So, I’m wondering now whether it is better to write as yourself instead of having a publication on Medium?
In the new app UI I see many publications titles and to be honest I don’t really want to read them, I’m more interested in seeing an article written by a person as supposed to written in a publication.
Whilst driving my car I often listen to a podcast or a book on audible. This particular day, I was driving to the railway station to catch a train into our nearest big city, Birmingham UK, I had some meetings planned with business owners and a networking event in the evening.
“It’s because of human suffering”, says the book’s narrator. All audible books are narrated of course and this particular book was being narrated by an english speaking voice, the voice of Kris Dyer. He was obviously chosen by the authors, who are the famous Dalai Lama and the not so famous Howard C. Cutler. In the summary of this book it says and I quote, “In this unique and important book, one of the world’s great spiritual leaders offer his practical wisdom and advice on how we can overcome everyday human problems and achieve lasting happiness.”
Yeah, me too, I pretend to be one also.
Allegedly 550k marketers on LinkedIn list ‘storytelling’ in their profiles. And yet creating content, case studies, adverts on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and Pinterest does not qualify you or me as a ‘storyteller’.
I’ve worked with advertising/marketing agencies and they still ask me to create animations that are explainer videos instead of stories. Bizarre and they’re supposed to be the ones that are good at storytelling.
It’s not just about the story either, it’s about how you dress it up. I am a follower of minimalism and one of The Minimalists, Joshua Fields-Millburn did a webinar on writing a few months ago (June 2018) and he explained it the best way I have ever heard it.
The first sentence you write is to make the reader want to read the second sentence, the second sentence you write is to make the reader want to read the third sentence, the third sentence you write is to make the reader want to read the fourth sentence…
You get the idea, every sentence has to be your best sentence in order to keep someone hooked. So when you’re writing a story script it would be a great suggestion to keep that in mind.
Put some characters into the story, real names, real personalities with a life and a mission. Make it relatable to the viewer, know your audience, you have to know your audience, better than they know themselves. If you don’t yet know enough about them then go and find out, lots of them are very happy to talk about themselves.
Happy storytelling!
I’m all for creating a positive vibe on the web but I’m astounded by the amount of good news messages that are littering the place. I am not suggesting for a moment that they are fake, but once we’ve witnessed when our contacts are sharing countless selfies, group colleague pics at conferences and award ceremonies, you kinda get the idea.
They just become more content we automatically zone out from.
We must become better all round storytellers instead of content junkies and with junkies I mean addicted to the need to post content. Less is more and so what if people are not active when you’re posting, post when you think of it and ditch the scheduler. Some of you may even be spending good money on those schedulers as I did too. Yes I’m totally guilty!
Now I’m more mindful about what I’m posting, more thoughtful about adding to my overall story, creating a narrative, sharing maybe small insights to my overall mindset and thought process, allowing my connections to get a better insight as to who I am.
But that’s just me, you must do what all the content sheep are doing, read all the books and download all the free content as to how the so-called gurus are doing it.
I totally know that my way is not necessarily the right way, it just suits me to be more authentic, honest and deliberate or on purpose.
Happy scheduling!
I heard a statistic the other day, every day 50,000 new blogs are started. In a working year that amounts to around 13 million blogs. The majority of those blogs are vanity projects, they are unlikely to be seen by anyone or rather be found by anyone.
Unless you are going to spend advertising dollars or pounds to get your blog seen it will probably become your little writing platform and that’s all.
Of course big corporates do spend millions promoting their blog or news channel, they believe that their customers or followers want to read their stuff.
Think about the amount of digital words you read in a day. I’m not talking about the Facebook posts, but you may wish to include that too. Yes, me too, I have no idea but if I were to make a guess it’s likely to be a maximum of 1000 words. That would be the very maximum. And yes I would include in to that any social media, although I’m no longer active on Facebook, so it excludes that, but I am including the Apple news app, which I scan very quickly.
Our attention span is suggested as being only between 8 and 59 seconds. I never understand why they give this spread, are we then supposed to calculate for ourselves the medium?
My personal guess is that it’s realistically around just 20 seconds and that’s exactly why I started creating a weekly cartoon, which is exactly 20 seconds.
Sure I’m still writing, but I have shortened my blogs considerably and yes for me I do believe they are my vanity project. I never wanted to blog, I didn’t consider myself as a writer and as English is not my first language I worried whether I would ever be able to pull it off. I’m pleased to say I have managed to train myself to write regularly now.
I did stop writing on my own blog and instead moved here to Medium as even though I don’t get that much engagement, at least the chances of being seen are greater.
Happy creating!
I've got 3 publications there so far. Medium allows me to be freer then I am able to be on either my own website blog or here on LinkedIn. There are other writers there who write great stuff, so I'm learning much more too. It allows me to have different publications, it feels a bit like having a book there, the book of me. I really enjoy being on Medium. Hope to see you there. https://medium.com/@stayingaliveuk
This is a daily blog post, quite short and to the point. It's basically about stuff I notice across the digital and the physical, which makes me want to make a statement.
This is our daily cartoon series. Well we publish on a Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I try and look out for topics in the daily news and take some sort of spin on it.
https://medium.com/michaelandjosh
Well this one was basically a copy cat from this blog, so not been updating that much lately. Will have to think where this one goes in the future.
https://medium.com/stayingaliveuk
I’m no author. I’d like to think I’m a storyteller but I’m more like a story facilitator, helping you to craft your best story and allowing your digital community to have a closer connection with you.
By far the biggest mistake I see people make is that they write profile summaries in the 3rd person, like they are a big celebrity and their agent has written a bio page for them. Maybe you’re a speaker and your agent writes it for you?
It creates such a distance between your reader, your audience and yourself, because it’s not personal and definitely does not create any sense of intimacy.
When you write a profile, bio or summary page about yourself, write as if you are sitting opposite someone, explaining your story. Of course share what you do in business, cool, but make it more personal because that’s the most interesting part of who you are.
Write WHY you do what you do, what circumstances, opportunities got you into what you are doing today or if you haven’t found what you wish to do yet, what is grabbing your interest the most, what aspirations do you have?
Share something personal about your life too, maybe how you have moved around, how that enabled you to see the world in a different light, what effect did it have on you?
Always write in the first person, ‘I’ instead of ‘She/He’.
Got it?