Now, much as I love Family Guy, we all know that the fastest way to get from one point to another is in a straight line. If the stories that you tell follow this path (i.e., moving from the beginning, through the middle and on to the end without swerving off at a tangent), then they are linear.

In natural conversations with friends and family, our stories tend to wander. They take detours, they get interrupted, bits get forgotten, good bits get stretched out (sometimes beyond the bounds of truth). Occasionally, they end up in places we never expected to go to when we started the journey. It’s like that time when I was talking to Tony Wilson and Frank Sidebottom about how Northside would save pop music*. These are non-linear stories.

The business world loves a story teller. Particularly an authentic story teller. So now there are now lots of bits of software that let you amaze audiences with a non-linear presentations. We talked about some of these a while ago. We even hoped that they would improve. Sadly, they haven’t. And there are new entrants to the market, such as projeqt that let you pull in blog posts and feeds from the social web to help your story spin round with increasing non-linearity and, it’s makers hope,  authenticity.

The sad fact is that when we plan a presentation we still think in linear terms. More to the point, audiences crave linearity. They want to be able to follow the flow of your thoughts. And if you want them to accurately re-tell your stories, it makes sense to present them as logically as possible. If your story has a defined beginning, middle and end, it is much easier to recount.

I can only imagine what the ultimate non-linear presentation tool might look like. Perhaps it would require us to dump everything we have ever known or thought about or heard onto a server somewhere. It would have been trained to follow our usual set of stories to conjure the required audio-visual aid onto the screen behind us in perfect synchronicity with our diatribe. It would know who was in the room with us and whether they were secretly willing us to slip in a vignette about the first ever football match we went to. And it would always earn us a standing ovation.

In the meantime, it’s back to thinking in straight lines and putting in the hard work to be engaging and authentic people.

*Actual, honest-to-goodness true story. Don’t forget to ask me about it next time you see me.

Of course, if you’ve already tried that you’ll know that it isn’t so simple.

We believe that all aspects of every businesses are social. Have you planned for that? How easy is it for people to talk about your products? Your services? Your customer service? Your sales pitches? If you don’t plan for how people will talk about what you do, you’re leaving it up to them to invent their own stories. And if you do that, you’ve just lost control of your business.

We will help you to prepare your business for the increasingly social world.

Ideas spread. Good ideas spread quickly. Overnight successes are everywhere and it’s understandable that you want a piece of it. But it’s worth remembering that “overnight success” is a very subjective term. In spite of the increasing speed of the real-time (whatever that means) world, an overnight success still takes about six years of hard work. If you don’t believe me, ask the founders of Twitter, which is six years old this year.

If your ideas aren’t spreading quickly enough for your liking, try another idea or a different target. Whatever you do, don’t try to force it. Desperation doesn’t spread at all. If you’re running out of new things to try, give us a call. And if your idea of success is getting a million views on your YouTube video, we really need to talk.

Whether you meet people in real life or online, you need a story to tell them. We will help you create stories that will be easily understood and easy for the people you meet to share. This is what we mean when we say that SOCIAL is about people, not platform.

Once people start sharing your stories, business becomes easier. And when business becomes easier, it becomes more fun. And people like sharing fun.

We like making things fun. Give us a call.

Advertising is Pay and Display marketing. Many of the services that make up the social web make their income from advertising. If you’d like to throw them some revenue, then by all means use their advertising services. They’re really good. They’re really flexible. They can help you to target your messages with amazing precision. They’re also pretty easy to ignore.

People are less likely to ignore great stuff. If you want to use the social web to promote your business for free, share great stuff. It can be anything. Videos work well. So do pictures. And don’t forget ideas. Ideas share really well. But the best thing to share is love. Love for your product. Love for your industry. Love for your customers. Love for your colleagues. People like love most of all.

Give us a call and let’s help people fall in love with you.

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