What would engage you to write and share stories?

[Baaja]

Hey guys,

At the moment I'm working on this image campaign (in school) where the idea is to raise awareness about an event that is connected to a big company, but also to ultimately engage people throughout the campaign. Now, my group and I have thought of several good ideas, but the only thing missing is: what would engage people in writing and sharing their personal stories online and perhaps through social media. What benefits or incentives would people look for in order to take their time and write a personal short story and sharing it on the web? I would appreciate any fine help you guys can come up with, because I know that some of you like to write and share stuff on the Internet, therefore I'm trying to pin what would incentives you to write something that you are only half-interested in.

Thanks bros.

 

[Zeonix]

Ask "Why are you better than everyone else. Provide an anecdote that helps illustrate this point."

Stroking egos is usually incentive enough.

 

[Horatio]

Well, popularity, money, etc are obvious factors.

There are also others, like perhaps a personal 'thank you for writing' e-mail or whatever from the project manager would be nice.

Can't think of any more, but that's my two cents. Sorry if I didn't help you at all!

EDIT:
Diomedes got dis.

 

[Nebulisreconx]

Used to be people simply liked expressing themselves just for the sake of it alone. Now there has to be BENEFIT, has to be gain. It's all about self-interest these days. As Diomedes said, lull them into it. Perhaps.. with song?

 

[Baaja]

But if I were to say to you, that the stories should be about the company, the event or the city you live in..how would you create buzz/hype in order to get people to participate in social medias where this "sharing stories" is the big theme.

Btw, thanks guys for trying to answer and come up with something!

 

[Zeonix]

Pick one, and we'll work from there. Your question is too broad.

 

[Baaja]

Yeah I know, let me give you a better brief. You live in a certain city, which is the hometown of this great company. Furthermore, a certain event will be in the city, and the event is connected to this big and great company. The idea is to get people to show up to the event, but in order to do that, there must be some kind of buzz floating around and the idea was to use social medias to create this buzz. Now, the insights that our research showed was that frequent event goers rarely went alone to events and they wanted to share the experience and relive stories with others, something which made events memorable for them. In addition, when going to an event people would like to learn something new.

The difficult part is that we have three different interest groups specifying that they want to align the pride of the city and the company, they want to associate the emotions from the event to the company (a lot of interconnectedness) etc. So using our insights from research and the interest group objectives, the idea of "sharing experiences/stories" came to. Because through "stories" we can raise awareness and inform people about the beautiful city they live in, the long history and rich history of this wonderful company and the event which will take place. There are a lot of opportunities to really align all of these entities by stories created by us! HOWEVER, the difficult part comes when we want to engage people and have them write their own stories prior to the event i.e. get them to create this required buzz and hype, so that more people show up at the event and share the experiences through social medias. How do you incentives something like that?

 

[Zeonix]

Unless this company is curing death or something, this is a level of emotional manipulation and treachery that I'm actually physically repulsed by. I can not help you in this endeavor. Luckily the rest of the forum won't be so disciplined.

 

[Eon]

Play on the fear of people and have them think said company can relieve those fears. Turn them against something for an easy buck.

 

[Baaja]

Thanks for the help guys, even if some of you gave up really easily. I still appreciate the effort though. I probably wouldn't be so helpful if someone asked me for help. However, the guys in my team met up at my place, and we talked about it for several hours and we finally came up with a good idea in order to engage people. However, we totally moved away from them sharing their own stories. It just wasn't doable in the given situation.

Thanks again!

 

[Zeonix]

Thanks for the help guys, even if some of you gave up really easily. I still appreciate the effort though. I probably wouldn't be so helpful if someone asked me for help. However, the guys in my team met up at my place, and we talked about it for several hours and we finally came up with a good idea in order to engage people. However, we totally moved away from them sharing their own stories. It just wasn't doable in the given situation.

Thanks again!

TL: DR: **** you. Thanks for nothing, we did it without you.

Roger dodger.

 

[Baaja]

No, that's where you are wrong. It was your insights that provided us with an objective perspective, that the shit just wasn't doable. We were circling around the same idea for the whole day, until you guys showed up and made some valid points, influencing us to scrap the idea all together.

But I'm sorry that this didn't come across in my earlier post, but hopefully I cleared the misunderstanding.
The whole reason for posting was so that people would know that the issue was handled and so that people wouldn't spend unnecessary energy on coming up with an answer.

 

[Zeonix]

No, that's exactly what I'm not stating. It was your insights that provided us with an objective perspective that the shit just wasn't doable. We were circling around the same idea for the whole day, until you guys showed up, made some valid points so that we scrapped the idea all together.

But I'm sorry that this didn't come across my earlier post, but hopefully I cleared some misunderstanding.
The whole reason for posting was so that people would know that the issue was handled and so that people wouldn't spend unnecessary energy on coming up with an answer.

Why do people still take anything I say seriously?

Here's a smiley face:

 

[Baaja]

Hard to read between the lines on the web I guess :/ I'm a sucker for sarcasm and/or irony. Easy bait for trolls to be honest..

Thanks anyway!

 

[Zeonix]

I'll be legitimately pissed if it turns out you work for Halliburton or Academi, though.

 

[Baaja]

That is classified information... but I can tell you that this was actually a test.