To be successful, your content needs to connect your brand with your audience.
Sounds simple enough, right? Yet so many brands and businesses struggle to effectively communicate their brand story.
Storytelling and branding go hand in hand. You can create as much content as you want to promote your business and services, but if you aren’t sharing a clearly defined, interesting, and unique brand story, you aren’t truly reaching your audience or standing out from the crowd.
Your brand story is more than just the story of how your business was founded. Your brand story should define who your brand is and what it stands for, encompassing your mission, values, impact, and value proposition. Not only will it set you apart from the competition, but it will help your audience better connect with you. Because your brand story is a tool used to build relationships with customers—whether new, old, or potential—it is imperative that you make use of storytelling strategies that lead to higher engagement rates, improved reach, and as a result, better leads and more sales.
Here are 5 keys to better tell your brand story.
1. Toss out your sales mindset.
As you generate brand stories, shift your focus from selling your service or product to providing value to your audience.
When your viewers feel like they are gaining something from your content, rather than being coerced into a purchase, they will let their guard down and engage with your brand. No one wants to feel like they are being sold to. Instead, they want to feel like they are gaining something from their interaction with your brand.
Storytelling is the best way to connect with readers, and this emotion-driven approach
will differentiate your brand from the competition and build the foundation for a stronger relationship with your customers.
2. Consistency matters.
Don’t tell your brand story in a certain way only to later release content that undermines or negates what you presented earlier. This will only serve to confuse your audience.
Keeping your narrative cohesive is essential to telling a brand story, and all content you release should communicate themes and values that are on-brand. Along with the storyline, the tone, messaging, and visuals all should match your existing branding. Don't throw your audience off!
3. Take your audience on a journey.
All great stories have a beginning, middle, and end.
Laying out your content in this familiar pattern will make it not only easier to understand, but will convey your message more effectively. When you tell a compelling and easily consumable brand story to your audience through your content, it will resonate that much more.
4. Drama, drama, drama.
Like all compelling stories, yours should include an element of tension.
Is there something your brand is up against? Show customers the causes you are fighting for and the challenges you have overcome in a relatable way. This is an excellent way to explain your brand's mission or explain your founding story. Demonstrating your values and how you stand by them will draw in your audience and have them rooting for you.
5. Create with authenticity in mind.
Don’t be afraid to be transparent about what your brand represents– and what it does not– when communicating your brand's identity. Actively work to create a brand story that resonates by being real. Audiences are used to living in the age of fake news, and anything phony will be sniffed out from a mile away. Honesty really is the best policy!