Stupefy, Semper-Fi, Storify
Everybody loves stories. Our lives are intricately woven together by a series of lewd anecdotes invariably containing more detail than anyone would ever consider requiring, involving what someone did with someone else at the club last night. And if we can listen to that at the water-cooler every day, then we can flipping well listen to anything. That in mind then, could storifying your content marketing make all the difference in the world?
Yes. The answer is yes. Essentially turning your work-a-day promotional garble into something that actually speaks to the visitor is the crux of the matter, because the moment your latest update outwardly attempts to cram a product into
the face of the reader, they’ll switch off. Why? Because they’re not engaged, for want
of a less buzzy phrase. The route around this is to storify yourself, your company, your product. Present the reader with a situation and describe it, draw them in, create the environment and, utilizing that age old content hinge of defining a problem and then solving it; dress it up in the kind of situational water-cooler fodder that will keep your audience listening, and finally use product placement like you’re a slightly less wealthy Sam Mendes. It’s the key.
Of course, you’re likely thinking, ‘But I don’t have any product related stories’. And if that is the case, you’re missing the point. The stories we tell each other every day are often a tissue of a mistruths, of embellishments or of facts rearranged to make the narrative seemingly more worthwhile. It’s inherent. Nobody wants to excitedly reel off their latest tale only to have it met with the kind of silence you might expect at a particularly windy golf tournament.
This then means that you need to find your story. You need to actively seek it out, and fortunately, inspiration is literally everywhere.
We love familiarity. Even when it only exists on some peculiar, sub-conscious level, and this is where you can capitalize: taking two separate ideas, or stories or instances and splicing them together with your own touch of creativity will endow your content with the elements of engagement, familiarity and virality, thus promoting your product in just the right way.
Kick your content marketing into gear; stop selling, and start telling. Stories.
