How Can Storytelling Help You Improve Your Content Strategy

woman laptop coffee cup finger screen

Content has been regarded as king in the marketing world and it will remain king for years to come.

The main reason is that content marketing is the most efficient marketing strategy today. Many companies and brands leverage content marketing to establish meaningful relationships with their target audience and build trust, engagement and loyalty with them as well. Content can easily deliver value to customers through education, information and entertainment. That’s why online consumers prefer to engage with valuable content on a daily basis.

Brands that deliver meaningful content to their customers can hold their attention as long as they provide relevant content regularly. However, due to content marketing’s efficiency, the Internet has become oversaturated with individual content pieces. That’s why companies must alter their approach to content marketing and make their content more valuable to their audience. A good example is storytelling. That being said, here’s how storytelling can help you improve your content strategy.

Have your target audience in mind

Many companies include stories into their content, but not all stories become successful.

The main reason is that people don’t generally like generic storytelling. As most companies are well aware by now, online consumers are savvier than they used to be. That means that they can easily spot an old content piece being re-published in an attempt to make it relevant again via poor storytelling. That type of content will simply be ignored for the most part.

However, including a story with your target audience in mind is a whole different thing. Telling a story in such a way that it will pique your audience interest and engagement is good storytelling. Content that encourages your audience to consume it means it contains all the elements your audience likes to see in content. That makes the content more enjoyable, shareable and more relevant. Therefore, when creating a story for your articles or other content pieces, make sure it speaks to your audience in order to be more appealing to them.

Make your stories helpful

Storytelling can be used to educate, inform and entertain customers.

In other words, it can be used to enrich your content and make it more valuable to your audience. No matter what type of digital marketing your company uses to promote itself, good storytelling will almost always ensure customer engagement. For example, you’re promoting your company’s mission and core values as part of brand awareness? Tell us a story about how you got where you are and what led you there.

Also, do you want to promote your product or service? Explain how everything works through an engaging story that will both educate and entertain customers. Moreover, are you nurturing a lead via email campaign? Tell them a compelling story about how they’ll benefit from purchasing from you. By adding good storytelling to your content, you automatically make it more interesting. Thus you improve the overall efficiency of your content marketing strategy.

Hit an emotional bullseye

It's no secret that many brands strive towards sparking an emotional response in the customers.

Even if your company is not a brand, it doesn’t mean your content can’t spark emotions in your audience. What type of emotions you will go for depends on the content and the story itself. It also depends on what kind of response you’re looking for when you stir up consumers’ emotions. Emotional response can also help consumers relate more to your content, as well as product or services you’re promoting via that content.

For example, here’s how Google leveraged emotions in their storytelling while also focusing on their services, but without being invasive about it. Emotions can be a powerful engagement method when used properly in your storytelling. What’s more, they can make your content compelling enough to go viral over social media and build awareness for both your brand and your products or services.

Ensure consistency

Adding stories to your content can boost audiences' engagement tenfold.

However, you can’t rely on the idea that a single story will carry the desired results all the time. Once you start developing a compelling narrative for your content, you must ensure consistency. That means that you’ll be able to provide content to consumers with the “wow” effect at all times.

That’s why you should consider stories that can be applied across multiple topics. Not only that, but don’t stick to a single content format. Think about how your story can be adapted to more than just blog posts or articles. For example, create a video, an infographic, a webinar or a podcast as well. Furthermore, think of creating evergreen content that can be reused. That way, you give yourself enough time to use current stories, while also coming up with bright new ideas.

Storytelling adds a whole new level of entertainment and information to your content. Based on your storytelling strategy, you can use content to boost your audience engagement and loyalty. However, if your stories lack the power to generate interest and encourage consumers to read it, your content will be regarded as just another failed attempt to make it relevant again because your company is out of ideas.

 

Rob Boirun
We will be happy to hear your thoughts

Leave a reply

SEO Lab
Logo