 Welcome to World Camp Milano 2019. The first speaker of today is Ivana Chupovic, Digital Marketer, PR, and self-assertant. She has been an organizer of World Camp Europe Berlin, 2019. Thank you. And is an active member of the World Press Community. Today, she will talk to us about web storytelling and how to do it properly both for humans and for science and science. So, let's start. Thank you very much. So, bon giorno tutti. And that's about it with my Italian. I'm very happy to be here today. This is my first time at World Camp Milano and the city of Milano. So, I'm very happy to be here. I have a little stage fright because I'm opening today's camp. But at the same time, I'm very happy because my talk is, oh, hi there, my talk is about storytelling, which is something that brought us all here today. And throughout the day, you will hear many stories. And I invite you to pay attention to what people are saying, what kind of stories they are sharing, and try to discover the type of story they are talking about, which is something that I will share with you in a little bit. So, we are here today to talk about stories, in a way to use them to promote yourself, your businesses, your work, and to get benefit of it, whether it's self-recognition or promotion of your work, your business, your attracting new clients, whatever that might be. And at the very start, I would like to begin with this quote from another tech guy, Paul Jarvis, who said that everything can be a story, you just got to tell it. And I truly believe that each and every one of us has a story to tell. And it's something that we've been using from the beginning of time. Like, we grew up with stories through our parents, through our grandparents. Even today, this is my kind of story, something I share with you. So, we are gathered here to talk about how to use the structured story to tell your business, to tell what it is that sets you apart from your competition, and to get results, driven results. Now, I'm sure you've heard about this sentence, this claim. But have you ever wondered, what does it mean? Like, for me, I find this sentence a bit called too generic, and this claim is like uninspiring even for me. Because what is behind this sentence, content is king? For me, it's about the context, not the content itself. Because any type of content, whether it's photo or visual, any kind, combination of words or video, it's the context that matters. And that context is actually storytelling. The way we use our words, our visuals to share, whether it's our emotion, or to explain some complex information, shared knowledge, useful tips and tricks, which we all will do here today. So, when I hear this content is king, actually I'm talking about storytelling, because it's the core essence of every content, is and should be at least storytelling. Now, this is something I came up with some time ago when I was searching how to portray how people see storytelling, people who are not familiar with this subject. So, for the outside world, storytelling is portrayed as something, a bit of bragging self-promotion. But the truth couldn't be much more far from it, because storytelling is a skill. It is a skill that you use to provoke emotion, to get people to act upon what you're saying. And it's not something like, hey, look at me, I'm the great performer, I'm killing with making websites or I do great copywriting, no. Show people the way that you do business or your product or your services are helping people. And that's the core of storytelling. To persuade people how by using your special skills, your products, your services, is actually helping them solving their problem or making their lives even better. And with that in mind, oh, this is okay. Apple, Airbnb, Coca-Cola, Lego, Nike, the one thing they all have in common is that they all built their businesses with stories because Apple doesn't sell devices, it sells power and a lifestyle as well as Coca-Cola. It's not a drink, but like vivid lifestyle. Lego doesn't sell toys, it sells imagination. And I would add one more brand on that equation and that is WordPress, because WordPress doesn't sell platform for your websites, but as I think of it, reliable and safe home for your stories, whatever they might be. And because we are here on World Camp Milano, there is a big part of WordPress that is engaging in storytelling, which we'll talk about a bit later. And knowing all that, what is, how can we use those tips and tricks I will share in storytelling itself to promote ourselves and to get value from it? There are like basic seven types of stories you can use to portray your visions, your goals, your businesses and to promote them through storytelling. Now these seven types, it's not something that I invented, it is based upon a research of the thousands and thousands of professionals and writers. So they came up with these basic seven types, which are the underdog or the hero story, which is something that you will use to describe you or your business as a hero and some problem or the way you are conducting your business or some obstacles are the villain and how are you overcoming those obstacles and becoming the better person or better professional or the obstacles can be something, some problem or issue your customer or target audience has. Describe, use this type of story to describe the way you and your business is solving problem to your customers and then you have this hero or the underdog story. Then we have the quest story, which is a story about let's say you have some goal, desire, some idea and you want to make it happen. Describe the ways or the steps you use to make this dream come true. So that would be the quest story and it is informational type of story. It is something that your target audience can learn from. So by sharing your knowledge, your path, you are helping your target audience and at the same time, you are making them realize humans behind your business and they can connect easier with you. Then you have the classic journey return type of story and that is the story you coming out of the comfort zone. It can be something like my story. I wasn't from tech industry. I am a mother of three. I am totally in the marketing industry and somehow along the way, I started learning about the ways I can share my story and be more out there to the target audience. So I discovered after many, many other platforms, I discovered WordPress and learned to use it in a way that helped me share my story to more people and to more targeted people. So that can be the journey return type of story. Then we have Rags to Riches story type of story. That is Cinderella or ugly duckling or even opera. Like how think of the ways their path is and how they bloom out of nothing. So again, it can be something that you found yourself in the totally unknown situation and rise above. Comedy type of story. That is something that can be funny anecdotal story about your business, your beginnings or something just for fun because no matter how hard we try to inform people about ourselves, our businesses, what we do, sometimes it's just fun and helpful to share something that is not all that business related. Just go out there and talk about some funny situation, let people connect with you in that way to humanize your brand. Then we have a tragedy type of story which is a classic story like don't do this or you will regret it. That's the type of story you will use if you perhaps crashed your client's website. So describe the steps, what did you do wrong? It's a classic failure story but also it's something that people can learn from and you are helping them along the way to not make the same mistakes you did. Then we have a rebirth type of story which is a classical tragic story but with a happy ending like how you did mess up your client's site but you learn to quick fix it and how you did it. Then those are like tips and tricks you can include in that story to help again help people understand it better and along the way you are showing them that you are human. You are not some developer robot who are just doing codes and numbers but you are making mistakes and you learn from them. So by sharing those type of stories you show yourself as a good professional but at the same time you are educating some future developers or business owners with the stuff you did. And those types of stories you can use any or each of them to portray what it is that you do but it's not enough. Those stories that you tell needs to have some more elements and it is something that I will share now. Good story is something that first of all, good story is simple. You tell your story by using tone of voice your audience uses. You are all professionals here and you talk very specifically but outside of your bubble common people don't understand all those equations, coding, whatever that is that you do and use in your everyday's language with your colleagues. So use the tone of voice your target audience uses. Make your stories very easy and easily readable and understandable. Again, good story provokes emotions whether it's happy you want to make people happy or you want to rage them. Whatever your end goal with the story is provokes some kind of emotion. Those are all triggers that will make your story more memorable. A good story is honest and trusting. You don't want to and it's real or at least it sounds real because you don't want to make your story a bit of fairytale and sci-fi that no one will connect with or believe it. So always talk about from your perspective but always think about the end user or the reader, the target audience. What it is that you want them to do with your story whether it's to understand it better or whether it's to know your work, your business, your product. How can it help them in their lives? And it needs to be relevant to the target group. Again, if you are building websites and you are building websites like niche targeted websites for let's say photography professionals, you don't want to talk for and to share stories for mommy bloggers because it's not relevant for them. So make your stories as more specifics as you can to reach that target audience. Now we covered the typo stories and the necessary elements but is it enough? Like you will, you know what to write about, you know who are you talking to and you came up with great typo story to share but is it enough? Of course not. Because your stories, we are talking about online storytelling. Internet opened us a huge amount of possibilities to and it's helping us share our stories even wider. So with that in mind, we need to optimize our stories for both people and search engines because no matter how great story you came up with, if it's not optimized for web search, you won't get the results that you need because you might miss the opportunity to get discovered on Google or any other search engine. Which is why I want to share some quick and easy, semi-easy, on-page SEO tips and what it is that all of you can do with your stories to polish them up and make them even better and more discoverable on Google. And this is something that I came up with during recent years, like the anatomy of the perfectly written text, no matter is it your story, blog post, an article, the basic necessary elements, every type of story needs to have in order to be discovered on search engines. Now, this is part of on-page SEO and it is something that you, any of you, can do with your content on your websites, on your blogs. But just doing this, it's not enough. Your website needs to be like, hosting needs to be fast, servers needs to be fast, technical SEO needs to be done properly. And then this, which will make you stand out and be more discoverable on search engines. Of course, if you did your keyword research right and get the right target audience. So let us start. The headline is the main thing you need to worry about. After you've written your story based upon the research and the right key phrase that your target audience uses and that you want to compete for, you need to think about the way to use that key phrase in the headline to be reliable, relevant and natural in the headline. Headline doesn't need to be click bait because it's something, you all seen it, it's something Daily Mail and all other Daily News use to grab people's attention, but they don't provide value. If you use click baits, be sure to deliver the promise from that click bait itself. So the headline needs to be very concrete, very specific to have the desired key phrase in it. And it needs to be, the length of it is about 60 characters. Or the key phrase needs to be in that 60 characters because it's the length of the visibility in the search result. Then we have meta description, which is something many people overlook, like, okay, I will put one or two sentences in it and that's that. Meta description is like a hook. It is something that promises to reader, to people who use search engines that they will find the answer if they click on your result. So make sure that, and the length of it is about 140 to 160 characters. Make sure to put the key phrase in it as well, if it's natural, and to make it stand out, give people the reason to click on your result and not on someone else's. Then the content itself. Your story, if you did your research well and you know what you're talking about, don't shy away from the length of the story. People, no matter how busy we all are, if it's something that interests us, we will find the time to read no matter the length of the article or the story is. So put yourself out there and write as long as you can or as long as it needs to be written, like whatever that is that you want to say, don't shy away from the length of it because people from ones want to know. And the other thing, Google likes longer articles. There was in 2016 a research of about 10,000 result on the first page of Google and approximately length of the articles that are on the first 10 spots on Google, on the first page are 1,600 words. So Google likes longer articles. Another thing, you need more space to go as much in details as you can. You can say and share your expertise or whatever is that you want to say with your story in like 300, 400 words. I mean, that doesn't bring you value. Not to mention that the story with less than 300 words is considered to be a spam, doesn't provide value. So make sure that your content is well written it takes you don't shy away from the length and use, don't just use words. Use the help of the photographs or other kind of visuals like infographics or video because you can even tell more specifically your story with them. People connect with the photograph much easier than the words sometime, but also it's another benefit because you can get discovered with images as well by explaining your what it is on that image, image alt tag that is called. Describe what it is on that image and maybe you won't get discovered via regular search but via Google search people will find you. So that's a bonus as well. And then when you wrote your story in that way provided value for the target audience like answer the question, help them understand what it is that you do and how that what you do can benefit them and make their lives easier. Then and only then at the end you will put call to action, ask something in return whether it's you want them to share your story or to ask you some questions or you want them to sign up for your newsletter or buy an e-book whatever is that you want with that story and from them, you will put at the end because you have to give something first in order to ask something from them. And then of course afterwards you need to make your story more shareable which includes put all those sharing buttons make people easy to share your story like user experience needs to be that easy and by doing all that you congratulations you just did your own page SEO and helped your story stand out from the crowd. So whatever type of story you use this is the way to polish them. Also when you write longer articles it's helpful to use bullet points to like break those big chunks of text with some subheadings and bullet points to make people easier to scroll and to like read your story because if you have just a chunk of text it's not very engaging and people will lose interest like the break it with a photograph with the bullet points and subheadings also that is something that Google likes and it's more easier for their algorithm and spiders to like scroll it and to index it in that way. Now that we done that there's also numerous tools we can use to further polish our stories and to help us stand out even better because and the very first I use I mean it is something that is very helpful to you all I'm not an English native speaker so I need to rely on tools I can use to help me in proof reading and English grammar. So Grammarly is a tool I use on a daily basis because I have numerous foreign clients that I write for so you can use it either free or premium to correct your grammar and your writings on English I highly recommend it it's really a life saviour if you are writing content on English. Hemingway app also it is something that it's free tool that you can use to scan your story in a way if it's readable enough easy understandable to your audience it checks if the length of the sentence is too long if it's too complex it will notify you with the different colors help you make it more understandable. Canva and picture picture charts are tools to help you make better visuals and to make infographics whether you don't have a designer or you don't want to pay them sorry you can use tools like this to really help you if you are just starting your business and don't have a budget Canva and picture charts are tools to use to help you with your any type of visuals for that accommodate your story and of course talking about shareability because even Google needs help in that matter social media some say are not SEO type of signal but I think it is because the more people share your stories it indexes Google itself some kind of signal that that story matters and it will give some more juice to it and more visibility in time. So go on social where your target audience is connect with them and share your stories there as well. Pinterest and Snapchat are a way to discover relevant topics and to see what type of stories people want to connect with today because we are getting younger and younger target audience like today's kids will be our tomorrow's customers we need to understand the way they want to connect and interact with the content in order to serve them our stories properly and I would like to add one more tool there which is something that I've been using since 2012 and that is WordPress not because this is a work camp Milano but I've been using all sorts of CMSs out there I started with the blog spot like in 2005 and six then went on to Joomla I worked with type of three like I've been all over the place and I really couldn't connect with all those platforms in a way that I did it with WordPress which really makes made my life and my work that much easier. Today I have about 10 websites that I own and work with my own not my clients and then client websites so I really needed a reliable CMS that I could use that I could let's say share my knowledge about with other colleagues so that I wouldn't need to rely on programmer for any type of work that I needed to done. Joomla didn't work for me, I worked with it three years and it was really, really disastrous and the moment I transferred my sites on WordPress like that was the beginning of everything and exponentially rise for me what I like about WordPress is that it's initially free you don't need any money to work with it you can like only buy a domain and buy hosting and start building your site you can build your site on WordPress yourself like there are tons of useful tutorials and thanks to you to open source community we can all learn to do it ourselves. The amount of themes of plugins or widgets we can use it's really something that is made my life easier not to mention that WordPress is very SEO friendly which is also something that I debate with other SEO professionals because they tend to say that WordPress is not SEO friendly but I know for a fact that it is because all of you are doing and making it better by following Google's tips and tricks and ways to make the code reliable not to mention Yoast uses day-to-day collaboration with Google to make their products SEO friendly so really it is something that made my life very easy and of course thanks to Gutenberg it all made me make it and work within it with more fun. Now I don't know the backend of story with Gutenberg and what it is that it drives developers crazy but for me as a content creator Gutenberg really helped me to play around with content much more than the old WordPress editor did so there's a plus another two and in a way to let's say put money where my mouth is American expression I want to show you few examples to know that the system works the stuff that I talked to you about briefly now really works you've all heard about Yoast and their Yoast conference SEO conference and when you type Yoast Con SEO tips the very first two results are my results that I did for a client of mine so not Yoast, not Yoast Con conference me like this is 10 days ago I did a hidden like Google search and this is articles I wrote for colleagues of yours max team developers which are my Serbian guys that I discovered while using some of their teams and then we got to know each other started working together so I did the research what it is that some of their target audience needs to hear to know wrote about these very specific yes, Yoast Con conference tips because people want to know what it is that is relevant in new and to implement it on their businesses so by using type of stories that I described and by optimizing the articles and the stories in that way I managed to not only for 2018 but for 2019 as well to go on the first two results on Google but there's an even better example like search snippet it is like you can't pay for this Google search snippet is something that Google puts above the result one so again, an article I did for max which is embed Facebook video on WordPress and Google found it so much trustworthy that it put it as a top result when people search for it and as you can see there's me then people also ask and there's WordPress beginner which is alpha and omega in the content world and in the world of sharing stories and I somehow was managed to go even higher than them also by using the type of stories I told you by doing my research to the right target audience using the tone of voice those people use and by using the tools I've described such as Grammarly it is a huge, huge help if you are working with the international audience and you want you are talking with them in English use Grammarly or any other relevant and similar tool because people really pay attention to the way you talk and share your stories you don't want to be misjudged or to sound unprofessional so Grammarly is a must if you are working in English and just not to think that this is a mistake here's another snippet again for max photo licenses because they have one of their premium teams is targeted to photography professionals and of course it is a huge, huge deal to know about photo licenses or even for bloggers too often we see that people just go on Google search type something relevant for them and take any photo from Google but it's wrong, it's not legal and you can get fine for it so this is an article that was really informational for targeted audience to understand what are photo licenses and how they can use knowledge of this to discover free photos they can use or in what amount they can use them so now you know the system works if you implement anything that I told you today about and try to write your stories in a way to use typo stories I shared to use elements and include them in your stories then there is no way you can't be that good as I did again I'm not native English speaker but I somehow, not somehow by my knowledge managed to get these and many other results in the first, on the first page and among top three, top five results on Google so if I can do it, all of you can just you need to know how and this is something that we briefly discussed now and I would like to finish this talk with another quote started with quote finishing Seth Goding, big entrepreneur from America who said that marketing is not longer about the stuff that you make but the story is you tell people don't trust advertising they don't trust commercials and promotion over promotional content but they do tend to trust the stories that you share don't, when you share your stories don't talk about your products and yourself per se talk about solution you bring talk about the way you can ease people's pain and help them in their everyday's lives and in that way, in that matter if you can do it then you are one or two or three steps closer to turning those target audience into future prospects your clients, your colleagues, whatever so I hope you enjoyed in this talk as much as I did thank you for your time and now we have some briefly time for questions if you pick my brain we can sum up something more, thank you yeah, she took come on, don't be shy, questions I love questions I'm for a small question thank you, you have a very good talk very interesting and informative points thank you one question I have is about the technical SEO so, you know, they say Google is too smart in like recent years that it does it does semantic understanding of the content of the pages so, some people say SEO is not relevant anymore which I disagree, of course but I wanted to know what is your idea okay, I disagree as well I mean, people who say that SEO isn't important are the people who don't have time or knowledge or willingness to work with it because it's something that scares them and possibly something that they don't want to mess up with but the truth is SEO is really highly important from the technical point of view which is something that you need to have clean code a well-developed website that needs to be responsive quick load, all of those stuff are important as much as this on-page SEO to make your content stand out because if you have a slow website people will go away and then there is a higher bounce rate and they won't come back then if it's not responsive everyone of us uses mobile phones so we want our information very easily visible on mobile so all of that is important like it's essential just like Google Analytics you put at the very beginning of building a website and sharing content you need to have all SEO aspects in order for your website to work and your content to be visible and shareable and they wouldn't have that good results they would possibly come on, I don't know third or fourth page of Google but not on first it's not possible to get without optimization because Google works on search queries and it is our job to understand that and to guess and to research those search queries from our relevant targeted audience in order to produce content in a way that they would like to read it and also to optimize it in a way that Google understands it and to put that with the specific keyword in a search query and to show it on top thank you more questions? Thank you very much