Marketers are constantly wondering about how to improve their SEO and engagement on their portal and have realized that content marketing is one of the greatest ways to do it. However, it is also important to note that the content which is described as a story or has a story in it is more likely to engage a greater number of visitors/customers in a better way.
Truly said, there are two ways to share knowledge: you can push information out or you can pull them in. Pushing information out is never a preferable option as the knowledge does not stay for long in that scenario. However, when we pull in people for knowledge share, the shared knowledge stays for long in their memory comparatively. Storytelling in content marketing leads to improved engagement and enhanced interest of the users.
You can push information out or you can pull the target users in. Click To Tweet
But, the next question which arises is that how should we go for storytelling in content marketing and on what factors shall we focus while telling the story.
The answer is simple. Following this could be included while telling a story:
- A story about the brand
- A realistic connection
- Educating customers about the prospects of your product/services
So let us walk through ways through which these kinds of small story moments work. Before we begin, we need to remember that the major aim of embedding stories in the content is to build trust and to convert a visitor/lead/prospect into a customer. Use the following tips for effective storytelling in content marketing:
Keep It Empathetic
First thing, what is empathy? Empathy is nothing but the ability to understand and share the feelings of others. Empathy builds a connection of trust/belief which no other thing can. And that’s why, when stories are empathetic, people relate to them easily.
The stories you develop need to have content which would be very easy for the users to relate to their own lives. For example, while giving the description of a service which aims to help the content team, you can illustrate it as “It helps you identify and remove bottlenecks in your system and brings efficiency in (give the name of a person) John’s content.” A person who reads the story will be able to relate to the situation and the issues faced by him would come in his mind. This will help the users to rely on you more and trust that your service could be a great problem solver for their team.
Empathy is nothing but the ability to understand and share the feelings of others. Click To Tweet
Keep It Memorable
It is very important to keep it so interesting that the listener remembers it for long, if not forever. Also, it is a dream for every content creator that his words have an impact on his reader and stay in his memory for long.
When you try to draft a description of your food service which can be customized as per a user’s need, you can illustrate it with the help of a story such as “Imagine as when you are walking down a street and go to seller to buy a cheese sandwich with no onions and only tomatoes.” Now you continue to describe how you have successfully able to adapt to these important preferences.
Not only have you explained the benefit but have also successfully induced that you have your marketing strategy of impulsive buying in place. Not only this, but you have also told your user a memorable story that will always tie the aspect of motivating to buy.
Keep It Illustrative
In order for a user to connect to the product, you need to write it in such a way that he is successful in drafting a complete image of the situation when your product would be a boon. It should help the user to create a picture in his head. For example, if you want to describe a product which helps to locate some things easily, you can say “it will make your aim of being Sherlock Holmes easy”. So he will be able to get a picture of a person immediately and will replace himself in that attire.
Use facts and figures
Using interesting and important facts and figures in any content or story play a key role in engaging the users. Also, telling the facts which are unknown to the majority in an interesting and creative way, leads to higher engagement.
Now that you are done with engaging your audience it is time to rank yourself better on SEO.
The question arises how storytelling in content marketing can help you do so. Let us understand that in detail:
- Most of the search engine websites give higher priority to the websites which have great content quality, good text to code ratio and informative/authentic content. They also give an emphasis on the presentation of the content. Thus, if the content has a good amount of information which can add value to the customer then it would be automatically ranked higher.
- Storytelling in content marketing works because the users give it a thumbs up and they share it with their network which in turn sends out social signals and these social signals are considered by the search engines too for rankings to some extents.
- Case-studies done on users experiences are also a great way to tell the stories of the users in an interesting way. These also meet the user goals as well as business goals i.e., telling about the product/service by relating to somebody with whom the readers/users can relate to.
- SEO ranking improves drastically when you have a high session time and lower bounce rate. So once you make your content engaging you are sure to make the jump on the result pages.
Conclusion
Storytelling in content marketing can prove to be the next big things for driving engagement to your website. However, the major issue with this sort of content is to not to exceed it. A content which has an approach of storytelling needs to be used sparingly. It is very important to remember that you need to engage your users and not to overload them with memorable pictures.
