The Hidden Cost Of Cheap SEO & Social Media Labor

We totally agree with Jordan Kasteler below-we see sites every day that are cheap and social media sites that are just spammy. You will get what you pay for----

The Hidden Cost Of Cheap SEO & Social Media Labor

Sep 4, 2012 at 12:56pm ET by Jordan Kasteler

• inShare771

Fact: All businesses, large or small, want to save money wherever they can.

I understand this. I sympathize with this. What I don’t understand, however, is why so many businesses try to take the cheap route and cut corners in their online strategy— and then are dumbfounded when they get scammed/receive terrible results/get blocked by Google.

I know how devastatingly costly it can be to launch, maintain, and grow a business. But there are certain aspects of building a business where it’s never okay to cut corners. You wouldn’t hire an inexperienced, too-cheap contractor to build the building. You wouldn’t buy discounted, bruised produce if you owned a restaurant and you wouldn’t buy day-old bread for your sandwich shop.

So why would you trust your website and your online reputation— the very first introduction your customers will have with your business — to an inexperienced amateur or a too-cheap scammer?

In life and online, you get what you pay for. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: solid, successful SEO and social strategies take time. Time is money. Try to save a few dollars now by hiring a cheap, inexperienced, or shoddy “professional” and you’ll guaranteedly pay for it later.

Still not buying it? Here’s a look at what suffers when you try to cut corners (or hire someone that cuts them for you).

Image Credit: ByronShell via Flickr

What Happens When You Try to Take the Cheap Route

1.  What You Pay For: Cheap links or linkbuilding campaigns.

What You Get: Google Penguin.

Google hates link spam. Google punishes link spam. In fact, Google punishes anything that even looks like link spam. On April 24th, Google unleashed Google Penguin, an anti-spam algorithm update that affected roughly three percent of queries. All controversy about the effectiveness about the update aside, Penguin proved that Google is actively going after sites with spam, and its history of shutting down link networks and blog networks further proves the point.

Buying links is the overt way to take the cheap-and-easy route in linkbuilding (and scheming link builders abound), but it’s not the only one. As I’ve written before, linkbuilding takes time. Connections aren’t forged overnight, and anyone who promises you major results overnight is a liar.

An experienced SEO may have a well-established network of connections to start a linkbuilding campaign, but you’ll pay for those connections. A bottom-barrel hourly rate is a surefire way to indicate shortcuts (buying links) or inexperience (laughable outreach emails).

Believe it or not, inexperience can be just as dangerous as a linkbuilder who overtly cheats the search engines, since an amateur “SEO” may have no idea what he’s doing looks like link spam to the search engines.

Don’t buy your links. Don’t fall for miracle-worker pitches, and be prepared to pay a decent price for a linkbuilding campaign. It’s the only way to ensure you’ll get results—real results that won’t get your site banned.

2. What You Pay For: Cheap Content.

What You Get: Google Panda

Google Panda probably needs no introduction, but I’ll give it one anyway: Panda was the major algorithm update from February 2011 that forced content farms into near-extinction. The age of cheap, shoddily-written content was over, and Google reminded us that not just any content could be king: only usable, quality (not keyword-stuffed) content could reign in the post-Panda wake.

But let’s take this a step beyond the obvious you-won’t-rank-well-with-terrible-content factor: cheap content does nothing for your business. Effective strategists use content to move people, to communicate, to grab attention, etc. Quality content compels: compels people to share, compels people to comment, compels people to buy.

Cheap, poorly-made content does nothing. It sits on a page, waiting to attract searchers (who, 9 times out of 10, will immediately get turned off by the content and return to the SERPs in seconds), and gets websites dinged by Google.

Hire a real blogger, writer, designer, videographer, professional. Look at their portfolio and really look at what they’ve done before (and if they don’t have a portfolio, run). If you’re going to put content on your site, it should be every bit as good as the site itself.

3. What You Pay For: Cheap Web Design and Development.

What You Get: Errors. Security vulnerabilities. Poor conversion rates. And, often, a pretty terrible-looking site.

Yes, you could pay somebody $50 to make you a website. And it will suck.

There are many amateurs out there who can slap together a GoDaddy-hosted site and make it look reasonably attractive (and millions more who can make an ugly one). But aesthetics aside, you don’t just need a site that looks pretty—you need one that functions.

Ask your developer how your site will be able to grow in the future. Ask if they know SEO (they should). Ask to see what sites they’ve designed in the past, and find out what hurdles they had to overcome when developing them. Ask what steps they’re going to take to increase conversion and lead your customers down the sales funnel.

Your website is the first impression you will make on potential customers. It’s also an extension of your physical business: it can take payments, answer questions, and show off your products and services like a virtual shop window.

With all the business your website can bring you, why leave it to an amateur that can develop a site that a.) crashes constantly, hurting your reputation; b.) confuses customers; c.) has little potential for growth?

Choose a Web professional that will stick around for the long haul: when it’s time to update or increase your site, you’ll want to return to the person who did an amazing job building it in the first place.

4. What You Pay For: Cheap SEO.

What You Get: Over-optimization, black hat tactics, zero results.

Professional SEOs are expensive. Like a lawyer or an accountant, they perform a function which most businesses need to exist but one that’s hard for most people to understand. They speak their own language, and they’ve built a reputation and results after years in the field.

If you want results, you will have to pay for them. And they will not come overnight.

When you hire an SEO (or social media marketer, linkbuilder, etc.), you are trusting them with your site and your online reputation. If you are not 100% clear on what they’re doing, you’ll have no guarantee they’re not doing something that could get your site penalized.

If they don’t stay updated on the world of SEO, they could be practicing outdated tactics that can get your site dinged for over-optimization. And if they can’t (or don’t know how) to measure their progress, you’ll have no idea if your SEO budget is actually doing anything for your site.

5. What You Pay For: Cheap Social Media Marketing and Management.

What You Get: Banned accounts and unauthentic results.

Social media may be free, but the hours spent managing your social accounts certainly come at a price. Any so-called social media guru should be advertising their people skills, marketing knowledge, and past experience running active accounts.

They should not be promising you hard-and-fast numbers of followers or fans. It’s one thing to promise to boost your numbers. It’s another thing to promise you 5,000 followers overnight.

Social media is built on relationships: showing your customers a different side of you, answering questions, getting feedback, and addressing complaints. You need someone who won’t just tweet three times a day (you could do that yourself, with considerably better results).

A talented social media manager will match your brand’s voice and build campaigns with clear goals— and that goal won’t be to simply nab you random followers or fans. It’s to build an audience based on people that will help your business grow. And they should be able to show you (in real numbers) how your social presence is helping your business.

You could hire an inexperienced college grad with 50 Twitter followers. You could hire someone who’s just going to boost your numbers with known follow-back accounts and accrue thousands of useless followers. Or you could  actually hire someone who knows what they’re doing—and actually see results.

There Are No Shortcuts. Period.

I don’t know if it’s hilarious or saddening that so many people fall for scams and get-rich-quick schemes from amateurs. I don’t know how many times I’ll have to keep exasperatedly saying, “There is no such thing as cheap SEO.” Because there isn’t.

No matter what low price you pay for Web design, SEO, or social media up front, you will wind up paying later on. Your site will get penalized. Your accounts will get blocked. And you will have to spend the time in the long run: whether it’s countless hours spent explaining things to a newbie, fixing a so-called “professional’s” mistakes, or working to recover your reputation, in the end, those pennies saved will cost you all the same.

So here’s a hint, a final plea, a last bit of advice: there are no shortcuts. Anyone who offers you one is a cheat, a liar, a scammer, or someone that has absolutely no idea what they’re talking about. It’s your choice: hire someone who knows what they’re doing and will take the time to do it right, or pay for it later. Either way, you will get what you paid for. To that end, paying moremoney does not necessarily mean you’ll get better results either. I’ve seen many expensive agencies offer awful services for your dollar, too. The same rules apply.

Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land.

http://searchengineland.com/the-hidden-cost-of-cheap-seo-social-labor-131585

7 Basic Types of Stories: Which One Is Your Brand Telling? Creatives explore humans' archetypal plots By Tim Nudd

Droga5 turned Prudential's retirement story from rags-to-riches into one of rebirth.

Advertisement

You think you're being all clever and original with your brand storytelling. In fact, you're not. From Shakespeare to Spielberg to Soderbergh, there are really only seven different types of stories, an Advertising Week panel hosted by TBWA suggested on Wednesday. The challenge becomes finding which one best suits your brand, and then telling it skillfully, believably and—if you're going to invite consumers to join in the story—extremely carefully.

TBWA's global creative president, Rob Schwartz, led the discussion, which was based around author Christopher Booker's contention, in his book Seven Basic Plots, that seven archetypal themes recur in every kind of storytelling. Booker looked at why humans are psychologically programmed to imagine stories this way. Schwartz and his two panelists, Droga5 executive creative director Ted Royer and novelist (and former agency creative) Kathy Hepinstall, focused on how the theory applies to brands—and how creatives can make use of it in developing persuasive stories for them.

Below are the seven basic plots—with examples from art and advertising of stories that fit each one.

1. Overcoming the Monster. This type of story goes back through Beowulf to David and Goliath and surely a lot further than that. It's the classic underdog story. Ad examples include Apple's attack on Big Brother in "1984" and American Express's attempt to dent the dominance of Black Friday with Small Business Saturday.





2. Rebirth. A story of renewal. It's a Wonderful Life is a prime example from the movies. Brands telling stories of renewal include Gatorade, whose "Replay" campaign gave aging members of high-school sports teams a chance to recapture their youth through rematches against old foes; and Prudential, which is presenting retirement as the beginning of a new chapter, not the end of an old one.





3. Quest. A mission from point A to point B. The Lord of the Rings is the classic example. IBM and Lexus are among the marketers who are on self-professed quests—making a smarter planet and relentlessly pursuing perfection, respectively.





4. Journey and Return. A story about transformation through travel and homecoming.The Wizard of Oz and Where the Wild Things Are are both journey-and-return stories. Corona is one of the brands that also encourages a trip, urging you to "Find your beach" and return refreshed. And Expedia has built its whole new campaign around the idea of changing one's perception through journey and return.





5. Rags to Riches. In literature: Charles Dickens and Cinderella. In the movies: Trading Places. In ads: Chrysler, which is rising from the ashes of Detroit; and Johnny Walker, whose entire brand history is about a simple Scottish farmboy's rise to global prominence.





6. Tragedy. From the Greeks through Shakespeare, these are stories of the dark side of humanity and the futile nature of human experience. Advertising has little use for such stories, except in PSA work, where shock tactics and depressing tales can get people to care about an issue.



7. Comedy. The flipside of tragedy, and the last of the great storytelling tropes, it's perhaps the hardest to do well but is hugely popular in both popular art and advertising—with Old Spice and Geico among the brand leaders in the space.




 

Schwartz suggested the seven plots can provide a blueprint for figuring out what a brand story should be when there isn't one, or isn't a strong one. During the panel, both Royer and Hepinstall talked about the importance of generating potent stories that ring true, and can't be hijacked or exposed as fraudulent.

"Ads most often are 'The husband's dumb, the wife fixes it, now he's better,' " said Royer. "They're these simple little stories that, I think, a lot of people react against. But if we do it right, we can tell some really beautiful stories. One of my favorite ads of all time was the Halo ad with the metal figurines. They beautifully portrayed what the game was about … I thought it was captivating and wonderful and amazing."

At the core of every brand, Royer added, is a good story waiting to happen.

"Brands are stories," he said. "They want to embody a story. When we start working with a client, we don't want to take a brief. We don't want to just say, 'What's your problem?' We want to go right back to, 'Why was your company started? What's your mission?' We talk about mission all the time, and it's just another way of saying, 'What kind of story are you on? What kind of story do you want to tell?' … Part of our job as an agency is to reignite that and really figure out what that story is."

A new wrinkle in the digital age is the hijacking of brand stories. "The hilarious thing to me is when a story is now taken over by the people," Hepinstall said. "It used to be a one-way thing, where the company would say, 'We're this,' and invite no feedback. Now, in the age of social media, that's impossible." She pointed to Shell's recent crowdsourced posters and the Walmart/Pitbull incident as evidence of disasters that can happen when brands lose control of their stories.

Royer discussed Droga5's "Day One" work for Prudential, which doesn't encompass merely the brand story but also the individual stories of many of the 10,000 people who retire every day—who harbor fears that Prudential would like to turn into optimism.

"It is a very dry category, and also absolutely terrifying. And you don't want either one of those," he said. "There's got to be a way, we thought, to find a middle ground where you can have an open conversation about what that period of your life is, what it can be, what you think it is now, and the potential of it. That's why we named it Day One. It is a label, but it's a fixed point that everyone owns. Everyone in this room has a Day One. And if you see it as a point moving forward, as a point where there can be optimism, there can be renewal, there can be bigger themes at work than just fear and confusion, then I think that gives Prudential a brand mission beyond just the products it sells."

So much retirement advertising has been rags-to-riches stories, he added, with lots of golfing and yachts in the imagery. Switching to a rebirth story gives the brand a more relatable platform, particularly in harder times.

The panelists also discussed the phenomenon of product utility as story—in particular, the Nike FuelBand. That product, developed by R/GA, embodies the Nike brand mission, which at its core is a quest story—the quest for the perfect body.

The seven basic plots might give creatives inspiration when it comes to crafting brand stories. But Hepinstall said it sometimes can help to focus outward, away from the brand, toward consumers—and figure out their experiences and their stories.

A "genius burst of energy about the customer's story," can ignite a campaign, she said. "The most perfect example is 'What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.' I thought that was such a genius reframing of the customer experience."

http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/7-basic-types-stories-which-one-your-brand-telling-144164

46 Ways to Kill It With Content

Simon Penson, September 24, 20121 Comments

•Text Link Ads

“The snake which cannot cast its skin has to die.”Fredrich Neitzsche

While I certainly don’t agree with everything Nietzsche shared, his famous quote above captures nicely where digital marketing is right now.

As an industry, change is something we live with day in day out, but we're in a period of unprecedented shift. Google is moving to a model of rewarding relevance and value based on the semantic web while rendering manipulative techniques of old redundant.

As Wil Reynolds explained so eloquently as the central theme to his recent Mozcon presentation, it’s time to do #RCS or Real Company Stuff (the polite version). And content investment leads that charge, which means you’ll need to know how to make the most of creating it.

What follows are a few killer tips to help with that transition and help everyone “cast off” that skin, starting with this quick-fire list of actions you should be considering taking as you grow your content investment.

Idea Creation

• Create a list of regular ideas you can repeat as part of a series. Things like Quick Tips, Q&As, Know Your… Top 5/10s, etc.
• As well as a list of ideas creates a list of the types of content that would work for your brand online – blog posts, videos, interactive infographics, etc.
• Look at cutting edge content such as data visualization as a “big bang” idea.
• Content can be "live" – so webinars and question-and-answer sessions can work brilliantly in real time.
• Create your magazine front page and work out what headline stories would be on your front page every issue, then create lots of ideas around those themes.
• Spend time on data visualization sites like flowingdata.com to get idea on how you could reinvent the way content is done in your market.
• Use Highcharts.com to visualize every part of your content strategy; from flow to author or writer workloads to ensure everything is consistent and deliverable.
• Tools can help you create more ideas. Use social data to help find out what people are talking about using something like social mention or Bottlenose, a new social search engine that I love.
• Use Google’s autosuggest to suggest content ideas based on phrases people are searching for. Combine with Ubersuggest to expand those ideas and create a great content list.
• A lot of energy is used to talk about the new kinds of content you can create on the web, but the good old blog post is still at the core of any great strategy.
• Competitions are a great way to grow audience via social that you can then engage with in part two of your strategy.
• Don’t be afraid to talk about more than what you’re doing. Become a knowledge hub and add value to the digital space. Prove your expertise and give away knowledge and the rewards will be great.
• When brainstorming ideas begin by not worrying about whether it’s realistic and "doable." You can refine later. Begin by putting everything on paper.
• If you can’t explain your post idea in a sentence to a 12-year-old, then it’s probably a bad idea – or at least an idea that needs refinement.
• Schedule in time for idea brainstorms away from the usual work environment. I have done them everywhere from the side of a lake to a bar. Change of environment stimulates creativity.
• Use a tool like Trello or Bubbl.us to help you map ideas "live" as you brainstorm as this will help everyone create ideas of the back of ideas.
• Ubersuggest and Wordtracker's keyword questions tool are great for expanding on ideas as they suggest related terms being searched for.

Creating Structure

• Don't plan to simply repeat content type. Look to create "flow" by varying the type of content you create and publish. Think: 
• Blog post
• Infographic
• Video 
• Blog post
• Ebook
• Etc.
• Visualize your content strategy as a piece of music. It must ebb and flow with big and small ideas to create interest.
• Visualize your content flow. It's important to ensure you have the right level of activity across all channels. Do this in highcharts.com and using their Stacked Area Chart. Map hours spent on each piece of content you create across every channel you operate across. You’ll end up with something like this:

• Buy a big selling B2C magazine you respect and reverse engineer its content plan. Work through it page by page and schematically map each feature against a flatplan piece by piece of content so you can understand how it flows. Replace their ideas with yours and you have a content plan!
• Your 6-month content plan should take the form of an editorial calendar that also captures key industry events and the state of mind of your customers.
• Live your life by a 6-month content plan. Make it the number one priority for your business for the first 6 months to drill into everyone how key the upkeep and delivery of it is.
• Perform a SWOT Analysis before starting to create your content strategy to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors’ content. Look to exploit those weaknesses.
• Include your site pages in your initial structural plan. It’s vitally important that every page is part of your plan. Not just the new ones and your blog. Ensure that every word matches your brand persona and oozes brand message.

Content Strategy

• Less is more when it comes to bigger ideas. Try to create big ideas you can brand and repeat and iterate annually to build value long term.
• Don’t just think "on page" and Google as your route to market. Plan across platforms – social, website and off page.
• Think about timings. We know how days of the week or hours of the day affect email open rate and social sharing and it’s the same with content publishing. Get it right to maximize reach.
• When planning content, think about the three phases you want to work through as part of the wider strategic vision:
• Growth (audience).
• Engagement (create evangelists and improve reach).
• Monetization (how you create revenue).
• Think beyond simply publishing and marketing your content. Gamification models can really improve stickiness and the ROI of any content investment.
• Know your audience. Use surveys for quantitative data and customer meets for qualitativeinfo so you know what tone to use when creating your content and what to write about to answer their questions and problems.
• Develop personas for your brand. Segment your customer base into three or four personas and plan to create content for each one, as they will have differing needs.
• The key to a successful content strategy is to amalgamate several separate plans into one cohesive uber-strategy. You should have a content plan for: every platform your business has a presence on, every persona you market to and also your off page content marketing plan for reach.
• Think carefully about your content strategy for every channel, so they complement each other and don’t simply either repeat the same content or fight for eyeballs. Play to each platform’s strengths.
• Create a content flow plan as part of your strategy creation process.
• Get buy-in from all stakeholders. Where possible involve a brainstorm with agency and client in one room. You have a much better chance of success with it.

Content Execution

• When creating copy think about every small detail. Font style and size matters, kerning matters, leading matters. Presentation and execution is as important as the idea. Make it beautiful to consume.
• Spend at least 30 minutes working on the headline. It’s the most important aspect in terms of getting any content marketing effort traction. On average people spend 3 seconds deciding whether to read on and your headline is your "front cover teaser".
• You cannot easily reinvent the wheel so look for news stories that give your idea a "new nose." Kate Middleton’s naked pix may be a great reason to write a "privacy and media law" advice piece, for instance.
• When planning a post start with the structure. Plan headline and each section, then start with the first paragraph of each section to sum up what they are there to do and what value they bring. That kind of structure helps people progress through to the conclusion.
• Always remember to answer what where how and why with every piece of content you create if its intention is to educate. Every type of content should answer at least two of those irrespective of what the aim of it may be.
• Rel=Author is key as part of the growth of AuthorRank. Create persona writers for your brand and build their authority over time.

Measure Effectiveness

• Set up goal and funnel tracking as part of any major content creation process and track users through to action. Just ensure that time frames are set in a realistic manner. Too many times this is measured over weeks or a couple of months when it should be a 6-12 month investment that will continue to deliver engaged and targeted visitors for many month to come.
• Don’t simply measure outreach by the links earned. Look at referral traffic and brand visibility value also as part of the measurement process. Guest posting is about much more than links.
• Many of the key social metrics should be included in any content marketing measurement campaign. Sentiment and engagement are key things to keep track of.
• Set up Google Alerts with a snippet from any major piece of content you create so you are alerted as soon as anyone copies it. Great content will be copied and the reaction should be simply to ask for a credit link. Build the relationship while the power is in your hands!
• Don’t expect every major piece of content to "fly." A one in three hit should be considered great but the value from that one will be enormous.
• http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2207432/46-Ways-to-Kill-It-With-Content?wt.mc_ev=click&WT.tsrc=Email&utm_term=&utm_content=46%20Ways%20to%20Kill%20It%20With%20Content&utm_campaign=09%2F24%2F12%20-%20SEW%20Daily&utm_source=Search%20Engine%20Watch%20Daily&utm_medium=Email

WHY STORYTELLING IS THE ULTIMATE WEAPON

BY: JONATHAN GOTTSCHALL

Jonathan Gottschall, author of The Storytelling Animal, says science backs up the long-held belief that story is the most powerful means of communicating a message.

48 Comments

inShare

In business, storytelling is all the rage. Without a compelling story, we are told, our product, idea, or personal brand, is dead on arrival. In his book,Tell to Win, Peter Guber joins writers like Annette Simmons and Stephen Denning in evangelizing for the power of story in human affairs generally, and business in particular. Guber argues that humans simply aren’t moved to action by “data dumps,” dense PowerPoint slides, or spreadsheets packed with figures. People are moved by emotion. The best way to emotionally connect other people to our agenda begins with “Once upon a time…”

Plausible enough. But claims for the power of business storytelling are usually supported only with more story. Guber, for example, backs up his bold claims with accounts of how he, or one of his famous friends, told a good story and achieved a triumph of persuasion. But anecdotes don’t make a science. Is “telling to win” just the latest fashion in a business world that is continually swept with new fads and new gurus pitching the newest can’t-miss secret to success? Or does it represent a real and deep insight into communications strategy?

I think it’s a real insight. I’m a literary scholar who uses science to try to understand the vast, witchy power of story in human life. Guber and his allies have arrived through experience at the same conclusions science has reached through experiment.

Until recently we’ve only been able to speculate about story’s persuasive effects. But over the last several decades psychology has begun a serious study of how story affects the human mind. Results repeatedly show that our attitudes, fears, hopes, and values are strongly influenced by story. In fact, fiction seems to be more effective at changing beliefs than writing that is specifically designed to persuade through argument and evidence.

What is going on here? Why are we putty in a storyteller’s hands? The psychologists Melanie Green and Tim Brock argue that entering fictional worlds “radically alters the way information is processed.” Green and Brock’s studies shows that the more absorbed readers are in a story, the more the story changes them. Highly absorbed readers also detected significantly fewer “false notes” in stories--inaccuracies, missteps--than less transported readers. Importantly, it is not just that highly absorbed readers detected the false notes and didn’t care about them (as when we watch a pleasurably idiotic action film). They were unable to detect the false notes in the first place.

And, in this, there is an important lesson about the molding power of story. When we read dry, factual arguments, we read with our dukes up. We are critical and skeptical. But when we are absorbed in a story we drop our intellectual guard. We are moved emotionally and this seems to leave us defenseless.

This is exactly Guber’s point. The central metaphor of Tell to Win is the Trojan Horse. You know the back story: After a decade of gory stalemate at Troy, the ancient Greeks decided they would never take Troy by force, so they would take it by guile. They pretended to sail home, leaving behind a massive wooden horse, ostensibly as an offering to the gods. The happy Trojans dragged the gift inside the city walls. But the horse was full of Greek warriors, who emerged in the night to kill, burn, and rape.

Guber tells us that stories can also function as Trojan Horses. The audience accepts the story because, for a human, a good story always seems like a gift. But the story is actually just a delivery system for the teller’s agenda. A story is a trick for sneaking a message into the fortified citadel of the human mind.

Guber’s book is relentlessly optimistic about the power of story to persuade. But as the bloody metaphor of the Trojan Horse suggests, story is a tool that can be used for good or ill. Like fire, it can be used to warm a city or to burn it down. Guber understands this, but he emphasizes story’s ability to bring on change for the better. His book is about people who tell good stories to overcome resistance, usually for laudable reasons. But, approached from a slightly different angle, Tell to Win is a book is about highly capable, experienced professionals suckering for story over and over (and over) again.

So there are two big lessons to take from Guber’s book and from the new science of storytelling. First, storytelling is a uniquely powerful form of persuasive jujitsu. Second, in a world full of black belt storytellers, we had all better start training our defenses. Master storytellers want us drunk on emotion so we will lose track of rational considerations, relax our skepticism, and yield to their agenda. Yes, we need to tell to win, but it’s just as important to learn to see the tell coming--and to steel ourselves against it.

The new gospel of business storytelling offers a challenge to common views of human nature. When we call ourselves Homo sapiens, we are arguing that it is human sapience--wisdom, intelligence--that really sets our species apart. And when we think we can best persuade with dispassionate presentation of costs and benefits, we are implicitly endorsing this view. But we are beasts of emotion more than logic. We are creatures of story, and the process of changing one mind or the whole world must begin with “Once upon a time.”

Jonathan Gottschall teaches English at Washington and Jefferson College and is the author The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. His work has been featured in the New York Times Magazine, Scientific American, and the Chronicle of Higher Education, among others.

http://www.fastcocreate.com/1680581/why-storytelling-is-the-ultimate-weapon