As mankind’s sole vessel of information for countless generations, our brains are hardwired to remember stories. The better the story, the easier it is to remember. The smallest details paint a vibrant picture within your mind’s eye. By subtly incorporating your brand into an intriguing tale, suddenly readers are learning about your brand via content marketing without even realizing it. Storytelling is a skill often overlooked in the era of digital communication. Marketers frequently place such a strong emphasis on impressions, and other analytics, that the nature of the brand’s content is lost.
Brand Construction
“I’m blind, please help” doesn’t hold a candle to “It’s a beautiful day, and I can’t see it” as displayed by this 2011 viral video. Stories can be composed of just a few simple words, yet carry more weight than a novel. This is because the single sentence story forms an emotional connection with the viewer. This connection is more impactful to the viewer, and as such the business this video is promoting only requires a few seconds of branded attention, allowing the story to explain the impact of their service.
This is the essence of content marketing, the insertion of your brand into material your consumers would like to be viewing of his or her own volition. Without an underlying story, the relevance of your brand within the content is lost. Make sure your brand remains both consistent and authentic.
Brand Consistency
You must establish a unique tone that flows throughout all of your content, defining what it is, what it’s about, and who it’s for. One of my favorite examples of brand storytelling is a short film about the history of Johnnie Walker: ‘The Man Who Walked Around the World’.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xX-BwG3PDVA
This story does an incredible job of reeling the viewer in. Due to the overwhelming amount of content available online, it is more important than ever for the reader to WANT to learn more about your brand. Once you have intrigued your viewer, then you can subtly introduce product features.
Brand Authentication
The digital consumer is willing to trade a certain amount of privacy for the information you provide. Brand authenticity is a critical element to making your content more compelling, believable, and genuine. Consumer trust is the most valuable quality your brand can possess, for it will aid in developing long-term consumers who actively seek out your content and/or products. Some simple ways to increase your brand’s authenticity is to:
– Be articulate and eloquent
– Relate with personal experience
– Adopt a warm brand tone or style
– Use first-person voice
Elements Of A Good Story
James Lush is a media pro from BBC and ABC, as well as the co-founder and director of Lush Digital Media. Lush speaks of the importance of TRUTH testing to quality content generation, which defines the following 5 elements:
Topical – Make sure you publish your content at an appropriate time. This is more impactful if your timing correlates with your reader’s desire. This is especially true if your content is seasonal or event specific.
Relevant – Make sure your content is being delivered to the appropriate audiences. For example if a younger segment of your audience is active on social media, and an older segment if more prone to email marketing, reflect this distinction in your communications. Market to specific personas, not a general audience.
Unusual – Everyone has a gimmick. The best way to cut through the clutter of digital communication is to put an unexpected twist on familiar content. This is an age-old tactic of advertising. For example if marketing an art museum, develop a campaign and “stop to see the roses” as opposed to relying on the traditional association with scent.
Trouble – There always needs to be conflict in order to develop a story. Fortunately this provides the perfect opportunity for your product or service to save the day as the hero of the promotional scenario
Human – No consumer will think of your brand as a personal friend, but that doesn’t mean you can’t develop a human connection with your customers. Unless your readers can relate to your content, there won’t be any drive to consider the product or service in context to their own life.
Study your ABCs
Authentic Brand Communications will require more than your single website to maintain a tight-knit community of customers. When developing genuine business to consumer relationships the devil is in the details of applying all your media channels. You can strengthen these bonds by replying to a customer’s tweet under your branded Twitter account, or you can weaken the authentic perception of your brand by delivering clickbait content such as “10 reasons you to ditch valueless content: Number 5 will have you in tears!”
Social Media
This communication venue is your most personalized as it has the potential of being 1-to-1 conversation, the impact of which can typically be seen by everyone. If you have multiple people managing your social accounts consider adding a unique sign-off to each person posting to add some personality to your brand’s overall account.
Email Marketing
Communicate with your consumers as if talking with your friends (within reason). While spelling and grammar are important to maintaining a respectable brand, don’t be afraid to add personality to your communications, as this is what allows your business to be truly unique.
Blog Posts
Much in the same vein as email marketing, don’t be afraid to add personality to your brand’s blog posts. Write for the specific people reading your blog, not a generalized and neutral audience. There is no denying that the more personalized your business becomes, the more likely you are to drive away a portion of your readership, however fear not, as this only identifies the customers who are truly invested and are more likely to continuously engage your brand.
Support
Most small businesses aren’t able to apply multi-channel automated response systems, and that can be an advantage! It is more important to have genuinely helpful customer service than it is to be able to provide poor service to a large number of people. “A solid customer experience could be more beneficial than many brands realize. According to new data out from Sitecore, a good customer experience could push revenue lines up as much as 11%.”
The Pixelated Word
When working with content marketing solely through text, the writer must appreciate the difference between the written word in a printed and digital environment. Digital readers require the ability to quickly scan your content above all else.
Often in printed, long-form writing the main ideas may be buried under paragraphs of introductory text. When writing for the web make sure your content is always organized into shorter paragraphs or 2-3 line sentences. While this likely goes against everything you have learned about proper writing format, breaking up your text into scan-able blocks is essential for the digital reader.
In addition to easily scanned sections, make sure to include headers before each major subject. This allows readers to scan your sections, as well as the content within each to see if they’re interested in learning more. If you need to include a large amount of information quickly, format it as bulleted points.
Effective content marketing is just as reliant on a writer’s ability to craft a story, as it is on a marketer’s ability to intertwine a brand. This can take many forms, from print to film, as displayed above. However before the execution of your content can begin, remember that developing your brand’s strategy always comes first. If you’re looking for ways to develop, or implement, your brand’s strategy into entertaining content campaign, reach out to 1Digital Agency’s team of copywriters to kick-start the marketing process.