Hey there, Happy Monday! Today let’s hear from Katie Storms, who is the senior director for marketing at Dallas College, where her focus is storytelling across the school’s seven campuses.

Q: How do you decide which stories are worth telling when resources are tight?

I always want to do a good story justice, but the reality is that we do sometimes have resource constraints. Whether it’s money for paid media, buy-in from other teams, bandwidth on my own team, or even just time (the most valuable resource of all), we work in a reality that requires flexibility and a commitment to doing the best work we can with the tools we have on any given day.

For me, I want to focus on the stories that are most impactful, support our mission, and have the power to create positive change.

I want prospective students to see themselves in the stories we tell and realize they have the potential to reach higher, whether through recognizing part of their own journey in another student’s personal story, discovering an academic program that is a good fit for their career goals, or finding a resource we offer that will help them be able to go college.

And I want current students to see our stories and discover they’re not alone and that they’re capable of reaching their educational goals.

From a strictly business standpoint, these stories can certainly impact our enrollment, retention, and completion. But from a human standpoint, these stories impact lives and families. And that has a lot of meaning to me.

So if I can tell a story that can be a win for both the business and for the lives of others, I’m always going to prioritize that where I can.

What I love about this answer:

What I really appreciate about Katie’s perspective is she’s putting her audience first.

She’s not striving to tell the stories the institution things matter. She’s focused on the stories that allow prospective students to see themselves at the school.

That may sound like an easy thing to do, but prioritizing that content can be a challenge — particularly when your team is stretched thin or you don’t have a queue of inspiring stories ready to go.

It could be easy to just knock out a straightforward profile and move on to the next thing on the to-do list, but ultimately that doesn’t help anyone — you or your audience.

By focusing on impact, your stories will deliver more value, particularly when resources are tight.

How do you decide what stories are worth telling when resources are tight? I’d love to hear from you.