Thread by @nathanbarry

Many companies have a process for writing case studies or gathering testimonials, but I’ve never seen a storytelling flywheel on the level of what we have at @ConvertKit.

This storytelling flywheel is the heartbeat of all of our brand marketing efforts.

Here’s how it works:

1. Find a creator

Our resident storyteller, Isa, tells everyone in the company she’s looking for creators with unique businesses doing interesting things with ConvertKit.

So our account managers, product team, and customer support team send her a steady stream of story leads.

2. Vet their story

The creator fills out a survey that asks how ConvertKit has helped them connect with their audience and make a living doing work they love.

This helps us ensure they’re the right fit. If they are, this survey also helps us prepare the interview questions.

3. Conduct an interview

During a two-hour interview, Isa asks questions about their creative journey and creator business. She specifically asks how they are having success with ConvertKit. Our marketing team then uses these answers to write a case study.

4. Create a podcast episode

The finished creator story, which has been thoroughly edited and fact-checked by the creator, serves as a script for Isa to record an episode of the I Am A Creator podcast.

5. Take photos of the creator

We conduct a full documentary-style photoshoot of each creator and use the photos to illustrate the story as well as in all our marketing and social media.

We then upload the photos to Unsplash where they’ve been viewed over 40 million times.

6. Film the story

While many stories live in written and podcast form, we turn some into short documentaries.

We select stories with a strong visual element that would make an engaging film and coordinate a 3-day shoot to produce an episode of our I Am A Creator docuseries.

7. Promote the story

Our team writes promotional copy for each story and passes it along to our marketing team who shares the story across all of our channels.

We also provide the creator with assets and copy to promote their story to their own audience as well.

8. Creators recommend others

All of this turns into more customers through which we filter to find more stories to tell.

During many of the interviews, creators often recommend other creators whose stories we also end up telling.

This storytelling flywheel becomes the heartbeat of all of our brand marketing efforts. It also means that we don’t use any stock photos in our marketing.

100% of our photos are real creators who use ConvertKit—photos that we took ourselves.

The end result is we have stories and videos to post on our site and YouTube. This material is also woven through every bit of our marketing.

Isa is building an internal creator story database that will make it even easier for anyone on the team to find and use these assets.

When I’m writing an article, or putting together a talk, I’ll ask Isa things like, “Do you know of a creator who struggled to get traction until they focused on a specific niche?”

She has great examples each time—complete with photos, testimonials, and a story.

This is just one example of the many ways flywheels can be incredibly useful in your business.

For more examples, check out the full essay about Creator Flywheels on my blog:

nathanbarry.com/creator-flywhe…