PRE-CONFERENCE WORKSHOPS
Wednesday, Mar. 14
The art of storytelling online: How to engage customers, journalists and employees with riveting brand content
It’s not the container, but what’s inside that matters most. Whether you’re aiming for an engaging social media post, online video, infographic or text, you first have to be a storyteller. In this opening pre-conference session, Mark Ragan and Jim Ylisela, co-owners of Ragan Consulting Group, will take you through the best qualities of being a great brand journalist—in any format.
You’ll learn:
- Why storytelling engages audiences more than facts
- To shift the focus of your content: It’s about your audience, not about you
- How to be your own publisher and stop begging members of the media for attention
- Secrets (such as focusing on people) for finding the emotional center of your communications
Propel your social media efforts with monitoring and measurement
In many ways, social media is unlike any other channel communicators have ever seen. However, just as with every channel employed by communicators, you must monitor and measure its effectiveness. There are tools and techniques aplenty to help you accomplish this, but which should you pay attention to—and which should you dismiss? In this pre-conference workshop, digital communications expert Shel Holtz will share social media measurement best practices so you’re never surprised by talk about you or your organization—and show how you can demonstrate the results of your efforts.
You’ll learn:
- Why reach and impressions are pointless metrics
- What it means to measure engagement
- How you can monitor social media on the cheap
- The increasingly important role artificial intelligence will play in monitoring social media channels
- The range of tools available for monitoring and measuring, from free to jaw-droppingly expensive
Lunch
(provided onsite)
Developing an editorial process that works for online, multimedia, print and social media
So many channels to fill, so little time: That’s the constant lament of digital communicators who want to publish stories for their audiences across platforms. How can you deliver the best content to the right place? What’s the best way to adapt your writing to multiple formats? The answer is the “news desk,” an editorial process that assembles communicators across disciplines (PR, marketing and internal communications) to plan, execute and deliver great content. In this session, veteran journalist, teacher and communications consultant Jim Ylisela will show you how to apply the news desk concept to your content needs—regardless of your industry, the size of your staff or skill level.
You’ll learn how to:
- Choose the best stories to tell—along with the best way and place to tell them
- Adapt storytelling and master a welcoming, conversational writing style across platforms
- Create distinctive content for Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin
- Apply great writing to visual communications that include video, photos and infographics
- Establish an editorial process that eliminates random posting, content chaos and an uneven publishing schedule
Visual storytelling: The great brand equalizer
How many articles have you read telling you that video and visual storytelling is the single most effective way to grow and retain a loyal audience? Probably too many to count, but you can’t just hit record and expect results. Attracting and retaining an audience using video takes skill, strategy, timing and creativity. It also takes money, but you don’t have to be a massive corporation with unlimited resources to do it successfully. This crash course will show you where to start (or how to fix) your video storytelling—and explain why the little details can endear you to an audience.
You’ll learn:
- Five crucial elements that make your video resonate with viewers
- Best practices in formats, timing and trends across social platforms
- Why moving all your resources to a “pivot to video” strategy can end in brand heartache
- How visual storytelling can positively affect your PR and marketing efforts
