I speak all of the time about the importance of telling stories in business and in events. Stories help to create intangible value, they break down complex ideas and most of what we store in our brains are attached to a story. We’re hardwired to not only tell stories, but to learn from them and retain them.
Event Planners are fantastic at creating a story at the live event…providing experiences that create lasting memories. But the story shouldn’t begin and end face to face.
Storify is a tool that lets event organizers collect tweets, Facebook updates, Flickr photos, Youtube videos, RSS feeds pre- during and post-event to build a lasting narrative around an event. Just take a look at this Storify page for HIMSS (Healthcare Information & Management Systems Society). In one story they included speaker presentations, event photos, attendee comments, behind the scenes videos, etc.
Take a look at this mini-story I pulled together from Event Solutions Idea Factory tweets and video:
Storify Features:
- Pull content from Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Youtube, RSS or Google – it even lets you create custom links.
- In addition to pulling content, Storify lets you add text commentary and hyperlinks to contribute wider context.
- Edit your story even after it has been published (the embedded story will be updated everywhere that it’s seen online)
- When you pull other people’s tweets into your story, Storify allows you to notify them (encouraging further social sharing)
- You can publish your story easily to your blog or Mailchimp.
- You can easily encourage your attendees to create their own Storify pages for your event.
For more information, read Storify’s How to get the most out of your story.
How might you use Storify for your business / events?
[on READY2SPARK] Storify – a tool for Event Planners – http://www.ready2spark.com/2011/03/stori… #eventprofs
RT @ready2spark: [on READY2SPARK] Storify – a tool for Event Planners – http://www.ready2spark.com/2011/03/stori… #eventprofs
Cool. Thanks Lara! I’ve been playing around with Storify, myself. I was wondering, though, about using people’s photos. Do you think it’s ok to post photos that people have tweeted without asking them? Right now, I’m very careful about this, only using photos on my blogs that are on Flickr Creative Commons and always including attribution and a link to the photographer’s flickr page.
That’s great, Jenise!
I’m really glad you asked this question! As a blog author I take image sourcing very seriously (I wrote this post on image sourcing about a year ago: http://www.ready2spark.com/2010/06/bloggers-are-you-at-risk-of-being-sued.html).
Bottom line is whether you’re cutting and pasting a photo in your Storify timeline from someone else’s tweet or aggregating tweets from others, you would need to obtain usage rights from the original source or ensure the image has a Creative Commons (with appropriate attribution rights).
I have sent an email to Creative Commons and Storify to clarify this question, but as you can see from Storify’s Terms, they have clearly said that they are absolved of any responsibility for content you use in your timeline.
Lara
I love this idea to keep momentum after an event
I used to post photos on my website after an event and people would come to the site just to see themselves.
Fantastic! Make sure to share your Storify page when you have one complete – I may feature one in a future post.
I never really thought of the public relations business being labeled as a story, but I really like the idea! Everyone knows a book has different elements to create the plot, and I find it rather interesting that this applies when a person is creating a business. Businesses basically draw clients in by creating an image that is represented by different aspects of social medias, whether that’s blogs, Facebook, or even Twitter. Each of these social media forms is a story line for any business, and putting all the social medias together is what creates the storify.