Digital Messaging and Creative Storytelling

Our weekly Community Calls provide peer support, discussion forums and guest workshops for retreat center leaders and allied organizations. Keep checking back for more of these videos here in our blog.

Just click the picture above to watch the video.

Kellen Manley joined us for an hour of Q&A, and revealed several basic guidelines he uses to create digital media content that will engage viewers across a spectrum of depth.

To funnel your audience into deeper and deeper engagement with your retreat center’s brand is a matter of diversifying your content, from daily posts on simple and broad topics, to specific in-depth stories about your space, your people, your passion, and your work.

Here are a few of Kellen’s ideas:

• Use video to bring people into your space; live-stream an experience on Facebook or Instagram.

• Be authentic. Share from your heart.

• Videos are the best medium for social media engagement.

• Keep it short and direct - 20 seconds or less if possible.

• You can only “fail up” in social media. Learn from what doesn’t work and keep posting.

• Sometimes the “off-the-cuff” ideas are the most successful. You can’t predict what will resonate most with your audience or bring you a new audience. Follow your passion.

• Tell the same story a little differently for different platforms - tailor it to the space.

More notes and an audio recording of this session are available at the link below.

Facilitators:

Kellen Manley, Digital Media Manager, Fetzer Institute

Justine Johnson, Associate Director, Kirkridge Retreat and Study Center