Four Apps To Tell Your Story Online
You've probably been hearing the words "content marketing" or "social content marketing" lately. Content marketing means producing or aggregating and publishing content for your social media platforms to increase engagement with your customers and prospects. How do you keep up with producing the content demanded by fast-moving social news feeds?
That's where the latest buzzword of social media engagement comes in, a word that is actually an ancient concept: storytelling. By telling your story - as a company, an organization or an individual - you offer ways for others to connect with you and your brand more deeply. Here are a few online and mobile tools you can use to compile your story into a shareable format.
STORIFY
Do you ever try compiling social mentions of your brand, event, product or other topic, and feel like you're drowning in social posts? Craziness! Storify simplifies the process of aggregating tweets, Facebook posts and even Instagram images based on name, keyword or hashtag searches. Some examples of how this looks can be found on my own Storify account where I compiled stories about each market my co-author Danielle Smith and I visited on our book tour for Social Media Engagement for Dummies. Check them out as well as other Storify stories I've compiled.
MEDIUM
From Ev Williams, co-founder of Twitter, comes the "anti-Twitter" site called Medium. Medium is a long-form publishing platform, the blend of an old-fashioned blog and essay website. Got something to say and want more room? Medium. Just want to publish in a clean space with a builtin avid community of readers and writers? Medium. Stay tuned to my Medium account for my first essay. I feel it coming on! In the meanwhile, you can see what essays I've read and recommended.
LUMIFY & EXPLORY
Lumify and Explory are both iPhone apps that make video editing oh so easy, right on your iPhone. Add photos, videos, text and audio into your own hand-held editing studio to produce videos with ease. Tell your story with these multimedia gems and share them in your social networks.
ANIMOTO
Not a new site but certainly much more useful now that we are all thinking about video, Animoto is a web-based (cross-platform) tool that takes the pain out of video editing. Add photos and videos easily from your other social channels including Facebook, Instagram, Picasa, and Flickr. Select a video style and music, add a few words and voila! Animoto offers a free version for 30-second spots with web-quality video and limited style choices. Paying $5/month ($30/year) gets you up to 10-minute videos and more goodies. There are even business-branded versions starting at $249/year.
EXTRA:
Tellagami is a fun way to deliver a message via a customized avatar of your making. Customize how your avatar looks including hair, clothing, and background. Type in or record your brief message, and your avatar comes to life with gestures. Enjoy!
Aliza Sherman is a web pioneer, award-winning author of 10 books including Social Media Engagement for Dummies and Mom, Incorporated, international speaker and digital strategist since 1992. Aliza provides high-level and strategic digital marketing consulting to companies and nonprofit organizations.
