So, should my biz blog?

Oh, you fabulous little crumpet. Yes, yes, a thousand times yes! A blog is wholly yours, a place where your branding can be polished as shiny as a new dime.

Blogging is a brilliant way to improve your SEO. Blogging is a brilliant way to establish your expertise. Blogging is an extra-crunchy brilliant way of connecting with your customers. Don’t believe me? Check out this infographic from the fine folks over at Social Media Today. Starting with this statistic:

61% of US consumers have made a purchase based on a blog post. 

So, what does storytelling require, anyway? Part 4

Here at stately Studer Manor, we dig conflict. Not in the sense that we like arguing about who exactly forgot to put the soap in the dishwasher, Someone Who Shall Remain Nameless, but in the literary sense. Without conflict? No narrative. Without narrative? No story. Just…stuff happening.

Having discussed the other three of the four main classical Western narrative conflicts — protagonist vs. society , protagonist vs. antagonist , and protagonist vs. self — it’s time to tackle:

Protagonist vs. Nature, ie: Captain Ahab Overly Invested In His Job And Hung Up On A Whale Which Is Totally Normal And Not At All Weird, Dude, But No I Don’t Want Your Number, Into The Wild, The Old Man And The Sea, Me Just Trying To BBQ Out Here Where Do All These Mosquitoes Even Come From? 

So, let’s talk about content.

Content marketing. You’ve seen the phrase around. I know you have. Unless you’re a hermit living in one of those astonishing caves in Cappadocia. In which case, welcome to the internet and thanks for stopping by my blog! Here is a link to the most important stuff online.

For the rest of us, especially those of us involved in any sort of writing or marketing or general internettery, the term is well nigh ubiquitous. But I’ve noticed a lot of folks aren’t exactly sure what it means. So let’s clear that up, mm? 

So, you talk about tropes a lot, Steph

Yep, I do. And I play pretty fast and loose with the term, too. But there’s a method to my madness. Won’t you join me as I saunter down the trope-y garden path?

But before we begin: A warning. Stay on that path. If you stray, you may end up lost in the dark wood, and stumble across a place called TV Tropes. And it will devour all your free time. In a glorious self-referential display, TV Tropes even has a page about how TV Tropes will ruin everything for you. I’m not kidding. That site is a massive time sink (but also excellent and useful for analyzing storytelling). So. Beware, abandon all hope, etc.

Back to tropes. What are they? Strictly speaking, they’re figurative language — similes, metaphors, figures of speech, that sort of thing. But like a lot of terms, the word has mutated over time and now means rhetorical or literary devices, the techniques that are the basic building blocks of storytelling. Like Legos. You can use the same blocks (knights and princesses) to build a spaceship (Star Wars) or a castle (King Arthur).

So, what does storytelling require, anyway? Part 2

When we last left our intrepid hero on the road to narrative success, I was breaking down the four classic narrative tropes. Not just out of the goodness of my heart, though. Nope. Out of a desire to help make marketing that doesn’t suck. And as luck would have it, there is an incredible of excellent marketing that concentrates on the next trope. So let’s take a look at…

Protagonist vs. Society, ie: The Man Can’t Keep Me Down (Unless We’re Talkin’ Orwell Because In That Case Yikes), Fighting the Good Fight, Plucky Hero Battling Overwhelming Odds, Me vs. An Entire Culture Set Up For Folks Who Are Morning People Where Is My Coffee