Storytelling and engagement

Storytelling and engagement. My favourite part, hopefully yours too. The 80/20 rule. 80/20 rule is a great rule. This will help with your engagement. Keep this rule in mind. You’ve possibly already heard the 80/20 rule but in terms of communications, in terms of really engaging, it’s a fantastic one to keep at the forefront of your mind and when you are drafting your annual communications plan. So I’d like to bring a quote up here which I’ll do in the next slide. So the writer, Daniel Carnegie, he wasn’t necessarily talking about the 80/20 rule but I’ve used these two quotes of his as a good way of demonstrating that to be engaging and to have annual communications plan that really connects with your community. 

Be interested, so being interesting is being interested in others. Dale Carnegie said, “talk to someone about themselves. They’ll listen for hours.” We’re not all like that. Not everybody wants to talk about themselves for hours but what this quote is really highlighting is that to be engaging, we need to be engaged. We need to be curious about others. We need to ask them questions and really listen to what those answers are. The second quote is, “you could make more friends in two months by being interested in others than you can in two years of trying to get people interested in you.” Maya Angelou, you’ve possibly already heard this quote, Maya Angelou, the writer. She said this, I really love this quote. 

It’s a fantastic way of highlighting again about how to really be engaging with our community is by again really listening to them and really remembering that everything we do, remember this is about acting like a publisher. Everything we do, compounds and layers and helps to really illustrate who we are as an organisation and who we are as a group. Maya Angelou said, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said. People will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” This is called emotional wake. How did you feel when you’ve just left your friend’s presence? How did you feel afterwards? You probably felt great. You probably had a really nice interaction. It’s your best friend. You had a great conversation. You feel great. And what about if you have a neighbour that you don’t get on so well with? The emotional wake that they left may have been negative. 

So what Maya Angelou is talking about here is the emotional wake. Organisations, community groups also have emotional wake. How do we make people feel after they’ve interacted with us? Think about that when you are crafting your communications plan and your communications activities, so that you ensure that everything you do engages and touches the very essence of who they are, really connects with who they are, that’s how you’ll engage with your community.