Marketing skills you can Add during the Digital Divide era

As I celebrated another year on this planet last week and looked back on a life that started decades ago in Los Angeles, I was reminded of some other storytellers born in California.

But I'm not talking about people; I'm talking about innovative social media networks that are used to tell interesting stories nowadays.

Why have I been thinking about these storytelling platforms made in the Golden State?

Earlier this summer, one of the most unique insights regarding the future of the Communications industry shared in France at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity was mentioned in an interview with the leader of the event himself.

While speaking with Emmanuel Vivier and Vincent Ducrey, the co-founders of the Parisian digital thank HUB Institute, Cannes Lions CEO Philip Thomas made it clear that technology (such as Northern and Southern California-made storytelling platforms like Twitter and Snapchat) will play a bigger role in Communications for years to come. 

Thomas launched the Innovation Festival at this years' Cannes Lions "to acknowledge the fact that technology is now a very important part of Communications." 

He also highlighted the fact that most Cannes Lions winners this year had technology at the core of their work and added that "understanding technology and how it can help with your ideas and getting your ideas out into the world is a very big theme of Cannes."

Thomas will be back in France to speak further about this topic on-stage at the next edition of the HUB Institute's annual must-attend digital event HUB Forum in Paris on October 5-6. Meanwhile, the full interview with him where the above comments were taken from can be seen on YouTube courtesy of the Hub Institute at http://bit.ly/PhilThomasHUBLions.

The theme of this year's edition of the HUB Forum (Disrupt or Be Disrupted!) will be similar to the theme of this story: all about how being disruptive (i.e. creative) is important for Communications professionals in order to keep pace in this digital era and avoid getting left behind.

Like the old Californian days: me using Twitter to tell the story of the Hub Institute's HUB Forum in Paris in October 2014, just like at events during previous years in Los Angeles. 

Where do we go from here?

If you work in Communications, Marketing or Public Relations or related fields and are wondering which direction to go in now for inspiration, here is a hint:

Nowadays, the nature of the Digital Divide (see details here) is changing after times in the past when it solely meant a lack of access to technology for some people. It is becoming more about those who are not yet using the new technologies available (often because they don't know where to start).

So, I decided to write this story to showcase some of my favorite storytelling platforms from California that I've used or seen people use well in the social media era.

Below are my guides for using some of the best storytelling platforms born in California in the past decade that can help you tell stories using technology.

When you consider the research-backed prediction made last year by a leader in the Marketing industry—long-time writer and Contently Co-founder Shane Snow calls storytelling the top business skill of the coming years of this decade—the ability to tell stories in innovative ways (or hire people who can) is now more important than ever.

1) Twitter (Year of birth: 2006)

I believe Twitter is one of the most fun and effective platforms for sharing stories about what is happening at live events in a way that flows naturally.

The good news is things will get even better when the much-anticipated Twitter Moments (also known as Project Lightning) feature launches this year.

One thing I hear sometimes is "Twitter is hard to understand and use."

You can learn how to use Twitter to (better) promote your events in my two guides published this year, including one from this month which shows how to use Twitter's threaded conversations feature in a way that it was not meant to be used.

The latter is an example of the disruptive approach that the HUB Institute and other industry leaders recommend more communications professionals take in order to be more original.

This image I designed illustrates my approach to Twitter and life in general: it is best to be original.

How To Combine Online And Offline Strategies To Build Communities: 

 

How to Use Twitter’s Threaded Conversations for Event Marketing:

 

Find out here why arguably the best social media blog in the USA (Social Media Examiner) thinks Twitter should be used for event marketing creatively.

2) Storify (Year of birth: 2010)

Once you start posting photos, tweets and videos on globally popular social networks like Instagram, Vine, Twitter and YouTube, you'll sometimes need a platform to share all of this different content easily in one place.

Storify is that platform. It lets you transform all of these elements into one linear story (literally "storify" them).

I've enjoyed using Storify for several years (after discovering it thanks to Social Media Club Los Angeles President Serena Ehrlich) and presented guides on how to get the most out of it at marketing industry events in Paris and Tunis over the past year. You can find an excerpt of the presentation I made in Tunisia below.

 For examples of publishing on Storify, see my portfolio at Storify.com/CulturalMatters.

3) Instagram (Year of birth: 2010)

After noticing Instagram is a favorite social network among people around me, from Los Angeles to Paris, I had to write a detailed analysis of how an Instagram expert (Beardbrand) is having success on the platform by creating a community that is very active:

How etailers build their brands with Instagram

http://bit.ly/InstagramBrand

4) YouTube (Year of birth: 2005)

By now it is obvious that YouTube is where many people around the world share video: you have probably seen the statistics about the many hours of footage uploaded every single day.

If you haven't seen them yet: 100 hours of video gets uploaded to YouTube (which has one billion users) every minute.

But if you manage marketing for a brand that hasn't started using YouTube, the following tips can inspire you to be creative on the platform. They were shared in Paris at a 2015 HUB Institute event.

Ogilvy explores YouTube's potential at HUBDAY in Paris 

Even more options

I won't let my roots in California and the fact that I am glad to see the above home-grown platforms being used around the world prevent me from acknowledging other innovative platforms that originate from other places. The Paris and New York City-based Mention can make your life easier if you want to figure out how to track and make sense of all the content shared daily on many of the aforementioned social networks.

Below you can find my guide to using Mention, which was originally presented in February 2015 in a Mention webinar (which I called a "Mentionar" and is available on YouTube below and at http://bit.ly/Elias213Mentionar).

http://bit.ly/Elias213Mention

 

There are also plenty of other digital tools and resources created around the globe (like Contently and Socialbakers) that can help Communications professionals. I presented some in May 2015 in Dubai at the 4th International Conference on Communication, Media, Technology and Design (ICCMTD).

 

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Elias Jabbe is (clearly) a native of California who was inspired to discover more about the world's cultures thanks to growing up in California's most multicultural city (Los Angeles) and later decided to become a multicultural marketer.

After using his Californian storytelling skills to help various startups and other companies in Paris reach the Californian/English-speaking audience they were seeking, he recently decided to take on a new challenge and relocate to Dubai to continue his career in Marketing and PR. 

This adventure has included traveling from the Easternmost side of the Arab world (Oman) to the westernmost side (Morocco), discovering the cultural diversity within the MENA region and promoting it through photos and words.

He is still an active French-to-English translator: feel free to reach out in regards to your needs for translating French content and localizing it to better connect with Anglophone audiences.

For more information, see his website (Elias213.com), his portfolio (Elias213.Contently.com), recommendations of his work written in MENA's main languages (Arabic, English and French) on his LinkedIn profile and his Gulf Marketing Review magazine cover story about MENA's Digital Marketing trends (Bit.ly/Elias213GMR).

Feel free to reach out via email: Hi@Elias213.com.