To communicate with your target audience, you need to create content. There are many different ways you can deliver content; blog posts, emails, website pages, social media, print materials, etc. However, your content should delight your target audience and convert them into advocates of your brand.
In a nutshell, content marketing is telling a story that educates and inspires your audience to make a good, informed, and confident decision. Instead of marketing or advertising your products and services, you create useful, entertaining content that your potential customers and existing clients can enjoy and learn from.
The Importance of Story in Content Marketing
Stories help you communicate and build relationships with your audience. Stories in business are similar. They’re about creating alignment between your business and your potential customers. But telling your overseas chinese in worldwide data brand story is about more than just what you write on your website or even on social media. Your values, mission, and how you consistently communicate them to your audience are all important. Thanks to smartphones and tablets, the average adult spends more than 20 hours a week on digital media .
Content marketers are constantly fighting to capture the attention of potential customers and clients. To get them to listen, you need to be authentic and tell a story that resonates with your audience. After all, your goal is to connect with people. Stories help your prospects make sense of the decision they’re about to make. It’s not just that you’re the only business in your field doing what you do. It gives you a leg up in deciding on a needed product or service.
To survive in today’s crowded information marketplace, you need to stand out. That’s where your business’s story comes in. Stories can make your potential customers the main character and even change the way they think and feel. You can use storytelling in blogs, emails, videos, and even guides.
The stories you create aren’t just about your background, they’re about why you do what you do, and how you tell your audience is crucial. You may provide the best customer service in your industry, but telling that story would be a cliché. Many companies play it safe and use their data and ROI to attract customers, which is important. But while numbers and data can be hard to remember, the feelings your customers have about your company are remembered and shared.
Simon Sinek says that people don’t buy “what you do,” they buy “why you do it.” Most people start by communicating about what they do and eventually start talking about how and why they do what they do. But think of Apple or Google, they communicate from the inside out. They start with why and only then move on to talking about what they do. To keep it simple, the “why” is why you do what you do, the “how” is how it helps your audience, and the “what” is the product or service you offer. When you talk about why and how, you are communicating with emotion and dealing with human behavior.
When planning a story, get to the emotional side of things to connect with your prospects and customers and articulate the why of your story, and start building awareness from there. Golden Circle can help you create your mission statement and set the tone for all your content.
3 Basic Elements of Content
Character (Persona)
There are three basic elements to the story you are trying to tell and how you are trying to tell it. Characters, conflict, and resolution. Every story revolves around at least one character. You need to introduce the people involved in the story. In content marketing, the people involved in the story are your readers, your target audience/potential customers. When creating your content, you need to understand your target audience and provide answers based on their wants and needs. If potential customers can get answers to their questions and see themselves as one of the characters in your story, they will be more likely to use your product or service and experience the successful ending at the end of the story.
To make sure you’re focusing on the right characters when creating your content, start with your buyer personas . Your ideal buyer persona can help you explain the goals and challenges your character will face. It’s also important to determine the point of view your story will have for your content. First-person, second-person, or third-person?
For first person point of view, this is when the character you create is yourself. Narratives that use the phrase “I experienced this” or “I saw this” are confessional. They can help establish a connection with the reader. You can use this narrative to establish authority over the reader, and try using first person when it’s a known person. This can work for a blog post, a video, or even an e-book if the author is credited.
For second-person perspective, the character is your reader. When using “you’ll see” or “you’ll learn” language, you need to understand buyer personas. Knowing their critical points and goals and making it personal to them will increase the readability of your content. Tell the story in a way that shows empathy.
Finally, third person. This is "he said," "she did" type language. Buyer personas can potentially use third person. " Case studies " of your customers are a great example of using third person.
When creating your content, consider your target audience, or buyer persona, and think about what will work best for them.
