Why does your business need a story?

Everyone loves a great story.

People want to feel connected to a group, to belong.

Stories give you a reason to communicate and relate.

Stories are stimulating and give you something to believe in.

Stories make you feel better, smarter, safer or even loved.

Business storytelling is similar.

It is about creating alignment between your business and prospects and customers.

But telling your brand’s story is more than what you write on your website, your blog, or even social media.

It is your value and your mission, and how you communicate that consistently to your audience – wherever they are.

Thanks to smartphones and tablets, the average adult spends over 20 hours per week with digital media.

Additionally, Google receives over 4 million search queries per minute per 4 minutes.

4 million search queries per minute? Wow!

That is a lot of people looking for the answers.

But, capturing their attention can be difficult.

In just 1 minute…

1388 blog posts are published.

Facebook users share 2.5 million pieces of content.

YouTube users upload 72 hours of new video content.

Twitter users tweet nearly 300,000 times.

Instagram users post nearly 220.000 new photos.

All in this can be done in 1 minute.

Content marketers are constantly battling for the attention of their prospects and customers.

To help ensure that you are heard, you need to be genuine and tell a story that appeals to your audience.

Your goal is to make a human connection.

It is about resonating with people, people that you need your help or guidance.

In the world of business, a story helps you create a contrast between choices.

Stories will help your prospects make sense of the decision that they are about to make.

Whatever it is deciding in a needed product or service or making the purchase,

Chances are you are not the only business that does what you do.

Why Stories Matter For Today’s Business?

To survive in today’s crowded informational marketplace, you need to stand out.

This is where your business story comes in.

Stories can make your prospects the main characters, and even change the way they think and feel.

And storytelling is used in all formats of content.

It is not just used in a lengthy eBook.

You can use storytelling in blogs, email, videos, case studies, guides.

The list goes on and on.

So, what is NOT a story?

A story is not just your history.

A story is why you are doing what you are doing, and telling it in a way that appeals to your audience.

It is also not cliché; it is not what everyone else is saying.

Sure you may think you provide the best customer service within your industry, but that is not your story.

Storytelling is about standing out, not blending in.

Many companies play it safe and use data and ROI to attract customers, which is important.

But logic is rarely is appealing and remembered.

On the other hand, emotion gets remembered.

Emotion gets shared.

And it is not by saying we are the best.

It is more about appealing to the emotional side of your prospects and customers than the logic of what you do.

Stories are how audiences remember.

And to help make your audience remember, you need to stand out by telling a story with the right context.

Create a contrast by being consistent and authentic and being conversational to elicit emotion from a specific audience.

As a content marketer, use stories to better engage.

The most importantly, teach your audience.

Content Sharing and Storytelling: Why People do Online Content Marketing?

Content sharing is often – the holy grail of many content marketing, social media and online marketing practitioners in general.

Although content sharing is just a part of the whole content marketing process and social media marketing reality.

All marketers would love to see their content shared as far as wide as possible.

It is a topic that had been living in all forms of marketing.

So, here is the question – why do people share the content?

Why do they tell stories? Why do they bother at all?

The answer is – this is because they want to feel emotionally compelled to.

The Psychology of Sharing: How to Use Content Marketing?

Content sharing – it involves emotions, psychology and quite some chemical process that go hand in hand with the act of sharing.

“The sharing of stories or information may be driven in part by arousal” – Psychologist Jonah Berger.

That seems like pretty self-oriented, don’t you think?

People have tried to define all the emotions and motivations of why content and stories get shared for ages.

Each of the emotion got its own label.

So, there are literally hundreds of ways to look at emotions and motivations.

Similarly, we as humans like to label things and people which are to make sense of the world around us.

Thus, we like to label emotions and connect them with the way on how we act, feel, behave and share.

Content, Social, Content Curation and Storytelling

Without all of the content and stories, the world would be a lot less populated and boring.

Everyone needs to have something to talk about, don’t we?

In the end, that also part of what content marketing is all about.

Storytelling is essential for content marketing.

And one of the characteristics of stories is that they tend to get shared.

Yet, storytelling is about much more than content marketing.

Content marketing is closely related and being integrated with nowadays social media marketing.

It is also depending on the business goals and context that you want to be delivered.

However, it is clear that the combination of content and social is a strong one.

Sharing is not anything new as humans have always shared the content in one way or another.

We just digest the content, share it and discuss it.

It is a fundamental fuel of communities offline and online.

Why You Need Content Marketing?

Besides, you also could use the storytelling to strengthen your brand.

Without a doubt, storytelling is one of the most powerful ways to breathe life into your brand.

It is often being called as one of the main components of a content marketing approach.

Just by giving your products and services an identity by capturing and sharing the stories, you could take your target audience to a journey that they yearn to experience.

In order to establish a personal connection for consumers with your brand, the story should be authentic, creative and inspirational.

Emotional branding is a progressive marketing strategy that has the potential to drive revenue and increase customer retention.

How a person feels about your brand typically determines whether they want to buy your product.

A brand is a matter of perception.

When you try to tell a story that embodies human challenges, you are indirectly creating an experience that resonates with your customers.

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