Content Marketing – Be a Storyteller

Today, creating content that engages potential customers and increases conversion is a challenge for a small business. The struggle for the attention of potential buyers has led to the fact that it is not so easy to surprise with text or even video. People need sincere, beautiful stories. And this will help you storytelling.

To begin with, there is no universal recipe for creating a good story. For example, American writer Truman Capote once told The Paris Review: “I am an absolutely horizontal writer. I cannot think until I lie down, either on the bed or on the sofa with a cigarette and coffee. ”And Vladimir Nabokov wrote all his works on library cards. So he could write scenes in no particular order, and later play with their sequence.

But neither lying on its side, nor a thousand library cards are unlikely, of course, to help a small business owner or marketer create a good text that would attract and retain buyers.

We define the essence and purpose

If you squeeze marketing to its essence, you will probably say that its main goal is to sell. So it is, but thinking about it is not particularly useful at the stage of forming a goal and actually writing your article or storyboard for a video. If you focus only on sales, you can get just cheap advertising text.

Thinking about sales as the ultimate goal, it is worth spending more time building trust with your potential buyer. So do not focus on sales, but focus instead on talking to your audience.

Consider, for example, the recent publication on the website of the American brand Best Made – a company engaged in the manufacture of clothing and equipment for adventure. The purpose of a short post, written by the company’s founder, is to tell readers how diligently the brand team creates and tests their products.

Borrow from journalists

One option is to approach writing content as a journalist. This approach implies writing content — whether it’s an article, the “About Us” web page or a video script — skillful writing and building a clear and interesting story.

Structure

Journalists follow certain rules. Not every article is a purely creative act from beginning to end. Most often, there is a sequence diagram that looks like this:

-lead paragraph;

-key paragraph;

-accompanying information;

-conclusion

The lead is the first paragraph of the story. He should give answers to such several questions:

-Who! Who is the article about?

-What? What is the article about?

-Where? Where are the events described?

-When? When do these events happen?

-Why? Why is this happening?

-How? How does this happen?

Lead should immediately hook the reader. Therefore, sitting down at the writing of the article, think about how you can interest the audience immediately from the first paragraph.

The key paragraph or nut gpaph is the core of the story, its core. Literally – “paragraph-nut”, this is the part of the text that explains its value and answers the reader’s question: “Why do I need this?”. Here the audience must understand the essence of the text.

And finally, the accompanying part of the article is information that complements the main paragraph and smoothly leads to the ending.

A good example of the use of such a text structure is the history of the TOMS shoe brand . American traveler Blake Mikoski visited Argentina in 2006. Poverty, which he saw in one of the villages of this country, struck the traveler. Inflamed with compassion for barefoot children who did not even have a pair of shoes to go to school, he decided to create a company to produce traditional Argentine shoes. Together with each pair sold, one Argentine child received his own, new pair of TOMS.

Everything must be beautiful

Add a little literary charm to your text. It should be read like a good book. The living text does not let the reader go, and the reason is not necessarily tricks and tricks, but the simple sincerity and humanity of this text. Storytelling – with his characters, images and plot – always appeals to emotions. This warm interaction that develops between you and the reader at the time of reading your text, and lays the foundation for a strong long-term relationship between your brand and its customers.

Storytelling – the most important tool for content marketing. A strong story told to a client creates a positive attitude in him, unobtrusively informs about the values ​​and benefits of the product and motivates to buy. Use images and characters that embody the values ​​of your brand. Imagine your client is your close friend. Be honest and sincere in your stories.