Why stories are a crucial part of your content marketing

People read content to be informed, entertained or inspired. So it’s your job to provide content that people want to engage with and one of the best ways to do that is by telling your story.

According to the Content Marketing Institute, 

“Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”

Chances are if you put any content out there for your business - blogs, social media posts, printed materials - you are already using content marketing as part of your strategy. However, not all content is created equal.

The reason that stories are such a powerful form of content marketing is because they are authentic, relatable and unique. If you ever share a story about you as a business owner on social media versus a piece of content about a new business service, you can almost guarantee that the story will get more engagement every time.

​“The reason that stories are such a powerful form of content marketing is because they are authentic, relatable and unique."

So do you have to talk about yourself all the time? No, absolutely not, but you do have to think about the story behind your content. 

Let’s focus on social media content for the time being and think about the things businesses might share. Maybe a new product or service, maybe they’re pushing a new event. How does this relate to a story? For an event, it could be including a testimonial from a previous event about how a real person benefited from attending. For a product, it could be using a photo of it in a real home, rather than a stock image, and for a service, maybe it’s adding a story about why you like offering this service so much.

Questions to ask yourself before posting your next piece of content online:

• Does it relate to something specific about your business or you as a business owner?
• Does it use a unique image which relates to the text?
• If you’re using testimonials, is it true to the original testimonial you received?
• Does it tell the viewer something useful, relevant, entertaining or inspiring?
• Is it written in your own style or brand voice?
• Does it evoke an emotional reaction of some kind - surprise, wonder, excitement?
• Is your call to action clear and is it related to the post?
• Are you posting it at a time that you audience are likely to be online?

​Try to reframe the way you think about your business content and think about telling a story, rather than simply broadcasting a message out there.

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