How to Connect with your Audience through Storytelling | Canva Webinar

So, welcome everyone. We're back today to continue our Design for Change Week here at Canva. Good morning from sunny Sydney. This is where we're [feeding] from. And you'll see I'll introduce Ronny, he's in [our space] in Sydney. My name is [Enza], I'm going to be your host today. But presenting today is Ronny Hermosa, Head of Communities and Nonprofit Education at Canva. So, Ronny has a wealth of knowledge working in the nonprofit space, and in particular in education, so [embrace] yourselves fo

r a great presentation. And I will hand over to Ronny to begin. (Ronny) Hello, hello, everybody. And thank you, [Enza], for this nice introduction. I would like to start by welcoming everyone, I've heard so many names of countries already, seems like we are international and I'm really flattered about this, I'm really happy that all of you are joining us today. We are going to talk about storytelling for social impact. But before that, I want to remind everybody here about what is Canva and what

is our mission and overarching goal, I would say. So, Canva, for those of you who don't know, is a design platform, and our mission is to empower the world to design. So, we want to make design very simple by being the most inclusive design platform out there, the easiest platform to use, so that everybody can use Canva for work, for fun, for a project, for achieving their dreams. Whatever they might want to achieve in terms of communication, we want to be there for them. So, that could be some

one who is only eight years old, someone who is 80 years old, we want to be the platform of choice for designers, make it easy for them. Before we start, I want to give a couple of announcements, housekeeping announcements. The number one is that we are being recorded, so that all of you can watch live but also, if you like what you are hearing, or if you find the information valuable, you can later come back to this presentation-- no only my presentation, but the ten sessions we are having duri

ng our Design for Change Week, so they will all be available on our landing page, which is canva.com/nonprofits. You can either type in canva.com/canva-for-nonprofits or canva.com/nonprofits, it will redirect to this link. I've tried it a couple of times so I know it works. Also, yes, we have been inundated with Canva love. So many of you in the communities but also from all over the world are joining this session, and that shows that there is an interest, and that is for us also very important

to see, that we are doing something that is meaningful for you guys, for our audience. And I'd like to start my presentation by dedicating my intentions, okay? So, it's kind of like when you sit down and you are going to meditate for 15 minutes, you want to dedicate your intentions so that that energy you are going to put into this goes in the right place. So, for me today, my intention is really to share as much as I can the knowledge that I have about nonprofits with all of you guys, so that y

ou can use that knowledge and amplify the already good work you're doing to promote your cause, to help the people you have decided to help with your nonprofits. So, that is really my intention and I will do my absolute best to provide you the best knowledge I can today so that you can use that and do more good in the world. So, that's really what I want to achieve with this presentation. Also, we have a very cool community on Facebook, it's called Canva Nonprofits Community on Facebook. So, if

you want to grab your phone right now and search, log in to Facebook and type in Canva Nonprofits Community, you will find our Facebook group. So, you might have to filter by groups but once you're there, you will see it is a private group, so you'll have to apply to become a member. But it's very easy, just answer the three questions and I will accept you. We have about 10,000 nonprofit professionals already in that community, and they share their Canva designs, they share tips, they share mark

eting tips also about how to promote their nonprofits, so it's a very engaged and fun community to be part of. So, I highly recommend you, if you work for nonprofit, if you want to learn more about nonprofits, get in there, just answer the three questions and I will be gladly accepting you in the community. Alright, so let's get the ball rolling. Let's kick up this presentation about storytelling for change makers, storytelling for nonprofits by saying a little bit about me. Why am I the right g

uy for talking to you about nonprofits and storytelling? Well, about ten years ago, I started my own nonprofit which is called Fair Trade Connection. So, Fair Trade Connection is a communication agency that aims at telling other nonprofits' stories. So, our goal for about eight years, my partner and I, was to travel around the world, and many of the countries I heard and as saying at the beginning of this presentation, from where you guys are from, I have actually been there and worked with othe

r social entrepreneurs and businesses. You can see here in Nepal, Indonesia, Peru, Bangladesh and Vietnam. So, our job was to get out there and work with these nonprofits in order to gather their stories so we can help them better explain what kind of impact they were making on the world. So, it was a lot of, you know, like video producing, a lot of photo, a lot of digital marketing. And this, I believe, gives me the right tools and the right tool set and experience to be here today and talk abo

ut how to tell stories for your nonprofits. Also, something that happened when I was working with these nonprofits around the world, I noticed that they were all having similar challenges, similar pains, you know, in terms of marketing, in terms of promoting their cause. And these pains were like they have a poor visual identity, or sometimes they have a pretty bad website that doesn't really sell and like they don't-- the website doesn't really convert or attract people, and also they were tell

ing stories in a pretty bad way, so poor storytelling skills. So, I decided, kind of by popular demand when I was working with these nonprofits, so I would typically spend a day in the field shooting interviews and B-rolls and making videos, and then at the end of the day, we'd come back to the office and they would ask me, "Hey, Ronny, we see that you know about Facebook and about social media. What should we post?" And so, I would sit around with them on the computer showing them like how to c

reate a Facebook post, how to create a story for Facebook. So, that's the first picture you see here on top of the screen. So, that's about-- I think it's 2010 in Tunisia, I was working with the dates producers. So, dates, the fruits. And then, about seven years later, the photo here at the bottom of the screen, it's me giving a keynote presentation at the World Fair Trade Conference in New Delhi, India. So, I was talking in front of professionals from the Fair Trade industry coming from 70 plus

countries. So, that's kind of the evolution of me trying to educate nonprofits about digital marketing globally, but also storytelling. And so, I did that for about eight years. And then, I decided, well, you know, I'm kind of tired of traveling every two months, I miss having a home, so I decided with my partner to settle in Thailand for a couple of years, we didn't know how many at this time, turned out to be two. But then, doing that, we also had to kind of reinvent the way we were making mo

ney. We couldn't-- like we had decided not to go to Bangladesh, Peru, Indonesia and whatever to make movies, because we were tired of traveling. So, we decided, okay, let's get into something else, something new. And the natural next step for us was to become online course creators because we had all this knowledge, we knew that nonprofits had this big demand for digital marketing and storytelling resources, and we knew how to make good videos, so we started creating online courses. And you can

see here in the middle, these are the six courses I currently sell on Udemy, which is a global marketplace for online education. And one of them is a Canva course. Actually, three of them are Canva courses. But the first one right here called the Canva Master Course became a bestseller on the platform and it became very popular. And at the same time, I started a Facebook group about Canva. And all of this grew to the extent that, at some point, Canva noticed me. They figured out, oh, who's this

guy? Like, he's talking about Canva, he has a course about Canva and that's-- So, that's how from one thing to the other I came to work here at Canva, kind of by casualty, like I didn't really apply to come here. But one day Cliff, who is one of the co-founders of Canva, he popped into my community and sent me a message on Messenger, said, "Hey, Ronny, we really like what you are doing. Would you be interested to join us and work at Canva?" And so, I came here, checked it out and I liked it, and

that's kind of how I became Head of Communities here at Canva. So, enough about me. Let's get into today's session, we have a lot to cover. It's a good thing we have two hours, I'm hoping we have time for Q&As at the end of the session. So, if you have questions, you can write them in the chat and Enza will collect them, and if we have time at the end of the two hours, I will do my best to answer as many as possible. So, by all means, leave your questions. Enza, if you think it's a good idea, y

ou can also interrupt me with questions, I'm happy to answer. Alright. So, what's on our plate for today? We have five points I would love to develop with you. The first one is what is storytelling and subtitled why are we doing it wrong. The second point that I'm going to cover is telling you two prerequisites that you need to do before you start telling your story. Next, we are going to jump into the heart of this presentation and I'm going to show you as best as I can how to craft authentic s

tories. Then, we will see how you can tailor your stories, and we'll see we have to tailor it to two different things. And finally, we'll discover where to share your stories, what to share on what platform, etc., so sharing your story. Let's get started. So, what is storytelling? Well, storytelling has become this marketing buzzword, you hear it everywhere, every business, every nonprofit is talking about storytelling. It's really become the new marketing, between brackets, right? But why is th

at? Well, the thing is that we live in a world which is saturated with content, there's so much content out there, there's so much noise on social media, on every platform, that companies and nonprofit organizations have to figure out how to cut through this noise, how to get their message across to their audience knowing that there's so much competition for people's attention, right? So, information overload, how do you cut through that noise? You might see a piece of cheese here on the slide,

so that's a little experiment I've been running. So, in this presentation, you will see some of my photos and you will see some stock photos. I personally think that stock imagery is a little bit cheesy. So, every time there's a cheesy stock image on my slide, there will be a piece of cheese. Next, this is probably why and the number one reason why storytelling has become such a buzzword, and that is taken from a quote which is super famous in the world of storytelling. If you take any course, i

f you read any book about storytelling, you are most likely to stumble upon this quote from Maya Angelou. And she says, "People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget what you made them feel." So, basically, she's saying that stories stick and facts tend to be forgotten. It is much easier for you to remember a good story rather than a piece of data, or what you've read on a spreadsheet, or some pure facts or statistics that you might have come ac

ross. Why is that? Well, another cliché when it comes to storytelling is that we are wired for stories. You know, we've been told stories since we were a child, even before we were able to read or write, we were hearing stories, you know, bedtime stories, everything is a story. And so, our brains, when they hear a story, they light up in different ways that they don't if they are presented with simple rational facts. So, that's one of the main-- I would say the main reason why storytelling has b

ecome this marketing buzzword is because stories stick. So, it's easier-- let me go back-- It's easier for companies to communicate via stories, because stories have special powers, and I've listed three of them, the three main ones, I believe. They help us understand. So, they have this capacity of making a complex concept simple. So, stories help us understand and remember. So, some of you may have watched a lot of TED talks or a lot of good presentations, and you might not remember what the w

hole presentation was about, but you would remember very vividly this one joke or this one story that the presenter-- that the speaker gave you or started the TED talk with, because it was told as a story or as a joke. So you remember that, it sticks. The second special power of your story is that stories grab and maintain your attention. That is also super important, an important way and-- yeah, an interesting way to cut through that noise and to get people’s attention, because really, today, i

t is about getting people's attention, competing with every other messages out there to be heard. And the third special power, which is also super important because it will lead to an action, is that stories touch emotions and engage us. That means stories make you feel things. That's what Maya Angelou was saying. You will never forget what you felt, because stories can make you feel things, because you relate to them, because they use metaphors, it generates feelings and therefore, it engages y

ou. So, what does this all mean for changemakers, storytelling for change makers? By story-- By changemakers, sorry, I include everyone working in the nonprofit sector as a social business, or even a conventional business like Canva with a social purpose, empowering the world to design. So, I include all these actors in this term changemakers, and I really like the word changemakers because a lot of times, what we are trying to achieve is to challenge the status quo and make things change in a w

ay that we believe is a more positive way. So, what it means is that storytelling moves hearts. So, in that manner, it inspires people to join your cause for social change. So, it helps you mobilize people to take certain actions and to act in a certain way so that they are joining you on your cause, on your travel to changing the world the way you have imagined. Alright. And one more thing before we move on to the next point is that the most important emotion that you are trying to generate wit

h your stories as a nonprofit-- as a nonprofit is that you are trying to generate trust, okay? Trust is really the name of the game, not only for nonprofits, I would say, for businesses as well, because without trust there is no transaction, basically. If people don't trust you, you won't get their money, you won't get them to work for you, you won't get them to-- to be a volunteer for your organization. And I have to say, trust is also what made me accept this job at Canva. Because Canva had so

me nice values and some nice, you know, values they stand for, but I wanted to double check like are they really living their values? Like is there this trust that is not just words on paper? So, I came here to check and then, when I was-- when I discovered that yes, I can trust, like people are really living by these values, so yes, that's what convinced me. That's just an example of what trust can do. A little bit of a warning here. Storytelling done wrong can really hurt your organization. An

d why is that? Well, the thing is, I've told you there is so much information out there and therefore, your audience is pretty time-poor, they are being bombarded with messages all day long. And so, if they have to read one more page, if they have to check out one more video or one more post on social media, you are consuming some of their time. So, time-poor consumers, time-poor audience. And if you come and you have your story but it's not good, or it's obvious that you are just using storytel

ling techniques in order to kind of drive your audience to point a to point b and take an action, if they can see that, if they can sense that, they say, “Oh, I think you're telling me a story here, you know, in a bad way. That is not good." And also, I'm going to give you two examples of storytelling done wrong. The first one is being the loudest person in the room. Companies or organizations being the loudest person in the room means, you know, these companies that-- or these organizations tha

t they understand they have to create content, maybe their boss have told them "We need to do content. We need more content, so go ahead and create content," and-- sorry-- and there is no strategy behind the content, there is no clear path of why they are creating this content and also, there is no understanding of the context in which they are sharing that content. So, typically, that would be an organization that would create a ton of content, five, six, ten different posts a day, and no matte

r where they are or what they are telling, they are pushing that content, they are pushing, pushing, pushing that content. An example in our Facebook Nonprofit Community for Canva, there is this organization that shares two or three posts per day and all the posts were about the amazing activities they were doing, the horse ride with the kids, the fundraiser that they just ran, and this and that, but no connection to either Canva design or even marketing for nonprofit, so they were not bringing

any value to the other members of the community, they were just trying to push their message. So, that's what I call being the loudest person in the room. And by the way, this is also a cheesy stock image. But I put a duotone effect on it, so it's a little bit less cheesy. Alright. The second mistake, the second way of doing storytelling wrong would be to copy what works for others. So, copying what works for others is very tempting, especially, if you have no idea of what to do or how to do sto

rytelling, but it is a big mistake. It is a mistake because, at the end of the day, you probably don't have the same budget. Because if you copy someone, it means you probably admire what they do. So, you would probably be tempted to copy the bigger organization, the charity: water, or the Oxfam, or the Amnesties, you know, sort of these big organizations that might have an entire team working on their communication, and you might not. So, by trying to copy that, you might get frustrated or you

might sound like you are not authentic, and that's really a big mistake. So, let me tell you a bit now about storytelling done right, okay? We've seen what you should not do, let's talk about what you should do. What you should do is to embrace your organization's uniqueness. That is the key, in my opinion, to tell stories the right way. So, embracing your organization's uniqueness. How do you do that? Well, how do you figure out your uniqueness? Well, ask yourself a couple of questions, like wh

at makes you you? What makes you different from all the other organizations? What do you do differently? And most importantly, try to really pin down the values you stand for. It comes down to the values-- I'm going to switch to this side-- It comes down to the values. And my next slide here is presenting the six core values that we have here at Canva. So, we have: empower others, be a good human, make complex things simple, be a force for good, set crazy big goals and make them happen and then,

pursue excellence. So, these are the six Canva values that-- I would say with confidence that if a project, if a person that wants to work at Canva doesn't transcend these values, doesn't seem like they are living these values, if the project that we're about to start doesn't work towards achieving one of these values, we'll probably not do it. Because my experience at Canva is that it is a company that is living its values and not just having them on paper, like many companies might have a ver

y pretty book or code of conduct with their values, websites, you know, the About page, but Canva is really living their values. And so, by knowing these values, I believe it's the core of your identity as an organization. And it comes also-- it's kind of steps into the branding world. Because, at the end of the day, what is your brand? I believe that your brand is your values wrapped in a pretty package. So, what does that mean? Well, obviously, your values is the foundation of what you're tryi

ng to achieve with this organization, it is the foundation of what you stand for. And wrapped in a pretty package is all the rest, it's all the branding, it's your visual identity, it's your logo, it's your tone of voice, it's the imagery style you use for presenting your photos, it's your color palette. All of these elements from the brand style guide or from your branding is wrapping your values so that it presents as a whole, as a brand. So, to me, branding is storytelling, because with your

branding you are already telling a story. We are telling stories, we are constantly telling the story of the brand across multiple channels. What does that mean? When I meet you at a conference, you give me your business card and I look at it and it's beautiful, it tells me a story. When I log into your website and it's completely messy, I don't find my way around, it tells me a story. When you look at my introduction of my next course that I'm about to launch and you like it because it makes yo

u laugh, it tells you a story. So, everything tells you a story. Stories are everywhere and a lot of it comes through your brand. So, talking about branding-- I love branding, I could talk about branding forever, but today I'm here to talk about storytelling. So, I'm not going to extend too much on branding, but there is another session. Actually, there are two other sessions, because I've seen Nick's session which is, I believe, Communicating for nonprofits-- I don't remember exactly the title.

And I'm sorry I don't have a slide for your session, Nick. But, I wanted to show you Branding and Social Media for nonprofits, it is another session by Christine who is my colleague from Manila, and she's going to get into the specifics of building that brand identity. I believe she might have some exercises for you, guys, so you can-- if you don't have a strong brand already, you can start building one with Canva if you follow Christine's session, so I highly recommend you, after this session

if you have time, or save it for another day, but to check out Branding and Social Media for Nonprofits by Christine, It will be on our landing page canva.com/nonprofits. Alright. Why should you tell authentic stories? And I know-- and I've seen a lot of my colleagues talking about the same guy, Simon Sinek, in their own presentation. Simon Sinek is kind of the guru of Start With Why. So, what does it mean? What is this book about? I read the book and I really enjoyed it. It had a big impact on

me, on my business, on my career, because it talks about what should be at the center of everything you do, what should be at the center of the way you communicate. And when he says "Start With Why," there's this famous diagram with Why, How and What, so three concentric circles with the Y in the middle, and he says "Start With Why," is really saying that when you-- when you know your why, when you know why you wake up in the morning, why you go to work, why you are building this company, when y

ou know that-- in the case of Canva, I believe our founders, they wanted to make design very simple, that's their why, they want to democratize design and make it accessible to anyone, you don't need complicated softwares, you don't need a diploma from Graphic Design curriculum, you just start using it, that's their why. So, if you know your why and you start communicating from your why, you tell people, "Look, this is what I stand for, this is my values," and you plant your flag. It's like plan

ting your flag on a piece of land and showing this is us, this is what we do, this is why we do it. When you do that, automatically, you will attract other people that stand for the same things and that recognize themselves in your flag, in your why, and so they will start rallying around that flag, they will start rallying around your company, and follow you and support you, and buy your product or subscribe to your platform. So, that's really, like you will attract people who have the same val

ues, people who stand for the same thing as you do, and it will be easier to invite them to take action. So, know your why and start communicating your why first. So, people buy-- people don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it. That's one of the famous quotes from this book, so I highly recommend Start With Why, Simon Sinek. Let me get a sip of water as we are moving on to the second section of this presentation. So, now that we know what is storytelling, let's get into two prerequisites,

two things you should do before you start telling your story. And it's important you go through this, that you don't skip this because it might get messy if you do. Alright, let's get into it. So, figure out two things. The first one is to answer this question: Who am I telling the story to? In other words, know your audience, you have to know who you are talking to. Otherwise, how would you craft the appropriate message? So, the reason why you have to know your audience is because what will mak

e your story good or bad for you, for your organization, your nonprofit, the way you will measure the effectiveness, the performance of your stories, is really, like is that story inciting my audience to take a desired action, an action that I want them to take, donate, subscribe, buy, whatever? You know, that call to action. And we'll talk about calls to action later. But really, what measures the effectiveness of your message, of your story is if people take action after they hear it. So, if y

ou want to know which story to tell, you have to know who you are talking to. So, for that, there is this concept of buyer persona. You might have heard this before, it's a very famous marketing concept of creating an ideal profile for your ideal audience, I would say. So, that's a simple way to explain what a buyer persona is. It is you really putting as much detail as you can into a profile, an imaginary person that will represent your ideal donor or consumer or buyer, your ideal audience, oka

y? So, typically, a buyer persona could be very elaborated, could be relatively simple, but it kind of touches on two different things. One, the demographics. So, what are the demographics? It’s like facts, like how old they are, like what sex are they: male, female? Do they have-- Do they live in a specific area, in a specific country? Do they live in a city versus in the countryside? So, all these facts, I would say, demographics. And then there is psychographics. Psychographics has to do with

the psyche, like what they think. That could be what movies-- the type of movies they like, that could be what type of Facebook communities they are engaged with, it could be what they like to do when they have some free time, so that's psychographics. So, when you have these two pillars, I would say, kind of broken down into a very detailed profile, and you could even go as far as giving a name to that person-- and I know some companies like Amazon, that's something I've read online, even invi

te that fictional person to their board meetings and they have a seat for them, I don't know if they have a puppet or anything, but they have a special seat for, let's say Bob, who is their ideal client, so that way they always make sure they are considering what Bob, in this instance, is thinking, is kind of rooting for. Alright. So, that's your buyer persona. I'm going to give you four practical tips to learn more about your ideal audience. And these are simple things, I'm not talking about fu

ll-on marketing research, I'm talking about simple things you can do tomorrow to learn more about your ideal audience, alright? So, number one is to create a survey. So, you create a simple survey, it could be a couple of questions, could be longer. But try to figure out the questions that will help you discover more about your target audience, right? So, you create that survey and then you spread it across your followers if you have any on social media. And maybe a good thing to do if you're no

t sure people would take the time or bother answering your survey, you could give a little bit of an incentive, so it could be a free product, or it could be inviting them to an event or, I don't know, something to kind of thank you and incentivize them to answer your survey. Another thing you could do tomorrow is to schedule a couple of discovery calls. I've done that for my online course business in my community. What I did, I had this Facebook group, it was not that big at the time, maybe 100

0, 2000 members, and I noticed a couple of people were more active in this community. So, what I did, I reached out to them and I said, "Hey, Sandy, Hey, Cyrene, I'd love to know more about you, I'd love to jump on a call and discover, and you tell me a little bit about your business, about what you do, about the challenges that you might have." And I did that with five to ten people, so it was not too much, like, you know, it was not too time consuming, but I learned so much. I learned so much

about who am I talking to, what kind of challenges they were going through. And many of them, we are still very connected today. So, these are people I can reach out to very easily on social media, they've become kind of my Facebook friends in like the real sense of what Facebook friends might mean, that I can reach out to, I can ask questions to them, and similarly, they can reach out to me. You can also play detective on social media, you know, like you can kind of stalk people, stalk the beha

vior of the people in your group, in your community, on your page, on your YouTube channel, and see what they like, and produce more of that. Or you can really try to figure out if they follow other influencers or if they engage with other organizations, what other causes are they supporting, you can find a lot by just playing detective on social media. And then, finally, you can dive into your analytics. If you have a Facebook page, if you have a website, you have data. And if you look at that

data, you can learn a lot from your audience, where are they from, which country, what age, where did they come from, what did they type in Google in order to find you. So, all of this data is super interesting for you to start processing and understanding so that you can discover patterns, and you can double down on what works and maybe stop what doesn't work. Alright, enough about creating a buyer persona. Another pitch for another of my colleagues and friends' presentation, and this time it i

s Ben, so I believe Ben is going to be presenting tomorrow and he's going to talk about Mastering Marketing and Social Media. He's going to teach you about a simple formula, the three Ps of-- if you don't have much budget, if you don't have much time for your marketing, if you follow this formula, you will get some results. So, and one of that is to do with creating a buyer persona. So, I believe Ben will have a template for you guys to create your buyer persona. That is going to be tomorrow, so

make sure you check out this session as well. Alright. So, know your audience is the first prerequisite. The second prerequisite is know your intention. Basically, answering that question "What am I trying to achieve with this story?" Super important because if you don't know that, why are you telling a story in the first place? So, understanding that will help you guide your audience onto their next step. So, that is the famous call to action. What do you want them to do? This desired action t

hat if they take it, that would mean your storytelling has been efficient, has been effective. So, you want to know your intentions, you want to be clear on that. So, here I have a couple of different goals that nonprofit might have when it comes to telling stories, right? The first one is to raise awareness of the cause. You want people to be aware of what's going on, you want people to know there is this going on in the world at this specific time. Next is to engage beneficiaries. So, for exam

ple, you want to tell their story, you want to explain how the cause is really helping the beneficiaries you're trying to serve. Next is to increase funding. Pretty straightforward, you need more money to run your activities, to sell products. Like in my case with Fair Trade Connection, a lot of these organizations, their goal was to sell more products, to recruit volunteers, you know, to put your flag out there, rally people around that flag so they can come and work for you, like I came and wo

rked for Canva. And finally, lobby for change. So, you just want things to change and you have to really start lobbying, start changing mentalities in institutions, and it might take more time, but that's also a very common goal for nonprofits telling stories. Alright, we are making progress, guys. We are at the middle of the presentation more or less. Enza, I don't know if there is any questions so far. (Enza) Yes, so we do have a couple. So, the first one is actually from Cecilia who has asked

a few questions in previous sessions, so it's great to see people coming back for some more sessions. So, she has asked, "You said that the goal of storytelling is to earn trust. Do we only tell the true or the real story, or can we make up a story, and why? (Ronny) Okay. So, Cecilia, it's a good question. I would say it all depends what you mean by making up a story. I would definitely not start lying, or making up in the way like telling fake stories. You could have imaginary stories, you cou

ld have metaphorical stories. That's all right for me. But telling stories that go and tell fake facts or lies, like simple lies about what you do or what you might have achieved is a big no-no. Because if you get exposed, if that lie gets exposed, it will hurt your brand, it will hurt your organization much more than what you might have gained by telling this fake story of this fake news, to use a trendy word. (Enza) Yeah, good point, Ronny. Thanks for that. Okay, so we've got another question.

Does the calls come before your audience or should you sometimes choose your audience first? (Ronny) Okay, so it depends also. Like sometimes, the cause already exists, you know, like for example, you're trying to fight a very specific problem, which is diarrhea in Africa, and a lot of kids are still dying from a simple disease we could cure if we had 50 billion-- 50 billion or 50 million? I don't remember, probably 50 billion dollars every year dedicated to that. So, that's something we could

fix tomorrow but we are not. Why is that? So, there is a cause. And the audience then, is for you to start really pinpointing so who might care about this. So, it might be people who already care about problems in Africa, it might be people who really care about the well-being of children, or it might be people who are already fighting to end poverty or something similar. So, you could have the cause already and tap into different existing audiences. So, your job in this situation is to realize,

by knowing your audience, like what are the other causes they support, so that you can really try to target the same people. But the other way around could be also possible. Like you could have no audience but you do have an idea, you have a cause, like your idea is pretty new, it's a new issue you're trying to tackle, for example, I don't know, like recently we've seen a lot of people becoming addicted to social media because they spend too much time, usually a lot of them are kids, so that's

a new issue. And so, therefore, there might be new nonprofits that kind of come to life to fight this specific cause, this specific issue. And so, you will kind of have to create a new audience from scratch knowing that this is the new issue you are trying to fight. So, I would say, most of the time the cause will already exist and the audience as well, is just a question of connecting and finding, reaching the right audience. (Enza) Thanks, Ronny. Okay, one more. Should we have one goal for sto

rytelling or can we have multiple? (Ronny) Yep. You can definitely have multiple goals, but I would say-- you could have different goals, but be very careful how you communicate them to your audience. Because if you have a beautiful story, let's say you have Steven Spielberg coming and directing your three-minute nonprofit intro video, a promo video, and it's beautiful, it's amazing. But then, at the end of this video, there's five call to action: buy this, and then subscribe to this, and then v

isit our website, and then do this. Then you leave your audience kind of disoriented, like what should I start doing next? And then you might lose that traction that you have created with the beautiful video that will make people cry and everything, but then at the end, instead of having one clear call to action, you are trying to get people to do a multitude of different things, take a multitude of different actions. Never forget that the effectiveness of your story is going to be measured by t

he number of people who take the desired action. So, I would recommend to limit your call to action to only one thing. But you can have multiple goals, but just be careful not to overwhelm your audience with too many calls to actions. (Enza) I do have a few more. Do you want me to keep going or would you like to have... (Ronny) Maybe one more because we have a lot of to cover, again, but one more. (Enza) Yeah. Okay, cool. I will save a few for later if we have some time. I'll continue going thro

ugh. Okay, I want to ask, are there any tips on making the right survey or asking the right questions to help define your audience? (Ronny) That's a good question. Well, some tips is to have you here on the ground, you know, especially if you do have a community, if you already do have some kind of a presence on social media, there is already a bunch of questions out there in your community. So, I would say, the first place to look for is your existing audience. So, what are the typical question

s they come to you with? Like the FAQs, the frequently asked questions, you know, what are some recurring things that is bothering them or worrying them? So, these are your first, I would say, indicators of the fact that you are on the right path asking questions. So, based on that, I would just start with this. If you have a Facebook group or if you have, I don't know-- or even if you don't, like, you know, if you find a channel or if you find a group that talks about the specific issue you car

e about, people have questions in that one community. So, it's very easy today to go into a Facebook group and use the search box and search. You can search for the word question, you search for the word question, you type Enter and then Facebook is going to show you every post where people say, "Hey, I have a question." Other useful keywords you can search for is help, need help, question, or even simply what, why, how, you know, these interrogative words. If you type that into a Facebook group

search, you will find questions that people have asked in the group. So, if you are targeting a specific cause, you go to a specific group that deals or talks about this cause, search for the questions, and you will find already a bunch of questions there. So, it's really up to you to grab some of that, put that in your survey and try to understand a bit deeper, like dig a bit deeper what your audience might look like based on these questions. And then, it also really depends on what you're try

ing to achieve, like what desired action are you trying to lead people to take at the end of the road. (Enza) Thank you, Ronny. I'll let you continue and I'll save a few for later. (Ronny) Awesome. And thank you, guys, for your questions. I'm sorry we don't have more time. I know there are lots of people and questions here in the chat. We will have a second round at the end of the session, so keep leaving your questions and Enza will keep bringing them back to me. Alright, so let's continue. We

are about halfway there. I don't know about time. What time is it? Yeah, we're good. So, the next section of this presentation is going to talk about how to craft authentic stories. And here I want to talk about two specific types of stories, okay, that I believe every nonprofit, every change maker should start telling immediately. The first one is your vision story. So, what is a vision story, aka the origin story, aka the founders story? Many words to kind of define this one story, we'll come

back to that. And the second type of stories is your impact stories, so also we’ll come back to that. Let's start with the vision story. So, your vision story is where you or the founder of your nonprofit envisions or dreams of the promised land. So, the promised land is the ideal situation they're trying to reach, and for that they will fight, for that they will work, they will work hard in order to build that promised land. For Canva, and for Melanie and Cliff and Cameron, what they have envis

ioned is a world where it is super easy to create design, it is super easy to come up with beautiful visuals that you need for your business, for your nonprofit, for your classroom. So, that's what they have envisioned. And then, what you need to do is to make the team see that future that you have seen, right? So, you are trying to convince people with your story, with your vision story that, okay, this is a valuable cause to rally around, let's get-- let's do this, let's do this together. And

I think they're doing a wonderful job here at Canva at getting everyone on board, and walking and working towards that vision that they have. So, I will show you-- yes, I think now-- I will show you an example of a vision story that is the vision story of Fair Trade Connection, so my nonprofit. A little bit of a context, of what is Fair Trade Connection. So, Fair Trade Connection, I told you it's a communication agency, but it has the word Fair Trade. So, those of you who know what Fair Trade is

, Fair Trade is a movement for alternative trade, for better way of trading merchandise. So, a better way of doing business, basically, that will respect gender equity, that will have no child labor, that will pay the artisans and the farmers a decent salary, a decent wage, so respecting a bunch of different Fair Trade principles. So, there was this industry already existing, and I discovered that and I really found this is a nice way of changing the world, like you can still do business but let

's do it in a fair way, let's do it acknowledging the little guys at the end of the supply chain, and not just trying to push, push, push, and maximize our profit here at the brand level, let's recognize everybody's work and pay a decent price for everybody's work. So, that's kind of what Fair Trade is. Fair Trade Connection is, we positioned ourselves between the consumer-- so the person in Europe, in America, in Australia, who goes to a Fair Trade shop or goes to a supermarket and grabs a Fair

Trade chocolate or Fair Trade banana over conventional bananas or chocolate. So, what makes that product any different from the normal bananas? So, we figured out that there was no real information or stories about these products, like why is it better to buy the Fair Trade chocolate over the traditional chocolate. So, what we did with Fair Trade Connection, we decided, okay, we are going to bring you the artisans and the farmers' stories. We are going to go get them for you and we are going to

bring that to you. That's kind of like the context for you to watch this video. Now I'm going to play the video and you will discover our vision. ♪ (background music in video) ♪ (video ends) Yep, we can make your product speak, so oops-- That is kind of the tagline of Fair Trade Connection. Let me go one slide back. Sorry about that. We went way too far. Okay. So, what you saw there is our vision. So, our vision was very simple, we need to bring the stories of the Fair Trade producers to the co

nsumers. So, how do we do that? Well, everybody has a smartphone. So, if we put a QR code on this product, and when people scan this code, when they buy the product in the supermarket or in the Fair Trade shop, they could access the story that we went and gathered in Peru, in Portugal, or in Nepal. So, basically, that was our story, our vision story. And I-- we convinced a lot of people because it was simple, it was a simple flag that we put out there, we bring you the artisans' stories. And eve

rybody needed these stories, so that's why our nonprofit has been running for ten years now and still running somehow. I just wish I had more time so I could do more of that, but now doing something else. Anyways, the next type of stories that you might want to create with your nonprofit is a bunch of impact stories. So, impact stories are stories that show you the positive impact-- that show your audience the positive impact your organization is having on the cause or the people you have decide

d to serve. So, that is, really, interviewing, and processing and showing, using the different stories of your beneficiaries. How are they better off after you have accomplished your work than they were previous to that? So, that's super important, it's basically showing a glimpse into the lives of the people or the communities where you are trying to run your actions, run your campaigns. And these impact stories are a real asset for your nonprofit's brand because, once again, what we are trying

to develop is trust. So, only by showing kind of the impact you are making, by showing what kind of result, what kind of change you are bringing to the cause, to the world, will you gain the trust of your followers, of your donors, of your stakeholders in your organization. So, I have another video here, which is one of the impact stories. So, now that you've seen our vision, we want to bring the stories. I'm going to show you one of these stories. (modem connecting sound) (speaking Bengali) My

nam is Bulbuli. I have been working here for the last eight years. I love to work here. I'm very proud of being a part of Prokritee because there's a very good work environment, we receive a good salary and with it I can afford my children's education, all the school stationery, good uniforms, everything. Also, I can provide for my family's expenses which helps providing a good life to my family. I want to provide a good education to my children so they can become honorable and respectful men i

n the society and get good jobs. Whenever I think that I am making such beautiful products that will travel abroad and that many unknown people will use them, it makes me feel very proud. (bell sound) (Ronny) So, you see here Bulbuli, who is an artisan in Bangladesh making baskets. She's telling you about how she can now send their kids to school, she can even pay for good uniforms, she wants them to become honorable people in society, and she's proud that she's making products that some people

in some foreign country where she might probably never go will be using the product of her work. That makes her feel proud. So, when you see that, you feel connected, you feel connected to the product you're buying, you understand, okay, yeah, let's buy this basket over an IKEA basket, because there is a story attached to it. So, let me go to my next slide. Alright, this one. Okay, so that brings me to a very important part of storytelling, which is the narrative arc. Is there a secret sauce her

e? Like is there-- what ingredients are needed to create a compelling story? Is there a formula that we can reproduce to create successful stories? Well, the short answer is not really, but there is some kind of a traditional story arc, so that is a succession of events or a construction of your story that a lot of movies, a lot of books, and a lot of-- even like professionals, use to tell their stories. So, I'm not saying this is the only way, I'm just saying this is the most commonly accepted

way or formula of telling a story. So, you could use this model to start telling your stories if you have no idea of how to do it. So, this is how it goes. It's also called the Five Cs of a good story-- because marketers, we like the five Cs, the three Ps, the seven Xs, whatever. So, there's five Cs. The five Cs are the following: Connect, Challenge, Conflict, Conquer, and Conclude. Alright, so let's dive into them. The first one is connect. So, connect is where you would want to create an emoti

onal connection with your audience. You need to to establish this relatable link between you and your audience. So, how do you do that? You do that via your main character, or characters, but often there is one main character, or the hero of your story. So, for you as a nonprofit, the main character could be your industry, the industry or the cause you're in, fighting poverty, or fighting diarrhea in Africa. Or it could be your stakeholders, your donors. It could be your beneficiaries, like Bulb

uli, that you saw two minutes ago. So, having this character and setting up the scene for this character, making that character relatable, by giving details about what they might think, what might be going in their heads, what might be going on in their head at this specific time of the story, makes that character relatable, it makes your audience relate to them. The next C is the challenge. The challenge will highlight a common pain or challenge that your audience is facing and will relate to.

So, that's what I was saying, like being relatable by showing that your hero, your main character is facing a challenge that you might be facing as well, you as the audience. So, there's this challenge, there is this big pain, difficulty coming up in the story. And so, in order to understand what your audience will relate to, you have to know your audience, hence everything I've said before about knowing your audience. Alright, so the story starts like this. You highlight a core problem that you

r audience or your industry has, and then you start describing how your character was once negatively affected by this main challenge, this big pain, and you have to start elaborating, like you have to go and give details about how difficult it is for your hero at this point of the story, like, you know, he's suffering, or she's suffering. So, there's this conflict. The conflict is establishing and describing in details the opposite forces that could result in a very negative outcome for your ch

aracter or for your audience. So, this is not a one-time thing in the story, it's a back and forth, it's a movement between, "Oh it's very hard", but no, there's a little beacon of hope like this is going to change," and then again, something else comes up on the way, and then again, your hero is struggling. So, this back and forth between the opposite forces, this challenge, this conflict is the third part of the story. It's usually where your hero will be at its lowest point, you know, like it

's touching the bottom of where it could be. So, use vivid details, make your audience really feel the pain and the complex situation, the hardship of your main character. At this point of the story, your audience should feel hopeless, they should feel this is not going to work. Okay, so that's the low point. And then, there's a transformation, conquer, that's the fourth C. Show your audience how the characters have overcome the struggle presented, that is the transformation. And usually at this

point of the story, there is like a mentor character showing up, or some kind of learnings that your main character will go through in transformation, they will go through that transformation that will lead them to the conclusion. And then the fifth point of the narrative arc which is kind of like this, so it's a curve, you go down, way down, and then you're at your lowest and then the transformation and you go back up, and that's the happy ending, okay? So, the conclusion, you deliver a resolu

tion to the challenge and you end the story on a positive message that your audience will take away. So, that's kind of the magic formula. I don't know if it's that magic, but that's kind of the formula of storytelling and how to tell compelling stories. That's what works for movies, that’s what works for books, that’s what works for most of the things, you know, like even if you're not going through exactly all the phases, and it doesn't have to be like a Lord of the Rings kind of story every t

ime. It could be simple, as Bulbuli. She was telling you, you know, basically, the story of how she lives in a difficult situation, not much money, so she's struggling, but by making these baskets, she gets a better situation. And that's kind of like a very condensed narrative arc because it's only one minute. But I'm trying to take you through these different phases of the story. Alright, so there is another one of these impact videos, I'm going to skip it in order to take more of your question

s. It's similar to the one from Bulbuli, just another story. Right. Another very important element of telling authentic stories, stories that work, is to get visual. So, that's probably my favorite part of the presentation. Today, visual storytelling has become the absolute norm in marketing. If you're not visual, there is a good chance you're not going to be heard. So, visuals are great if you want people to remember your message, but also they are super good-- Visuals are also super effective,

and more effective than text at evoking emotions and inspiring your audience to take action. When you look at the the photo here, this guy has something on his face that just makes you feel good, like it's if-- he seems happy, he seems well, he seems sympathetic. And, by looking at that, you feel something. And it would be very difficult for me to make you feel the same thing just with words. How do I do that? I would probably have to write a full page and bring you through ups and downs to get

there. But here, with a simple photo, you can evoke and provoke emotions in your audience. So, again, that has to do with the fact that we live in this content-saturated world, this overload of information. So, if you want to get your message heard, if you want to get your message across, you need to master the art of making a positive first impression. That is what I'm teaching in all of my courses, and Canva is a great tool for that, because you can really transform a crappy presentation into

a beautiful presentation, you can transform a crappy business card into a beautiful business card. And then, when you give it away, when you present your presentation to an audience, you will make that positive first impression. And that is super important, because today, our visual perception of the world is what we use to form our opinions. So, we don't process text or the content as fast as we process the wrapping. I told you the brand is your values wrapped in a pretty package. So, that pre

tty package is what you see first. So, you have to master the art of creating a positive first impression that is everything. I've gotten a lot of contracts for my nonprofits, I always had to pitch these organizations to convince them they need stories, they need to send us to India so we can bring them the stories. So, I would send them project proposals, and I used Canva to create these project proposals, and these got me a lot of work, because they looked better than everything else they had

seen before in terms of project proposal. So, I spent a day or so to create a beautiful presentation or documents that I would send them, and when they will open that, they will have a positive first impression. That gave me an edge, and I'm pretty sure contributed to the success of this nonprofit. Because people will judge you and judge your organization, judge your whole world based on their first impression. And I'm going to prove that to you. I'm going to show you two different websites-- le

t me see if this works. I'll refresh this very quickly. But I have here two different websites that are both from Bangladesh. So, let me go into the right slide for you. So, they are two different organizations selling handicraft, both from the same country, and I'm going to go-- it's a recording, but I'm going to show you a little bit of me navigating their websites. Oops. Alright, so... This is the first website, and this is just me scrolling down the homepage, okay? So, I'm discovering the we

bsite, go to the bottom of the home page, and I see a call to action there, it says "Meet more artisans," so I click there. I see another page, big visuals, and then I discover some of the artisans. And every artisan has a little one-liner about, you know, something that happened in their lives. So, that's the first one. Let me show you the second one. That's another website, same country, same industry. That's the home page, so I'm scrolling trying to find a call to action, cannot find any. So,

I go back to the nav menu and I search for artisans' profile and this is what I get. So, a small photo and a huge block of text. Now, which website would you buy from? If you're like me, you'll probably buy from the first website. Why? Because it told you a story through visuals. Okay? So, that's kind of my little demonstration of the power of visuals. You have to use good visual to tell your story. Alright, we are moving on. We are now in the fourth part of this presentation, which is Tailor y

our story. So, this part is going to tell you how you can customize your story and customize it for two different things. You need to customize your stories to your audience, and you need to customize your stories to the platforms you are using to share them, okay? So, let's start at the beginning, adapt your story to your audience. What does that mean? Well, you need to align your message to what your audience cares about. You cannot be that guy that was pushing content in our Facebook communit

y regardless of whether or not it was bringing value to the community, you know? It's good for them that they had this horse ride and they have kids, and they can show that this specific day five kids went on a horse, okay, they might be proud of that, that might be good for their websites, but it's probably not good for our design community, you know? So, what I'm saying here is that you should align your message to what your audience cares about. And you should also find out where your audienc

e likes to hang out. Because if you know that, if you know, okay, my audience is mostly on Twitter, so you will probably not craft your stories the same way you would if your audience was on YouTube, for example. YouTube allows you to have long pieces of content, long videos, webinars, whatever. But on Twitter you are limited to the number of characters, you're limited to a bunch of different things, rules-- (cough) sorry-- from that platform. So, you should know where your audience likes to han

g out. And lastly, you should really put yourself in your audience's shoes. This is super important. If they had done that, that person who shared three posts about that special day they had with the horses and the kids in our community, they would have understood that, okay, maybe one post is enough, maybe I don't need to share three of them. Maybe that's not really relevant for the people in this community, for that audience. Maybe I should talk about marketing or about the design I made with

Canva, since this is a Canva community. So, I'm not saying don't post in our community, I'm just saying be relevant to your audience. Alright, second thing you should adapt your stories to is the platform you are sharing the stories on. So, every social media platform has its own set of spoken and unspoken rules. That is called in marketing jargon native content. So, don't post a video in your Facebook group with a call to action asking people to subscribe to your channel. That doesn't make sens

e because you don't ask people on Facebook to subscribe to your channel. You ask people on Facebook to comment, or to like or to share your video, but there's no channel to subscribe to. So, that's a common mistake I've seen many nonprofits do, is that they pay someone to create a video, or they create the video themselves, which is even better, but then they have one version of their video and they put it on YouTube and then they share the same thing on Facebook. Try to upload natively to faceb

ook, try to adapt to the code to the language that is spoken on Facebook. Yes, the stories you post should be fluent in the language of each platform. That's what I just said. And also, adapt the content so that it fits the culture and the language of the platform. So, the culture is this set of unspoken rules. Okay, the language is like the obvious rules, like you subscribe to a channel, you follow a page on Facebook, so these are the vocabulary that you need to use. So, here I have a list of a

couple of things you need to think about in terms of adapting your content to the platform. Your call to action, the call to action you're using. That's what I was saying. Don't ask people to subscribe to your channel on Facebook. The way you tag people. So, some platforms allow you to tag people like Facebook, or Twitter, or Instagram. You don't tag people the same way on every platform, so know how you tag people appropriately. The length of your videos. You would probably not share the same

thing on TikTok and on YouTube, or on LinkedIn. The length of your video is also showing your audience that you understand the culture of the specific platform, so adapt the length of your videos. The need for captions to accompany your images or your videos. Some platforms might not need a lot of caption, and some platforms might need that extra context that you're sharing. You probably would not share a simple image on LinkedIn with no description. It might be okay to do so on Instagram. So, a

dapt the need of caption or the lack of caption. The length and the format of these captions. Some platforms might require a longer description, like for example your YouTube videos. If you want your YouTube videos to have a very comprehensive description, full of keywords and calls to actions and links to other things that people might be interested in, versus an Instagram caption where you would focus on the hashtags and maybe inspirational kind of a story there. So, that is the length and the

format of the captions, the vocabulary you are using in your captions. The format of the images and videos you are posting. So, that is the size of these videos. And that is super important, that is one thing that Canva does very well with the different doctype that we have. We have a document type which is a Facebook banner, and then we have a LinkedIn banner, and then we have a YouTube channel art, and then we have a Facebook post, etc., etc., etc. By having the exact dimensions of all of the

se documents, it makes it easier for you to respect the format for your videos, for your photos on the different platforms. And then, finally, the use or the absence of a hashtag. So, not every platform uses hashtags, or maybe they use them but they're not so relevant. If you don't have a hashtag on Instagram, it could be a pretty bad thing, versus if you don't have a hashtag on Facebook, might be okay. Alright, moving on to another ingredient of creating and adapting, tailoring your stories tha

t is to create a clear call to action. We've already talked about calls to action and how they are super important. Because the effectiveness of your story is whether or not people will take the desired action, remember? So, creating a call to action. What is a call to action? Let's have a little definition here. A call to action is a piece of content intended to induce a viewer, a reader, or a listener to perform a specific act, action, typically taking the form of an instruction or a directive

. Example: buy now, subscribe to my channel. Those are calls to action. Alright, so we don't need a definition, what we really need to do is how to create an effective call to action. So, here are five tips that you can follow to create effective calls to action. Number one, keep it short and precise. Don't have like "Please, follow my Facebook page because you will have this and that." That's too long. Usually, two to three words maximum. "Subscribe now" or "Buy now." It's simple to the point,

short and sweet. Use a strong command verb to start your call to action, so a strong action verb. Number three, use positive words that provoke emotion or enthusiasm. You have to keep the whole thing positive and kind of dynamic. Number four, give your audience a good reason why they should take the desired action. This is something I've seen a lot of organizations doing wrong. They put their call to action out there but they don't give you any good reason. "Subscribe to my channel." Why should

I do that? I'm already subscribed to 100 channels. So, give them a good reason. And take advantage of FOMO, Fear of Missing Out. So, that is make them understand that maybe this offer is not going to be standing forever, or maybe if they don't do it, they might miss on something important. So, FOMO is a very strong engine that moves people, that makes people take action. I want to demonstrate effective call to action with you, guys. So, for that, I'm going to run a little experiment, let me grab

my phone, and I encourage you to grab your phone as well. You'll be needing your phone. So, I'm going to go to my YouTube channel, you won't see that on screen right now, but I want to check how many followers we have. So, as of now, we have 19,263. 19,263. I'm going to screenshot that. Alright. Now, I would like to incite you to join our YouTube channel and I'm going to give you a good reason why you should join it. So, the way to join it is very simple, there's a QR code right here. What you

can do is simply to grab your phone, open your camera app, and you can point your camera to the slide to the QR code, and if you have a decent-- or if you have a recent phone, sorry, not decent, recent phone, it should scan the QR code and prompt you to open this in your browser. So, you can do that right now, and you will have instant access to 120 tutorials, they are all free, we have new tutorials every day. So, that means that every day you can learn something new about Canva. Sorry, not tut

orials every day, we have new tutorials every week. But that means that every week you receive your new tutorial and you can learn something new about Canva. Already a bunch of tutorials out there. So, if you're interested to learn more about Canva, go ahead and scan this QR code. I'm going to leave the slide for two or three more seconds, then I'm going to check my phone again and see how many of you have subscribed, and that will show us if my call to action was effective or not because you wo

uld have taken that desired action. Alright. That's the last slide. I need to change my deck. So, I'm going to change the deck to this one. Alright, let me check. I'm going to refresh here. So, 19,263 that was-- Okay, we have 19,331, so we have already almost 100 new subscribers. So, thank you for that. That's kind of showing you the power of an effective call to action. So, don't be afraid to ask. Ask and give a good reason to people to do the desired action. Alright, guys, this is the final sp

rint towards the end of this presentation. Let me check what time it is. So, yes. It is 11:30 so we'll still have some time for the Q&A. So, if you have questions, write them down, I have about ten more minutes. And I'm going to talk about sharing your story. So, what to share on what platform? And that is because with social media, there's no one-size-fits-all. You cannot share the same content across every channel, it's not going to work. So, you have-- why is my slide so low resolution? I wil

l briefly reload that. Shouldn't be pixelated. Yep, that's better. Alright. So, yes, you have to repurpose your stories for different channels. Kind of like a DJ will remix a song, you have to remix your content, so that you can post that across different channels. You also have to share your stories more than once. Because, you know, you might think everybody's watching every single move you take on Facebook, on YouTube, but it's not the case. These platforms, they use algorithms and they only

show your content to a tiny fraction of the number-- the total size of your audience. You might be surprised, may be a very low percentage of your entire audience. So, don't be afraid to share your stories more than once. Because also, there is this famous study, I don't know if it's a study, but it's a famous fact in marketing that says that it takes seven touch points before someone will internalize, I mean, will understand and act upon your call to action. So, it takes your audience several t

ouch points with your brand, with your message for them to take action. So, don't be afraid to repeat the stories, to create, to repurpose, and to share different stories, or the same stories different repetitions. Alright, so now let's go through the four biggest social media platform. I've intentionally skipped YouTube, because pretty much on YouTube you can share everything as long as it's video, so it doesn't really make sense to say "Share this and not this on YouTube" because it doesn't ma

ke sense, you can share whatever, you can find anything on YouTube. And also, this is by no means an exhaustive list or the bible of what should be shared or not shared. This is based on my own personal experience as a content creator and as a community manager, so this is what I've learned. So, what to share on Facebook? To me, Facebook rhymes with community, especially Facebook groups. I found Facebook groups to be super effective to create communities. And that's my day-to-day job here at Can

va, I am the Head of Communities. What we call communities is our different Facebook groups. So, I'm permanently working in four or five different Facebook groups and I see there the power of these groups for building community. So, what kind of content? Well, you could start with focusing on your vision story. You remember that promised land you are trying to accomplish through your work? So, you might want to share that on Facebook with the people who follow you so that they understand. It's k

ind of like planting your flag, so put it out there. (woman on video) See you on the next video, bye. Live videos on Facebook, because Facebook makes it super easy for you to connect with your audience through these videos. Impact stories. Remember this collection of impact stories that you will show how your work is affecting positively the people you're trying to serve? So, show these impact stories. Ephemeral content, aka the stories. So, that is content that will stay there for only 24 hours

, so you can address your audience directly. These stories, they don't have to be so polished. Could be you like, "Hey, guys, today I'm doing this and that," "I'm giving a presentation," whatever. But these stories, they don't need to be perfect, they will only last 24 hours, so use them to connect with your audience, to let them in your daily activities, I would say. Right, moving on to Instagram. By all means, I'm not a very big influencer or instagrammer. But I know people who are more active

on this platform, so I've consulted with them before I created these slides because I think I have 300 followers. So, Instagram to me rhymes with culture and lifestyle. This is where you build your brand, this is where you curate your photos and you show your audience what you want them to think of you. So, building culture, building brand. So, you might want to share some polished photos, you know, some more elaborated photos, more time has been spent on the edition and the editing of these ph

otos. You might want to share some product photos as well if you are selling something. So, showing your product under the best lights, you know, like this feed right here showing makeup and skin care, or this one showing shoes. And you might want to associate your product with influencers if you have a budget for that. You can show behind the scenes. So, you see here a photo of me working in the jungle in Indonesia, interviewing this coconut sugar farmer. If I post that on Instagram, then the p

eople who follow me, they understand, oh, Ronny's there, he's doing that. It reminds them of what you're doing. And user generated content. This is also super popular on Instagram, like if you have a tribe, if you have a community, ask the people in your tribe to also create content. We do that at Canva all the time. We have different communities. One of them is our brand ambassadors and the person that you see here, Onouha, is one of our CCCs, so Canva Certified Creative, is a brand ambassador

of Canva from Nigeria, and we often create content together. Onouha would create tutorials, would participate in challenges. And like this, we have a bunch of people, a bunch of savvy Canva users that we can frequently talk to and create content together. So, that's pretty nice, that also takes some load off our shoulder, to create every single piece of content, and it also gives a different perspective, the perspective of a user from a different country and how they use Canva. And Onouha uses C

anva a lot on his phone, so that's quite different from what we might do here. Alright, Twitter. Again, not a big Twitter fan, but I do know a thing or two about Twitter. Twitter to me rhymes with actuality, So, that's the place where you want to go and where you want to share the latest news about your industry or about the cause related to your industry, related to your cause, and you want to curate this content. So, that means you might receive or come across a lot of blog posts, a lot of int

eresting videos related to what you do and you might want to share that, so Twitter is a good place to that. Twitter is also famous for the memes and the gifts and all the funny stuff. So, if you think it's relevant to use this for your organization, for your cause, go ahead. People always appreciate a good laugh, so might be useful. And finally, LinkedIn. I do have somewhat of a following on LinkedIn. So, for me, LinkedIn rhymes with professional and career. So this is the place where you would

want to share information about your career or new jobs, like for now, we are recruiting people here at Canva, so I would probably share some profiles, some job descriptions and stuff like that. Or this is also a place where you can... (video) Hey, guys. Ronny here from Canva. I want to give you three good reasons to join our Facebook. Sorry. So, that's also a place where you could build your brand, your personal brand, so the video you were seeing before. If you use LinkedIn as a place where y

ou will contribute value to some people in your industry about things you know, like for me, about storytelling, about marketing, about building communities, or about Canva, simple Canva tutorials, that might be appreciated. So, always think how can you bring value to that audience. And I think we made it, guys. We covered the five points of the presentation. So, I'm going to have a sip of water, and Enza, if we have questions, I'll be happy to take them. (Enza) Thank you, Ronny. Yes, we do, we

have a ton of questions, so I'm doing my best to try to group them so that we can answer similar questions together in one hit. So, there were three questions that came through. Clara asked how to avoid sentimentalism and sensationalism in storytelling, and Anna asked how to showcase poverty in a way that still dignifies a person, and Ashley asked how do you make sure that you tell an authentic story about your hero's conflict without becoming a white savior archetype, or your content perhaps be

coming a trauma porn. So, I feel like those three questions are grouped in a similar way. Do you have any advice for Clara, Anna and Ashley here? (Ronny) Yep. I have a bad memory, can you remind me the first one? (Enza) No, that's okay. I threw them all at you in one hit, sorry. So, how to avoid sentimentalism and sensationalism in storytelling? So, I think that probably sums up all of those questions quite well. (Ronny) Yeah, all the questions are somewhat related, indeed. So, how to avoid sens

ationalism and emotivism? Well, the answer is pretty simple: be authentic. The idea is not to-- the idea is not to make a buzz, especially when you talk about big issues like poverty or AIDS or, you know, Fair Trade or stuff like that. So, you don't want to over exaggerate any part of your story. One technique that I used a lot, I really tried to be the observer. Even when I was shooting interviews, I let the beneficiaries talk. If you want to avoid any form of being the white savior, I heard th

at sentence and it's true, how to avoid being the white savior? Well, don't be. Just let the beneficiaries that you are helping express themselves. So, I'm a big advocate of letting the beneficiaries speak for themselves. So, I would set up an interview, like you've seen on the photos, and I will ask them questions like what is your name, tell me about you, your family situation, what is your job, and progressively, I'll be getting to the more exploitable storytelling bits of the interview like

how is your life any different now that you're working with this company, with this nonprofit, you know? And they will tell me, they will open up, or sometimes it would take more time, depending. I interviewed 500 people, so I would say, you have a set of questions that are intended to make people open. And everybody has a story, that's kind of like the bottom line of Fair Trade Connection, we wanted to go get these stories because we know they exist. So, I think, telling in the story by letting

the beneficiary speak is a really good way of doing it. Yeah. Can you remind me of some other aspects of these questions? (Enza) Yeah, one part-- I think that's a really great answer, I think it's about making it about them and not about you and your brand. So, Anna's question, just to kind of-- to answer that a little bit, how to showcase poverty in a way that still dignifies a person? Which I think is quite a tricky question. (Ronny) Yeah, it is. And I've worked in a lot of very poor areas, I

've interviewed ladies in Bangladesh who are making 30 US dollars a month, and they were telling me their stories. And I've seen kids in the streets also working in factories where they produce school books. So, instead of going to school, it was there like kind of gluing school books together for 10 US dollars a month. So, that is extreme poverty. And how do you tell these stories? Well, first you have to be humble and you have to be prepared. Because you, the white guy, have to go there and un

derstand the cultural context, and have the right questions to ask these characters that you see there to kind of tell you about their day-to-day. So, I guess, if you adopt like a curious point of view, if you're not judging-- and I've made some mistakes also, I will tell you about a mistake I made-- but, by simply being kind of like a neutral observer and asking, genuinely being interested in the situation of these people, even if it's a poor difficult-- I've had people crying during the interv

iews because they were feeling hopeless. I've had people in Nepal who recently had their house destroyed by the earthquake in 2015-16, and she was crying during the interview and she didn't know what to do, and I had to stop, because I didn't know what to say, I didn't know what to do, but it was not appropriate to film that. If I wanted to be sensational, I mean, I would have used this footage, I had a lady crying on camera, and I could use that to promote the cause but that wouldn't be ethical

for me so I didn't do it, of course, and I didn't even think about doing it, but these things happen. So, I think, you as a storyteller, you have to be some kind of moral code of what is acceptable, what is not, what question is acceptable, what is not, and what kind of behavior is acceptable and what is not. You wouldn't go in Islam, in India wearing an eye watch and a gold chain, like you would just dress appropriately, and you would try to show the people that you are genuinely there to try

to explain their reality so that we can try to change it, but you don't position yourself as the white savior, you're just like, you're being humble. (Enza) Yeah, I think that's a really good answer, Ronny, and especially, based on experience, you can see-- you can really kind of understand your authenticity just from the way you answered that question, so I think that's a really great answer. Okay, let's hop into a few others. "How frequently should we tell stories and how do you get to know th

e frequency?" (Ronny) Okay. So, I think you should tell stories pretty much as much as you can. So, it does take and require resources to tell stories but, as I was mentioning in the presentation, branding is also storytelling. So, really for me, when you create a website, when you create a post on social media, when you design your presentation or your business card, you are telling a story. So, include that part of storytelling in everything you do by always thinking visual, first impression m

atters. If you think like this, you will already be telling a great story by simply presenting yourself to the world in a way that it creates a positive first impression, it reflects professionalism, it might encourage people to work with you or make you seem like you really do care about what you do. So, use design in everything you do to make a positive first impression, to look professional, that's super important. Once you get people on board, once you already have made that first impression

, then yeah, then it's all about your message and it's all about the authenticity of that message. But if you can tell stories regularly, I would say go for it. So, for me, a video like the one I showed you, the one-minute testimonial from Bulbuli in Bangladesh, this video would take me usually about two days to shoot, knowing that we are already in Bangladesh, two days of shooting. That's just for this one clip of one minute, but we have a bunch of material and we could produce much more clips

like that, but we would go shooting two, three days, and then, we would edit for two or three days, and then we would have a reservoir of stories about this specific project, social business, Fair Trade organization. Then, yeah, it's all a question of repurposing, creating different cuts of the same video, creating supporting visuals for posters or for brochures or, you know, so depending on how much resource you have, how many people you have in your company. But I do believe a company should p

rioritize storytelling. Every company, every business, every nonprofit should have a communication team that is focused on stories. (Enza) Okay, just to continue that a little bit further, do you have any tips to limit and select priorities when you're telling a story, so that you're at the-- you sort of-- you can run the risk of trying to say everything, so Clara would like to know if you have any tips for that. (Ronny) Yeah. I would go back to the basics that I told you already during the pres

entation. Know your audience, know what they care about. Because sometimes, you might have a message you judge is appropriate, and that might come out of a meeting room, with you and your colleagues and the close stakeholders of your nonprofit, but then, it might not be appropriate for your target audience. So, what I would encourage you to do is to follow the rules that I had in the presentation: knowing your audience, adapting the message to-- aligning the message to what your audience cares a

bout, and also knowing your intentions. So, these two prerequisites, like know your audience, know your intentions. What are you trying to accomplish with that story? So, that should give you a good sense of what the priority is. For example, with Canva, we create a lot of user stories. We have a small team, videographer, a producer, and their job is to figure out, okay, where can we get a good story? So, they might work together with other teams like they might work with the PR teams, Okay, we

want to find stories about nonprofit because it's our nonprofit week, let's feature some nonprofit stories. So, that will be their priority, let's find some stories about nonprofit and let's try to showcase how nonprofits are using Canva to amplify the good work they are trying to do in the world. So, that would be the priority, it's kind of guided by the desired action we want people to do. And this is a desired action, right here on screen. Get your free nonprofit subscription to Canva Pro. Ev

ery nonprofit, which is a registered nonprofit, can benefit for free from Canva Pro, which is our paid subscription product at Canva, and not only one person, it's up to ten people in your organization, so you can have ten accesses to Canva Pro if you are a nonprofit. So, I guess what we are trying to do with this nonprofit week, Design for Change Week, two things. I think is to show that we care as Canva about all the social good these nonprofits are doing in the world, that's part of our missi

on of being a force for good. How do you do that when you're a design platform? Well, you put that into the hands of people who are already making things move. So, that's what we are doing, we are giving it away for free to all of you, guys, all of you, nonprofits, because we want you to use that power to create better presentations, better business cards, better everything, make that first impression. Sorry if I plugged a call to action here but, it seemed relevant to answer that question. (Enz

a) Okay, so we spoke about frequency and we spoke about priorities. There's a question that's come in about measuring. So, Lily has asked, "What if the impact of my organization's work is quite hard to measure? So, for example, how do you measure raising awareness? Or how do you measure advocacy work?" (Ronny) Yeah. So, it's a good question, and one that I've been trying to address during my whole time with Fair Trade Connection. Because what I was really trying to do is to raise awareness for F

air Trade. So, how do you measure that? Well, different ways. You can measure that with vanity metrics. What we call vanity metrics is how many followers you have, how many likes do you receive on your video, how many subscribers you have on your YouTube channel. So, these are kind of vanity metrics because they make you feel good because you see a big number. But another way to measure that which is more concrete is to really go back to the beneficiaries when I started shooting with one of thes

e Fair Trade organizations, I always tried to understand the big picture. So, I would ask one of the managers of these organizations like how many workers do you have here, like how much are they paid and what are the other benefits that they get from working here. So, if you can see the impact that you are trying to have with your organization, I would say that's a nice way of measuring. So, in the case of advocacy work, okay, I want to try to raise awareness. So, there are some studies made--

and I remember me being in the streets of Brussels with my flyers in my backpack, with a couple of other activists there and trying to ask people-- stop people in the most commercial street of Brussels saying, "Hey, do you know what Fair Trade is?" Six people out of ten would say, "Yeah, I know what it is, and this and that," but four people would have no idea. So, these four people, we would start talking to them. So, there are ways of measuring. Might not be super exhaustive, but there are way

s of measuring even like advocacy work, there are surveys that institutions might run every year, they might have this per industry, so these are always useful, a kind of more like the scientific kind of studies that show you numbers and proportions and you can measure somehow advocacy work as well. (Enza) Thanks, Ronny. Okay, so we've spoken now about measuring. I'm going to just continue this flow, let's talk about a call to action. So, Susie has asked, "What if you don't have a call to action

like a product, but you're seeking action towards something like a better environment, changing human behavior, or a social change? Can you just have the story? Or how do you craft a call to action in this scenario?" (Ronny) Okay. So, I would say, always try to have a call to action. If you tell a pretty story and that's it, people will laugh, people will cry, people will whatever, and then move on. And then what's the impact for you? How is it worth your time, your money, your resources to spe

nd all that time crafting the story? So, you should have a call to action. If you're not selling anything, you could ask people to visit your website and know more about the cause. Or if you are working-- I mean, it's very rare when an organization has nothing to ask. I mean, you either need funding, you need volunteers, you need people to just care about what you do and try to learn more, but you probably have something to ask. So, cannot really think of an organization that has absolutely noth

ing to ask. (Enza) Good point. Alright, let's change pace a little bit here. So, I thought this was a really great question, "Are there any nonprofits who really stand out in your mind that have been effective with their branding and storytelling? Because it would be great to see what they're already doing to promote their causes." (Ronny) Yes. So, yeah. There is one, actually-- There's a couple of, actually. One that I really liked and that really influenced me during my video producer kind of

career was the Rainforest Alliance, and there is a video in particular, it's called Follow the Frog. So, if you google Follow the Frog Rainforest Alliance, you will stumble upon this very cool and quirky little video of a guy who is working in his cubicle and somehow, someday he realizes, oh, I need to do something for the rainforest. And so, he decides to go and embark on a quest, and the video is the story of how this guy goes from his cubicle to the heart of the Amazon Rainforest, and how his

dreams got completely crushed. (laughs) So, it's a very funny and dynamic video, it influenced the way I edited, it influenced the way I told stories. And I really found that super impactful in the way that it moved me, like it really influenced me, it moved me because the story is so well told, so go ahead and check out Follow the Frog from the Rainforest Alliance, it's on Google-- it's on YouTube, sorry. So, there's that. There's charity: water. Charity: water has an amazing website full of s

tories, they have the right messaging, the right images, the right videos, super well on-point. So, these are really the ones that really stand out for me. Yeah, I would name these two. So charity: water and the Rainforest Alliance. (Enza) Thank you, there's some good ones for people to check out. We have had a few questions come through that are addressing our current situation with COVID that's going around the world and how this impacts nonprofits in particular. So, I've got two questions for

you, so I'll ask the first one. The first one's from Lexi who has said, "In this current time, when most of the people out there are creating a different image for themselves in social media, it's very different from reality. So, how trustful can it be to share your personal stories with the storytelling of your speech?" (Ronny) So, if I understand the question correctly, is that people can tell whatever they want about themselves on social media, is that correct? (Enza) Yes. So, she's particul

arly asking like how valid is it to create trust in your brand and how trustful can you be in your storytelling, I guess. (Ronny) Okay. So, for me, the way to build your brand is very simple. I've built my personal brand, I've become the Canva guy in my little circle of friends on Facebook, and that led me to Canva actually hiring me. So, how did I get there? Well, very simple. I cared about people and I really tried to bring them value. So, I guess, if you see a story about personal branding on

social media, and there are a bunch of them, try to really go to the bottom of what that person is doing. Are they trying to sell you a get rich quick scheme? Or are they really trying to bring value freely and genuinely because they really do care about you progressing in a specific industry, cause, or whatever? Are they trying to sell you something or are they just trying to bring value to you? And I'm not saying it's wrong to be selling things, but you see so many people like "Hey, guys, if

you buy my course, you know, I was like you, I did this, I did that, I really touched the bottom and then, after I discovered this course, my life changed, you know." And you just have to trust them on that, that it will change your life as well. Usually, that's a pretty poor way of telling your story and that's a pretty poor way of getting your audience's trust. But if you have, on the other hand, like the person who is consistently answering questions in a group and creating tutorials or talki

ng about how they have been volunteering or helping, if you want to bring the conversation back to nonprofits, and genuinely sharing experiences and value with the other people, and they don't sell too salesy-- they might have something to sell but they are not always pushing-- that's usually a good sign. So, yeah, it's kind of like the Gary Vaynerchuk Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook, so you have to jab a lot, so jabbing is giving away free value, the right hook is when you pitch your own product, the

stuff that you're selling, so I kind of-- I live by that and I try to provide a ton of value up front before I try to ask for something. So, that's usually a sign of smelling good story versus bad story, and good personal brand versus bad personal branding. (Enza) Okay. So, we're talking about the current climate. Maria has asked, "With the ongoing pandemic, it's become quite difficult for our team to get stories logistically because of limited movement. So, can you recommend an alternative way

to interview people and potentially get good photography?" (Ronny) Yeah. So, it's a very good question. We are also suffering from that at Canva. Our team has to be creative in the way we create content, we gather stories. So, I guess our options are relatively limited in that sense, that we cannot travel, cannot jump on a plane, send a crew to Guatemala and film the story. So, yeah, there are ways, Zoom is a good one. So, what we are doing right now, like I'm standing here, there are literally

three people here in the room, like I'm one of them. So, but I'm reaching-- my message is reaching hundreds, or hopefully thousands of people around the world, so many countries, so that's one way of doing it. Like you can use the technology we have at our disposal to get your message across. So, interviewing people, I've interviewed a bunch of people over Zoom recently, and that's what we do at Canva. So you send a little bit of instructions to the people you want to interview, you know, like

sit in front of a window, have a camera and try to frame your shot this way, so you send them a little bit of a how to frame your interview, so that they are not overwhelmed by the technology. So, we have these little decks where we ask them to do this, not do this, use a microphone if they have one, etc., etc.. So, you send them direction, you show them that you are there for them, and then you record your Zoom call, and then you pass that on to your editing guy and hopefully, he will or she wi

ll do some magic, like we've seen at Canva some of our colleagues creating very cool videos with some crappy footage I gave them. So, yeah, it is possible. I would say, we are probably living this crisis in the best time possible ever. I mean, imagine if we didn't have the internet, what would we do? (Enza) That's extremely true, I've never actually thought of that, so we're quite lucky that we can all still be united somehow, I guess. Okay, last one, because I'm just conscious of time here, so

the last question from Samantha. She says, "You refer to video, this is something we struggle with creating quickly and cost effectively. Do you have any suggestions?" (Ronny) Sorry, I missed the beginning of your question. (Enza) That's okay, I'll just repeat it. You refer to video, this is something that we struggle with creating quickly and cost effectively. Do you have any suggestions? (Ronny) Yes. Okay. So, video for a long time has been this kind of OVNI, this kind of UFO there that it's s

upposed to be costly, supposed to be hard to produce, you're supposed to know what you're doing and have expensive software. Well, the good news is that now you can create videos pretty simply, I would say. And Canva offers a pretty good solution for that and even a free solution. With Canva Free, you can already create videos, add animation to your designs and bring them to life in that way. So we have an amazing video team here working on making that part of the product super easy to use, and

I have to admit it is easy to use. So far, like as of today, 2020, you will not produce a full-on documentary with Canva, but you can create some very good videos for social media, you could probably edit some simple interviews, or put together a little video for social media, you know? So, I would recommend the person who asked that question to try using video in Canva. So, other recommendations I would give them is to not be afraid-- not be impressed by the technology. You know me, I never stu

died anything about creating video at school. I went to a business school and then I studied management and stuff like that, so-- but I created over a thousand videos in my life, and I was selling videos. I sold videos to the European Commission, and I never studied anything about filmmaking. So, my secret is YouTube. So, everybody today can just get online and start learning about something, about a product, about a software, about technique, about framing interviews, about what kind of microph

one to buy to do your-- and the good news is that you don't even have to leave your living room, you can follow that, buy everything on Amazon, it will be delivered to your place, and you can start being a YouTuber and even making money. Or you can create Zoom interviews and create your content like that. So, I would say don't be impressed by the tech, just get in there and learn, use the amazing resources that are available to you. (Enza) Thank you. Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow! What an amazing info

rmative presentation! Thank you so much, Ronny, a huge thank you. You should know that there's been a ton of love for you in the chat. I think a lot of people are fanboying all over you which is great. (Ronny) Oh, yeah, you see-- I'm coming. Well, thank you, guys. It was super interesting, an interesting experience to deliver the presentation in this way. I wish we could all have been in the same room, but that would have been more complicated. I had a great time. So, by all means, go check out

the landing page. So, the videos will be-- the sessions of the whole week will be available as soon as possible, I believe within next week, they will all be available over there. Make sure you check my colleagues' presentations as well, because I'm sure they will have a ton of value for you. If you liked this one in particular, you can go ahead and watch it again. You can reach out to me as well. I'm Ronny Hermosa, you can find me easily on any Facebook community, I'll be there, so yeah, thank

you so much for hanging out until the end. (Enza) Thanks, Ronny. Thank you, everyone, for joining us today. I hope you enjoy the rest of Design for Change Week.