Storytelling
People like stories, not sales pitches. Not just the facts. In an information overload world, we’re all looking for the part that means something to us, and will benefit us personally in some way. We’re continuously asking ‘so what?’
Content marketing has to answer that question, repeatedly, and get the reader to the point where they trust you to give them stories they want to hear. You have to keep getting it right, in other words.
People want their stories to be:
- Topical – current, or at least linked to the readers’ here-and-now.
- Relevant – to a singular reader, preferably addressed as ‘you’.
- Unusual – told differently, with a unique spin, with a different reason for telling it… something that makes the reader think, ‘well now I have to read this.’
- Trouble – a bit risky, challenging, if possible.
- Human – otherwise there’s nothing to hold on to. Whatever the subject matter, there’s always a human angle – yes, even with accountancy or industrial scaffolding.
This is all part of the journalistic approach that’s central to good content marketing, and that many businesses don’t have or get wrong. And this is where you need that all-important writer or editor: to spin the content that most businesses and many brands wouldn’t even think to write about. It’s often in that different angle or tangent, that external view and the out-of-context conversations… that the best content lies.
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