The Profitable Capability of Storytelling in Content Strategy

The Profitable Capability of Storytelling in Content Strategy
The Profitable Capability of Storytelling in Content Strategy

You might be asking of what’s truly the power of storytelling. How it can help your business to grow and flourish? And why it is becoming a part of content strategy?

What stories do I need to tell my audience?  How will I start? Can it bring value when it comes to my business?

I or we can have a lot of questions, but what is storytelling?

Storytelling in Content Strategy

Let’s get one thing straight. Customers wanted to have more than reading data. The trend right now is that they are getting used in reading a lot of ideas, information and knowledge and if you wanted to be present online, how you can compete with this?

For this reason, storytelling is noted to be an exceptional method of doing marketing.

You see, that they love stories. The art of storytelling itself dates back to ancient times — even before civilization was erected and existed.

Your target customers are excited when they can read stories that are similar to their experiences, that is the reason why they dwell in reading life-changing stories, romance and a lot more. Even it’s long enough as long as it triggers their interest they spend time on it.

Storytelling is a very essential element in online content. It’s a valuable method of working with content that might be forgettable into interesting content pieces. It becomes a valuable element of their content strategy

Why should you even bother with storytelling in content strategy?

Before we even begin, it makes sense to ask the inevitable and the first question. Why do you need to work out with storytelling within your content marketing?

Well, truth be told, there are lots of reasons to do so:

First, stories are very interesting and they establish a connection. It’s human nature to be incredibly curious about things that are interesting, and about things we aren’t familiar with. Plus, people are good listeners; especially when they find a narration which is impressive.

Second, stories lead to gaining trust. If whom you will share your stories matters a lot. You can get closer them with just telling a story especially if it is something personal. Some of the audience can relate since they have the same experience. And in line with this telling, an interesting story can bring closer to your audience.  And if they see more relatable stories coming from you, by simply gaining their trusts.

Third, stories serve to prompt action. Storytelling is your tool to generate emotional responses out of your audience. With stories, making your audience feel other emotions; humor, anger, nostalgia, hope, sadness, inspiration, etc among others. When it comes to a good story is like a thriller ride through people’s emotions.

It’s no surprise that it’s the goal of most copywriters. Because when making your reader feel, you can spur them into action.

One can take a good hard look at cold facts and a bunch of numbers, and then leave it at that after understanding the data. But weave a story around it, and they can stick around to learn more.

The bottom line? We are simply social creatures who wanted to have the base on comparing yourself from other people, feel a connection with them, and put ourselves in their shoes.

How to Get Started on Your Storytelling

But I’m not a novelist or someone who indulges in writing stories or spinning fictional stories to compel people. How do I leverage the power of storytelling if I can’t even write a narrative that’s not full to the brim with eye-glazing facts?

The thing is, you don’t need to be a fictional story writer. It’s as simple as imagining that you’re having a casual conversation with friends.

Do your audience research

If you don’t know of whom you are dedicating your story for, and you could not be a very efficient story writer. As you go along, you’ll actually see that the same kind of perspective applies to your posts and to other forms of web copy when you’re writing either. This is the reason why the audience and the keyword research is crucial to your storytelling success.

For these reasons, the first part of this is to find out what your audience’s interests and preferences are. Ask questions like:

  • What are your targets’ needs,  their pains, their hopes or even aspirations?
  • Who are your audience?

The crucial information you gather will serve to help you in telling an awesome story that would tug on your target audience’s emotional strings right away.

Clarifying your goal

No person has ever achieved their dreams without a clear goal. The same principle applies to every marketing strategy. The big overall goal may have something to do with your business’ financial health and the returns on investment. But it’s also equally important to create a goal for each and every one of your storified publications.

Ask yourself what you’re trying to say with one post? What is your aim? What do you want your readers to take from this particular article? Are you looking in communicating values? To discuss your product? Or perhaps you’re wanting to work on people motivation and taking action on one of the CTA buttons on your web pages.

Clarify this before you even put your pen to paper. Your crystal clear goals play a great significance on the kind of story that you’ll be constructing; whether that’s something dramatic, humorous, or inspirational.

Devising a CTA

Straight from your objective, it is simply the perfect time to start creating your CTA. This will let your readers visualize and understand what you wanted them to do right after reading your story.

It would be necessary to establish it beforehand. Crafting a compelling CTA takes huge amounts of work and lots of research. Your calls to action must be aligned within your objective and must contain the elements of a powerful line of copy to convince your readers to take the desired action.

Create your story structure

And now that the basics have been introduced and are out the way, it’s the perfect time to begin outlining the rough draft of the story. And this will serve as your guide in visualizing how every part of the story will fit together.

Do you know why it’s a better idea to craft this rough outline beforehand? This is so you don’t end up wasting tons of space and time in your storytelling. In creating a story map, it’s easier to craft a massively comprehensive story piece within the end. This can serve as your guide to see which parts are important, and these are completely optional.

And on that note, some important part of the story (no matter the shape or form) are:

  • Hero or main character: Each story needs to have this.  This might be you, someone being created, or from a business perspective, it’s your brand. Make sure that those characters have focal point which they can identify immediately or point out.
  • Conflict: This deals with the core of the journey or the story. This is something exciting. Every story has this. This is where the story revolves. It is vital that this is relatable where your audience can connect with it and its awesome if they are experiencing it within their life or can be within their past experiences.
  • Ending: Stories always have an ending. And they range from closed to open; to positive or negative or somewhere in between.  It should provide a resolution or a solution in the end. It is something that closes a  chapter. Therefore it is vital that you have a clear understanding of your audience and must include a significant call to action.

Start writing

This is time to start writing and have the basics of the structure, and now’s a more fitting time than any to start filling out the gaps. Do not be super conscious. The next step in this guide is there for a reason. However, what you need to do is go first with the volume, and move on to editing in the next moment.

Proceed to editing and refining

Editing is the part where you focus on heavy proofreading. After having a draft, it is time to check and proceed with editing.

This is the right time to give your original copy a once or even thrice over and find certain elements that are best eliminated or revised for even better clarity. And if you have to work on language improvement and work on replacing a couple of words that may seem too complicated or are not appropriate. You can keep doing this until the main point stands out clearly for your audience to read.

Don’t shy away from editing. It’s dirty work for writers. But you need it for achieving article finery.

Distribute your story on the right channels

Promoting content is very necessary just like creating content. On that note, don’t carelessly hit on the ‘Publish’ button and hope that it will turn out the best kind of traffic and engagement, and move on right afterward with the next piece.

How you’ll be doing it and in what format will depend on the type of channel you wanted.

Plus, it’s also a good idea to implement search engine optimization for better exposure on search engines and organic traffic generation.

7 Tips for Compelling Storytelling in Content Strategy

Knowing how to write your story is one thing. Ensuring that it has all the right elements to make it compelling and engaging is another matter. And we’ll tackle that part for better benefits.

Personalize your stories

If you love creative writing just as much as the next novelist on the block, you might be sorely tempted to throw in abstract concepts that would boggle the mind and hopefully entertain your audience.

But in this case, especially from a business standpoint, it won’t be appreciated much. Your target audience won’t appreciate when dealing with abstracts. So it is vital to tell your story based your perspective or another viewpoint just make sure to give credit with your audience. These kinds of are likely evoking empathy.

Draw up a connection between your clients, your users, your readers, etc. Do that as often as possible, and tie everyone’s worries and problems together so that everybody can relate. This approach is perfect for highlighting some real pain points and offering solutions to solve those problems.

Sprinkle some emotion

Feelings make the world go round — especially the very powerful ones. Luckily for you, you have plenty of emotions to choose from in a whole assortment and pool. You can simply feel emotion.

The main point behind you telling a story that it delivers emotional reactions.

No matter how technical your write-up may be. You can still sprinkle emotion into it. And remember that you can never go wrong with polite humor. It breaks the ice and makes your readers feel all sorts of positive emotions.

Need more help?

You can try painting a scene that offers a solution to a problem. In this add the even emotions that you want, it’s either pain or fear but in the end, you must tell a story that can solve this. It like overcoming the pain and be able to see the bright future. Additionally, storytelling must always have a personal touch and be relevant.

Think and investigate like a journalist

Journalists are prime examples of expert story hunters. So you can try stepping into their shoes and deal with things like they would. Let’s look at a prime example from the giant auto-manufacturer, Nissan, and its marketers.

Back in the year 2011, Nissan’s team of marketers discovered that traditional advertising and press releases weren’t helping them connect with your target audiences. To solve this issue, the company established a content laboratory — their very own for, well, content production, of course.

Nissan contracted former journalists. And these story searchers began scouring the internet and other sources (and even the brand itself) for archived data — basically any material they could use. They needed something attractive for Nissan’s customers and the band of social media influencer advocates.

Thanks to that fact, now nearly every international company has developed its own content lab. Companies like Apple, Google, Walt Disney and, etc., leverage the power of stories and have it as a basis for their content marketing.

And we can see that not each one can have its own content hub put you must work just the same as with a  journalist, always think what people wanted to see, hear or read.

Add Data within Your Story

What makes a story to be a remarkable one is that they use deep research. They have added supporting data with it. To be straightforward, it is making your story realistic and not just too good to be true. Therefore you must always start with searching with the right data and interesting data.

Think of your storytelling as a dish. You need to flavor it with spices to make it even more appealing for your customers (your target audiences). Data adds a punch to your content; makes it informational and trustworthy.

Take your readers on an adventure

So, start telling about your story, make a connection coming from your brand up to your audience in order that they can go along with the journey.

For instance, let’s say you’re a company that develops smartphone technology. You can tell them stories of how you have developed technology in the beginning, and what were the challenges you went through.

Provide visual representations

We are thankful that we have the social media where we can seek a lot of information but if you are business it is truly challenging to appear within it. There are a lot of big brands spending for awesome visuals to capture their users.

Remember that even in our own perspective, having just a textual content is not appealing, you can truly have a big problem if you will just tell a story and just write in a whole bunch of text.

So, if you wanted to make your story be more appealing, it is vital that you add with a relevant image or you can form it into another type of content, like working with a video or a podcast. You can also have infographics or amusing visuals.

The Bottom Line

Now, do you see the value of a story? It is simply the one that creates a significant connection with your audience or target. Whatever type of business you have, it is a great tool in gaining your target audience trust and making them believe with your brand.

When it comes to creating a story you must always add a personal appeal. Go deeper in searching how you can connect with within the target market. It must be something that creates a significant experience.

Within your story, it must provide a solution. It must solve what they are looking for and can make them happy and connected.

With storytelling, you can definitely create a difference from your competitors. Therefore make sure that you will add this into your content strategy.


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