You will never stop hearing that storytelling is the key to your best content strategy. We all know this! Humans are designed to love stories from an early age – they pull us in! When it comes to your brand, the type of stories you share with your audience can make the difference between a lifelong customer and someone hitting the unsubscribe button. You know what you stand for as a brand, who you serve and what you’re selling, right? So, let’s make sure you’re delivering stories that are converting followers into leads and leads into customers!
Grab something to take notes because here are the three different types of stories your brand needs to be telling this year!
#1 Brand Mission & Values
You might be thinking you already share about your brand’s mission and values; “I even have them on my website somewhere, come to think of it!” Listen, you want what you stand for and how you uniquely choose to do business to serve as the cornerstone of your identity. Stories about why you started your business and choose to serve the specific type of customer you do will provide a deeper understanding of what your brand stands for. This is a perfect example of how to highlight how you’re different from competitors! What stories create an emotional connection, allowing your audience to align themselves with a purpose beyond just a product or service? Allow yourself to show up transparently and authentically to foster connections that go beyond just another Instagram post or marketing email. These stories will help build trust and loyalty faster than you can say “add to cart.”
#2 Case Studies & Client Interactions
Can you simply share customer reviews and screenshots of client comments from your work together? Of course, but is that what’s going to really drive home the impact your products and services are making? Sharing stories about specific customer journeys, wins, results and more provides tangible evidence of your brand’s ability to solve problems and deliver value. Don’t be shy, and try different things here. When you dive into specific instances where your brand made a difference for a client and share exactly how you worked together, you humanize your business and build credibility. Highlighting challenges faced, solutions implemented and the positive outcomes achieved creates a powerful storytelling framework that really isn’t hard to create because it’s literally what you did! The goal here is to help future customers envision similar success for themselves, ultimately increasing the likelihood of conversion.
#3 Teachable Moments & Lessons Learned
You want your brand to show up as an authority and expert in your industry. With the art of storytelling, you can position yourself as an authentic and relatable brand by sharing stories that connect your audience to teaching points. These stories should inspire, educate and resonate with your audience, emphasizing the things you truly want to be known for and seen as an expert on. Each story can be different, showcasing personal stories, professional accounts, interesting anecdotes or pop culture references but create an image of you as a trustworthy source of knowledge and experience. Through teachable moments, you not only impart wisdom but also foster a sense of community, where both your brand and audience grow together.
Hustle & Heart Challenge
This month, dig into your brand as a whole and brainstorm 2-3 stories for each of the three story types listed in this article. Before implementing these stories into your content strategy, pinpoint how each story you’re telling relates back to your business and what you’re selling to make sure it aligns well!
