Some might say that working in the soundbooth at church has ruined the way I look at movies, TV programs, and any other productions. I never realized how much goes on behind the scenes at church until Chuck, my friend and brother in Christ, invited me to start working with him back in the A/V room at church. I hadn’t noticed lighting changes with scenes, for example. I had never worked with ANY mixing board before, much less the 40-track one we have. MediaSHOUT, the system we use to send content through the projector and mixing board was just as daunting.

In 2006 I had been creating content through my own podcasts and blogs, and Chuck was well aware of it. In September 2005, after podcasting for less than a month, I recorded and produced audio from a domestic violence awareness walk we participated in. Ever have one of those projects you’ve worked on that you felt just had to be told?  Chuck heard this episode and complimented me on it. He said it reminded him of something he might hear on NPR. You can judge for yourself The Cheryl Dawson Memorial Walkathon.

I’ve been spending time in this specific behind the scenes environment for five years now, but for as long as I can remember I’ve been fascinated by what it takes to tell great stories that resonate with others.

You might say it’s ruined my DVD watching. Well, not my DVD watching. I put the disc in and immediately go to the Special Features so that I can see the “making of” featurette. My family, on the other hand, would much rather I just play the film. Or I’ll look up the Trivia page for it on IMDB.com and share it with my wife, who then says, “Can’t we just watch the movie?”

Seeing how others create inspires me to create more myself.

Can you relate?

This post was written entirely on my Droid phone. Another experiment in content creation!

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Cover via Amazon

You… are a professional communicator, parent, family member, teacher, friend, or just someone who wants what you say to be remembered. But, you ask, how do you do that, exactly?

MADE TO STICK

In their book Made to Stick (affiliate link), brothers Chip and Dan Heath describe their journey of analyzing messages that have stuck with us. They looked at urban legends, proverbs, and other forms of communication that people across history have been able to remember.

They have been able to identify six characteristics of messages that persist. They even came up with a handy, sticky acronym to help us remember them: the SUCCESs.

Let’s look at these elements and find ways to make our messages memorable, whether they are blog posts, announcements, instructions, or even words on a cover letter or resume.

SIMPLE

Simple messages are not dumbed-down or made stupid. They hit the core of the matter. In the military, the commanding officer does not need to tell the entire unit how to get to the top of the hill before sundown, he just tells them to do it. That’s the core of his message – it’s simple and easy to understand.

Not like some company mission or vision statements, unfortunately.

Complete this proverb: “A bird in the hand is worth _____.”*

You know the answer because it’s a proverb. Again, simple doesn’t mean dumbed-down – it’s got the complexity removed from it.

Twitter is a great tool to help us with this. Can you get your point across in 140 characters or less? If not, then forget about it.

UNEXPECTED

Was the title of this post a bit provocative? In January, the New Media Cincinnati social media networking group held a panel discussion about online. We wanted to get people’s attention. So we came up with the title: “Naked on the Web! How’s YOUR Privacy?” It got a lot of attention.

Our messages need that dash of unexpectedness in order to get attention and be memorable. Think about the urban legend about the guy waking up in an icy bathtub with his kidneys removed. That’s unexpected!

CONCRETE

In order to make our messages clearly understood, we need them to be concrete. When we start talking about how many calories we need in our diet, the number doesn’t mean anything. But show us how much food that is, and we’ll understand. The President can talk about removing $100 million from the US budget, and that seems like a lot of money (it is, relatively speaking). But compare that with the total national budget with a nice graphic visual, and it makes more sense to us.

After the earthquake in Haiti last year, we were given the ability to send a text message and donate $10 to help the cause. Breaking it down in a simple, concrete way, makes it easy to remember and act on.

CREDIBLE

Our messages need to be believable in order for them to be remembered. Doctors and other medical professionals have some built-in credibility by nature of their profession. In some cases, we need to borrow from someone else’s credibility as we share our message.

And sometimes, the average person can have credibility himself or herself. Remember Clara Peller’s character in the Wendy’s “Where’s the Beef?” commercials? She was able to say what we all wanted to say, and that gave the message its credibility.

EMOTIONAL

For our messages to be memorable, they need to hit us emotionally. This is one reason, why, when we see PSAs asking us to help out impoverished areas of the world, they tell the story of a single individual and what our donations would do to help him or her.

Our individual messages may inspire compassion, outrage, guilt, anger, resentment, or any other emotions. I’ve noticed over time that some of the most popular posts I’ve written over here are those that get the biggest emotional response from others.

STORY

Weave all as many of these elements as possible into a story, and chances are we’ll have a sticky message. We remember stories more easily. Children love to be told stories – Aesop’s fables have remained popular over the years. So have the parables that Jesus told.

I encourage you to read Made to Stick. You can get a copy from the affiliate link here, check it out from your public library, or, like my friend Andy did, borrow a copy from someone else. Our SUCCESs in communicating a message that will be remembered by others depends on how many of these elements are in them.

Make them sticky!

Related articles

• Made to Stick Learning (eideneurolearningblog.blogspot.com)
• When you communicate – are you memorable? (psychologytoday.com)
• Leadership Hall of Fame: Dan Heath, Coauthor of “Made to Stick” (fastcompany.com)

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Last week I gave a talk at the Job Search Learning Lab (JSLL) in Anderson Township here in Cincinnati, Ohio. They had requested that I speak about blogging, specifically in getting started with a WordPress.com blog. I recently checked and realized that I have created over 15 blogs since I first started back in 2002. Many of those are fallow or have otherwise been shelved.

I used the occasion to try out the Prezi.com presentation software.  Check it out below, or directly at the Prezi.com website here:

For more information about me, the work that I do, speaking that I’ve done, please check out my About page at http://danieljohnsonjr.com.

Related articles

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• Lessons learned from creating my first presentation with Prezi (mindmappingsoftwareblog.com)

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For the longest time, people keep asking about the ROI (Return on Investment) of social media. I remember in a Community Chat on Friendfeed a few months ago, Olivier Blanchard mentioned he needed to put together a Basics of Social Media ROI presentation to share. While browsing the Marketing Over Coffee website, I noticed they linked back to it.

Here’s Olivier’s presentation from Slideshare:

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Earlier this summer I got an opportunity to talk to a group of people in the Cincinnati Social Media community about the How I Got My Job project for one of their Open Mic Nights. If you’re not part of the LinkedIn group, and you’re into social media in the Greater Cincinnati area, you should join.

It was an interesting time for me, because

1. I had recently been laid off the month before
2. I was running Kevin Dugan’s UStream channel for those who were unable to attend and to create an archive of the individual speakers’ talks.

Below is the UStream video of my talk, followed by the slides I used, so that you, too, can follow along.

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What Visualization Tool/Software Should You Use? – Getting Started | FlowingData.

This should help me with my love for data. You others reading this might also want to check out the link.

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As part of my role in helping run the audio/visual systems at church, the leaders of the song ministry asked me to put together a slideshow for tomorrow’s service for the traditional carol, “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen“. We’ll add this to the script we have in MediaSHOUT with the other items.

I’ve uploaded the slides to Slideshare, and, since it’s a traditional carol, feel free to use as you see fit.

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Here is the presentation I gave at Podcamp Ohio, entitled “Managing Multiple Online Identities“, and the folks from Coefficient Media recorded the audio and have posted it to the Podcamp Ohio Podcast.

UPDATE: I found a link to the video for this presentation at Viddler: Daniel Johnson, Jr. at Podcamp Ohio 2008

| View | Upload your own

Thank you to everyone who attended the session! I feel like I learned at least as much from you as you may have learned from me.

The presentation has been getting some buzz from others in the blogosphere:

• PodCampOhio – Daniel Johnson Jr. – Managing Your Online Identities
• Introduction to Pod Camp…
• Managing Multiple Online Identities (Podcamp Ohio)
• So you think you can blog

Some folks mentioned the presentation on Twitter:

• RobRutkowski: Attending Managing Multiple Online Identities presented by @danieljohnsonjr.
• sMoRTy71: @danieljohnsonjr is having everyone introduce themselves. Nice mix of people in this session.

• shannanb: @podcampohio Just met the man- @danieljohnsonjr He’s presenting a session on managing online identities.
• theRamenNoodle: pod @danieljohnsonjr has a packed out house for his talk on managing multiple identities. I better go see what my other ones are doing.
• Argon52: My friend @danieljohnsonjr is looking hot during his talk right now! Boo yeah!
• sMoRTy71: http://twitpic.com/2w4m – @danieljohnsonjr just showed the Profilactic home page during his session.
• shannanb: @danieljohnsonjr presentation on managing multiple online identities. Great presentation. Learned a lot.
• tw3nty3ight: Great session from @danieljohnsonjr It was a good time!
• kilodelta: @danieljohnsonjr Good luck with your talk! Wish I could be there, but knowing you, there will be a recording!
• ays: really enjoyed @danieljohnsonjr preso!

I also set up an RSS feed for the PodCampOhio Social Media Firehose, in case you want to track all the social media conversation related to PodCamp Ohio.

Also, if I’ve missed your link and you’d like me to include it, please leave it in the comments. Thanks again!

[IMG] “Startin’ the day with @DanielJohnsonJr” by AnnOhio

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Check out my other blogs:
Daniel Johnson, Jr.
Get That Job!
Journey Inside My Mind Blog
HowI Got My Job
QuotesBlog
Twitter.com/danieljohnsonjr
Connect on LinkedIn
Interesting Things I’ve Read

Related tags: daniel+johnson+jr podcampohio social+media presentation public+speaking

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