How Emanuela Zaccone tells amazing stories with her Lumia

Emanuela Zaccone has a PhD focused on Social Media and a Lumia 1020 she carries everywhere.

This fantastic combination has earned her almost 10700 followers on Twitter, more than 500+ contacts on LinkedIn, over 1650 followers on Instagram and 16500 plus followers on Google+.

1. On your Instagram feed you call yourself a natural born storyteller, which we think is an excellent description! How do you get people to listen to those stories?

I love telling stories and I love being inspired by great ones. Instagram is the place in which I find a new dimension for both my business and my personal life. I am a very curious person and no matter what I am doing – whether I am on my way to a customer’s office or chillaxing – whenever I see something that catches my attention I have to take a pic. When I travel, I always try to find some spare time to explore the place where I am at and then try to make my followers “part” of the story, reporting about the location or its history. Sometimes I use inspirational quotes in the caption instead.

I have thousands of photos, but only the ones that most inspire me become part of my Instagram feed. What I love best is writing the caption. My greatest inspiration for captions comes from National Geographic: they can really make people relate to what they talk about, to take them where the photo was taken. In the same way, I want my followers to be part of my journeys (that is why, for example, I started to take pics of the stuff I bring with me when travelling). I strongly believe that the caption on Instagram is as important as the photo itself. Never forget: always answer to people who post a comment. That’s how you can actually improve.

2. How did you become a Lumia lover and which Lumia are you using now?

I had the opportunity to try some of my husband’s Lumias and eventually I fell in love with my Lumia 1020. We are inseparable! The experience that changed my life was the Stephen Alvarez workshop at Nokia World 2013. That’s when I thought: “I want to tell stories and I want to do that with pics and words.” Plain and simple.

3. What do you most love about your Lumia and why?

I have always loved to tell stories but it was with my Lumia 1020 that I discovered my passion for photography. So, the thing I love the most is that it unleashed what is now my greatest passion. It is great when you find something that really thrills you. The Lumia 1020 puts users in control, since you can manually set all the parameters before taking your pic. This is the best way to learn how to use the right focus, how to give value to different elements with different levels of exposure, how to create effects by changing the shutter speed and when and how modify the ISO. It is literally the best way to be in control of everything.

4. Could you list five ways in which your Lumia helps you with work?

Most of my business documents are in OneDrive, which means that I can access them everywhere. Skype is great on Lumia and since I am always on the move, I definitely need it. What’s more, I’m a massively enthusiastic user of Office, especially PowerPoint and Excel, so it’s great to be able to access and modify my files everywhere. I also use the Dynamics CRM app: at AIDA Monitoring – my startup which is part of the Microsoft BizSpark Plus program – we built a Social CRM plugin integrated with it, so I can always access our data. Here Maps is also a part of my essentials list: try to get to a customer when you are in the middle of nowhere. You need a map, don’t you?

5. Finally, which five apps do you think every storyteller of the digital age needs on her/his Lumia?

First of all: OneDrive. You will need a lot of space when taking pictures. Second: Lumia Camera. Your essential app for catching all of the beauty and the stories out there. Third: Instagram. It’s where the magic happens. Fourth: Lumia Creative Studio. We all try to catch the best pics ever, but sometimes we need some adjustments. Creative Studio is perfect for it. And, last but not least: Evernote. It’s great for taking notes of what you want to see, plan your trips and even prepare the captions and hashtags you are going to use with your photos.

***

“Great stories happen to those who can tell them,” Emanuela quotes Ira Glass on her Instagram. We think she definitely proves that right with her eye-opening, amazing work. How about you? What impressed you most about Emanuela’s Lumia storytelling and is there something you’d like to ask our latest #LumiaExplorer? The comment section is all yours!