The keys to a storytelling blog

To get people to care about your blog they have to not care at all about your "blog." And they shouldn't. Just words on a page, after all. They need to care about things much more interesting than that.

Those things are:

The story. The content. The offer.

I'm going to run through what each of these pieces mean, specifically, and hopefully provide a few examples that make sense.

I'm not certain this is perfect. And this mostly applies to blogs that have a key person or character behind them.

The Story
The story is the overall narrative of your blog. It's the lens through which your readers view your work and share it with others.

Is your blog about limiting your net carbon impact on the planet? Then the story is your journey, your struggle, your experiences. Conflicts, crises, resolutions, successes, and so on.

Is your blog personal, talking about what happens in your daily life? Then you are the story. What's happened to you before, what's going on right now, and how that affects what you do and write about.

It's like a novel. The individual pages are the content (see below), and they build upon or draw from the story (what's happened before, what you know about the characters, etc.), but the two are somehow separate pieces of the same book.

The story of your blog is, well, the "point." What do you care about and why are you writing in the first place?

The Content
Each post (or podcast episode, or vlog, or whatever) either builds upon or draws from the story. It fuels the greater conversation about your blog.

This is the stuff you write everyday, that you control. Ideally, each of these contain their own stories that play off of the grander story of the blog.

When someone reads a post, or shares it, or talks about it, or feels something because of it, it's all done through the lens of the greater story. The posts themselves are the content, the story is the context, and they combine to fuel the conversation and help sell the offers.

The Offer
This is the Why Should Anyone Give a Shit? part. When someone reads your blog, what do they get out of it? What can they get out of it? Are you literally selling something they might want to purchase? Or are you teaching them something valuable?

In the case of the No Impact Man, maybe you're just making them feel like they're better people for caring. That's pretty huge by itself.

You can have more than one offer, or sell, too. Hugh, for instance, sells marketing knowledge, keys to creativity, and he literally sells stuff. They all offer you, the reader, something big in return for caring about the blog.

The Combination
So it's in figuring out all these parts and having them work together smoothly that leads to an interesting formula for producing something worth caring about. This sort of combination is what fuels interesting conversations. Gets people talking about your blog, and you, and why anyone should care.

I think.

So if you've got the drive to write, or are tasked with maintaining a blog for your company, you might want to try working out what each of these pieces will be for you, and see what happens.

Examples
J-Money's thetypingmakesmesoundbusy.com: The story is Jelisa's life. We know she's kind of broke, loves running, and has had plenty of hilarious dating misadventures. And she's trying to get more professional writing work. The content are her posts about what goes on in her life. If she talks about running, or writing, it builds upon what we already know about how she feels about those. The offer is that her posts are hilarious, they give you something to chuckle at. And you can hire her to write for you if you want.

Hugh Macleod's gapingvoid.com: The story is Hugh living in Alpine, Texas, doing some futile marketing and making awesome artwork after having been a traditional ad man for 10 years. The content are his cartoons and marketing insights (often the same thing). The offer is learning about marketing, inspiration, what you can buy from him (plus many more things).

vegandad.blogspot.com: Story -- A, well, vegan dad who wants his family to be healthy and eat great food. He's got a few boys and a brand new vegan daughter, and he wants to share the cool food he makes for them with other vegans. Content -- Amazing recipes. They're usually fairly simple because we know from the overall story that he's a busy guy. Offer -- Great recipes that you can try yourself. And you get to learn that no matter how busy you might be, you can always find time to eat right and cook great food.

Jesse Thorn's maximumfun.org: Story -- Jesse Thorn, 28, is living his dream of hosting a public radio show (and podcasts), despite the odds (it doesn't really make him much money). He struggles, he finds success, and you're on the journey with him of living his dream. Content -- The episodes and blog posts themselves. The things he creates and controls. Each episode of his show or podcasts are framed by the fact that he's young, fairly broke, but having a huge amount of fun interviewing his heroes and hanging out with his friends. Offers -- His shows are hilarious and informative, he asks for donations to support his work, and you feel like you're part of an exclusive club of awesome.

So what do you think?

So I guess this is a beard blog now

Most of the comments on my first ever video post (how exciting and modern!) were about my facial hair. And there were lots of tweets about the beard, too.

I'm not entirely certain how I feel about that (yes I am, I think it's rad), but in any case it brings up an interesting thing to consider.

Nobody gives a shit about your video post, or about the content. The only important thing is whether people want to talk about it.

Sure, people didn't talk about precisely what I'd hoped they would, but they (you) talked.

It gave people something to talk about on a Monday. The conversation about my horrible beard probably made a few people chuckle. Not the video, not the beard, but the conversation.

That's interesting, that's cool. And maybe that makes this blog a little bit more worth coming back to.

Conversation is the point, after all. Rad.

EDIT: See Anonymous's great comment (2nd one down) about this. He/she makes some great points.

My first video post

I'm not going to apologize for how crappy this video is.

The best blogs tell stories

So I’m helping a friend get a little more social with the marketing of his art. And some of the advice I’ve been giving him is that the best blogs tell stories.

They give you something to follow and care about, not just something to return to. The best blogs aren’t easily replaced by another blog talking about the same thing. They make a stronger connection than that. And they tell you that, by reading this blog, you’re doing something. You’re learning, you’re laughing, you’re getting closer to where you want to be, or closer to someone you want to be like. Or someone you just plain like.

So my artist friend is going to take this approach with his blog. It’s going to be about what they don’t tell you in art school. Namely, how to actually make money. It’s just not something that comes up.

It’s going to follow the story of a man trying to figure out how to make money from art. By reading his blog you’ll be following his story. Oh, and you’ll be learning about what works and what doesn’t if you’re an artist. Or if you’re not, you’ll learn about how you could be one. It tells you that if you read enough of his blog you could quit your shitty day job and take up that artistic endeavour you’ve always dreamed about. It tells you that by reading this blog you’re getting a little bit closer to it everyday.

The No Impact Man blog is the very compelling story of someone trying to do the right thing. And it tells you that, by reading this blog, you’re learning about how you can do the right thing, too. In fact, you’re doing the right thing right now by reading it. You’re a better person than the people that don’t read it.

Chris Brogan’s blog isn’t about marketing, it’s a lifestyle blog. It tells you that by reading about Chris, and by learning from Chris, you’re becoming a little bit more like him. You could be just like him one day if you keep reading his blog every day. If you're a mid-level manager at your company and you read Chris's blog, you're reading it because it tells you that you could do the sort of thing he does where you work.

So what about my blog? What’s the story, what’s the point?

I don’t rightly know. Still working that out. Maybe a 20-something working in a fun but flawed industry trying to make sense of it all? Maybe. I don’t know.

So apparently I'm on vacation

From work, and from this blog. I'd like to think I'll actually be having a vacation from work, and I'd like to think that I'll be ending my vacation from this blog.

Because, you know, writing a couple short posts a month is so hard...

I've been sitting on a post for a while that referenced something Hugh had written about how 95% of advertising sucks.

My thought was, well, if someone came into an ad agency and explained that their business produced 95% crap, but that they banked on maybe, hopefully, producing 5% of something that was actually worth paying attention to the agency would tell them they're in the wrong business. Right?

So what are ad agencies doing?

What they've always done, I guess. Monkeys in a cage.

So what now? For this blog I mean. I don't know about the agencies thing. I haven't figured that bit out yet.

Should probably start with, what am I doing? What do I need to be writing about?

Vacation's over, time to figure that out.

Why I unfollowed a couple people this weekend

They weren't posting much that I was interested in. So I didn't feel like following them on twitter anymore.

That is all.

My interview about unfriending and unfollowing

I was interviewed earlier today over at Haligonia.ca about unfriending, unfollowing, and managing your social network contacts. Please check out the video here.

Thanks for having me on the show, Giles!