“There are nine story themes that people like hearing about from companies,” I explained. “If you create content  based on those themes you’ll  be turning your messages into stories.”

I introduced these nine story themes four years ago when I published the book Beyond Buzz. This simple model is used around the world by companies and agencies of all sizes to get unstuck and come up with fresh ways to connect with customers, employees and analysts.   Guy Kawasaki included these themes in his new book “Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions,” writing,

“These story lines from Lois Kelly, author of Beyond Buzz, will help you craft a story that does your cause justice.”

Sean Moffit and Mike Dover also include them in their excellent new book “Wikibrands: Reinventing Your Company in a Customer-Driven Economy,” saying:

“People love to tell stories. When repeated they reinforce a message; when told well they become viral. Lois Kelly suggests nine types of stories in her book Beyond Buzz that get talked about.”

The 9 themes

1. Great aspirations (Patagonia believing a company can grow big and sustain the environment in innovative ways)
2. David vs. Goliath (Southwest Airlines taking on the big, established players)
3. Personal stories (Fred Smith on why he started FedEx, and why investors funded the company after they met the janitor)
4. Contrarian/counterintuitive (BestBuy deciding to fire some of its customers. What? A company doesn’t fire customers?!)
5. Avalanche about to roll (Spotting, forecasting early trends before they’re big and in the mainstream)
6. Anxieties (Does your child have what it takes to get into a good college?)
7. How-to (How to do things related to your service/product to help customers)
8. Glitz and glam (What you can learn from Sara Jessica Parker about investing money)
9. Seasonal/event related (Financial and tax advice leading up to April 15; vacation deals just before he summer)

Download the eBook, check out Guy Kawasaki’s post

Not in the mood for reading books to learn more?  Click here to visit the Foghound resource center, and download a copy of the eBook, “Beyond Buzz: Let’s Talk About Something Interesting.” Or check out Guy Kawasaki’s post, “How to Change the World: The Nine Best Story Lines for Marketing.”

There’s been much debate over whether companies should outsource their Twitter accounts to their advertising and public relations agencies.  Discussions have largely focused on whether an outsider speaking on behalf of the company expresses authenticity and transparency.

That’s a good point, but here’s the real issue for companies to think about.  Approximately 80 percent of Twitter is about retweeting and having “conversations” with others.  Just 20 percent is about posting your own tweets. Your agency can probably do a fine job on that 20 percent. But are they trained and steeped in company issues enough to respond to the 80% of questions, complaints, and off-topic musings?  Probably not.

As Twitter goes mainstream now is the time for companies to create an enterprise strategy for Twitter, addressing such issues as:

• Own your name: Make sure your company has its Twitter domain, e.g., Twitter.com/yourname.  If you’re too late, you may have to get involved with name squatters. Here’s a helpful Wall St. Journal piece on the topic.
• What do customers want: Think about what your customers want to be able to do/get from your company on Twitter, and then create Twitter strategies to support those wants. Pay special attention to areas  like customer service, training, product news, areas where people are beginning to expect to be able to get help via Twitter.
• Managed by business functions vs. social media dept.: Rather than have a separate social media function managing Twitter, I highly recommend incorporating Twitter into  business functions.  Doing so makes sure that the  80 % “conversations” are staffed by he people who can provide the most helpful and valuable information, and that they support business objectives.
• Put an enterprise listening platform in place, with specialized keywords and accounts for each business area involved in social media.  Make sure the platform helps your people be responsive, e.g, storing answers to commonly asked questions, featuring flagging capabilities so you rate the urgency of the Tweet and know if someone is addressing it.
• Have escalation guidelines: Develop  guidelines on how emerging trends, positive and negative, will be escalated — what are the criteria, who in the company will be alerted to what within what time frame, and what kind of action should be taken and then noted in the system so others in the company know the issue is being addressed.
• Find the insights: Lastly, create a strategy for mining social media conversations about your company, industry and competitors to uncover insights that the business can act on. I’ve seen clients find ideas for new products, new customers, and new brand building programs.  This is a rich, rich market research opportunity that few companies are fully taking advantage of.

Remember the 80/20 rule

The  number of Tweets or Twitter followers does not help build a  brand or the business — especially if the Tweets are randomly pushing out information, or the company Twitter is  trying to follow as many people as possible. I know this sounds so obvious. But every day I hear about companies who are being advised by agencies to “hire someone (meaning the agency) and pump up their Twitter volume.”

Pushing out that 20 percent is easy to “pump up the volume.”  The real value of Twitter comes from the other 80 percent, where people are getting useful and responsive information from a company that they can trust.

However, many firms struggle in answering this question. Or they play it safe. Or answer in bland language.  Having reviewed hundreds of RFPs my advice is to answer this question passionately and genuinely, in language you would use in talking with someone.

This RFP question is designed to help the evaluators get to know the personality, people and passion of your firm. Don’t waffle.  Be bold, be true to who your organization is, and use language that brings you beliefs alive.

Also, make sure your Web site includes your belief ( or purpose, or mission, or point of view; they’re really the same)  And that everyone in the firm knows it and understands how it guides your work every day.

Stuck?  Get your people together and have a thoughtful conversation around this question: why does the world need our organization now more than ever?

I help companies uncover what they love about their businesses and show them how to use that to create pretty fascinating sales and marketing strategies.

The first step in our discovery process is asking a few questions, like “if you were having dinner with an old friend,  how would you  brag about your business?” The answers to this question are usually dull, dull, dull. But it helps me get to know the people.

The second question always uncorks the creative juices.  Please take it and use it. It is simply this:

If you could pick one song as a theme song for  your organization, what would it be?

The ideas are usually hilarious, hold a thread of truth and possibility, and loosen people up in new ways.   A couple of weeks ago I heard some some great responses from a consulting firm with deep analytics expertise:

• Beat It by Michael Jackson
• White & Nerdy by Weird Al Yankovich
• Marching Through the Wilderness by David Byrne

Let the marketing brainstorming begin….

Just what causes a story to go viral?  New York Times Science writer John Tierney reports today on a new in-depth University of Pennsylvania study  that found:

• People share articles that inspire awe
• Positive stores are more likely to be shared than negative
• More emotional stories are emailed more often
• Stories about anxiety travel, but no where close to those that inspire awe

Having done my own studies on what people like to share and the power of meaning making (Beyond Buzz, 2007), I found this new study  validating and insightful — especially learning more about what the heck is awe inspiring.

The UPenn researchers used two criteria for an “awe inspiring story”: the scale of the story is large and it requires the reader to see the world in a different way.

The researchers also found that people like to share awe-inspiring stories not to impress others, but to realize a type of “emotional communion.”

Emotion in general leads to transmission, and awe is a strong emotion,” said Dr. Jonah Berger of UPenn. ” If I’ve just read this story that changes the way I understand the world and myself, I want to talk to others about what it means. I want to proselytize and share the feeling of awe. If you read the article and feel the same emotion, it will bring us closer together.”

One of my most popular blog posts over the past few years  had nothing to do with marketing but was about an awe-inspiring 18 hours in an urban hospital emergency room. The resulting comments, calls and emails created an extraordinary emotional communion with friends and strangers.

Three weeks ago I finished writing a new book about an awe-inspiring journey. It was the most fulfilling writing I’ve ever done, and it’s the marketing project I’m most eager to get moving. Why?  There’s nothing more satisfying than emotional communion, and the buzz that goes with it.

Good lessons for all we marketers who  too often rely on a heavy-on-the-logic, light-on-the- emotion style of business communications.  To realize the powerful possibilities of social media our content needs to be emotional and show what’s possible.

Whenever I go to San Francisco I schedule my business calendar so that I can have breakfast at Boulette’s Larder in the Ferry Building. The food is extraordinary, the restaurant  design remarkable. So while waiting for my breakfast I took out my Droid to snap a couple of photos to share with you.  Because no words can quite capture the beauty of this small little space.

After the click, owner and renowned chef Amaryll Schwertner came over and asked me to stop taking photos immediately. It was against her policy.

“But why,” I asked. “I wrote a book about word of mouth and like to spread the word about great experiences, and photos are a great way to do that.”

“We’ve had a lot of problems with people taking photographs and stealing our ideas,” she explained. “Photographs of our restaurant have ended up in places without our permission. We need to control who takes photos.”

The exchange left me cold and wondering. Just what could anyone “steal” by taking a picture of a  little restaurant?  A restaurant’s assets are its food, its service, and its vibe. How can one steal that total experience in a one-dimensional photo?

And why be fearful of letting people take a picture and spread word of mouth, the most vital marketing for a restaurant. Sure, my photos aren’t professional but I doubt I would hurt the restaurant’s image.

My advice for all businesses and Boulette’s Larder is to let go of  fear, and let people who love you spread the love, especially with photos. The greater the love, the less likely that any negative remarks or pirate photos will ever hurt your reputation.

Here’s a photo of the restaurant taken from Boulette’s web page. I hope I don’t get reprimanded again.

‘Tis the season for marketing planning, which can be painful if you’re in a rut. From many years of experience I believe every company has remarkable ideas to talk about, but finding those ideas can sometimes be challenging.

This week I talked at the Word of Mouth Supergenius conference about how to shake things up and find those ideas. Thanks to Merritt Colaizzi of SmartBlog on Social Media for her post that sums up those ideas. You can find it here.

Finding those interesting ideas to talk about is well worth the work. Consider:

• What do sales reps to say to engage prospects?
• What makes your proposals and RFPs stand out?
• Social media only works if you have interesting ideas to talk about
• How do CEOs get employees’ attention?

To get more interest, you have to be more interesting.  It doesn’t mean you have to be cool like Apple. In fact, much of my work has been with “boring” B2B companies.  Everything in marketing and sales gets much easier when you find the “talkable” ideas.

If you get stuck, call me to help jump start your thinking. If your company is really stuck, let’s do a workshop in 2010  to uncover those amazing ideas just waiting to be found.  While I am slightly biased, this is the best marketing investment you can make next year.

1. What will cause my followers to smile
2. What will enrich people’s perspective
3. What will inspire

Thanks to Hollie Delaney of Zappos.com, for sharing this yesterday during out social media session at The Conference Board conference on extending your brand to employees. Thanks too to the other super-smart and generous panelists — Marietta Cozzi of Prudential Financial, Kat Drum of Starbucks, and Kelle Thompson of Liberty Mutual.

1. What will cause my followers to smile
2. What will enrich people’s perspective
3. What will inspire

Thanks to Hollie Delaney of Zappos.com, for sharing this yesterday during out social media session at The Conference Board conference on extending your brand to employees. Thanks too to the other super-smart and generous panelists — Marietta Cozzi of Prudential Financial, Kat Drum of Starbucks, and Kelle Thompson of Liberty Mutual.