be inspired to share with their network of friends, family and co-workers.

The Challenge: How do you create video content worth sharing?

In a world that’s inundated by marketing messages and advertising, creating content that rises above it all is a tall order for marketers. There is a constant pressure to create content that is engaging, funny or valuable – and inspires viewers to share content with their networks – and there’s no guarantee the viewers will appear or that it will work. Yikes! The result is a plethora of obnoxious, flashy advertising that is designed to grab the attention of viewers and often fails to engage them on a personal level.

The Opportunity: Who can be authentic?

Fortunately, the values-driven clients we work with at TrimTab Media have an unfair advantage when it comes to social video – the ability to be authentic. Our clients care about social and environmental issues and integrate these values into their everyday – they have great stories to tell about their people, practices and offerings. They have the ability to reach “conscious consumers” – people who shop according to their values, and are skeptical of conventional marketing. Authentic stories can often be told more affordably in a documentary approach, rather than using elaborate narratives or comedy that are often costly, and risky. Those are some of the reasons we focus on producing authentic content for our clients.

Values-driven businesses and non-profits can connect with their customers by telling their real stories – stories of their people, practices and offerings that connect with like-minded customers and supporters.

In the next post on social videos – I’ll address how a video becomes “social,” and give some examples of successful and less successful social video campaigns.

Image by webtreats licensed under Creative Commons