BSK: Story
In this session, we will talk about your Story, also known as your messaging.
Why does a Story matter?
Because people remember stories. Facts are boring. Numbers can be made up. But stories, relatable, emotionally engaging stories, stories stick.
People don't just buy the product or service; they buy into the Story that comes attached. Thanks, Seth Godin, for teaching me that one.
The Story card covers two types of messaging.
The first is your brand's core identity, and the second is the content you put out regularly as content marketing, as part of a campaign, or content plan. The stuff that you talk about after you've set the foundational Story of your brand and you want to keep people informed about your business and engage your audience in a conversation.
One is a Bio on the About Us page, and the other is what you'd discuss in a blog.
Let's start with the first one - your brand story.
We're looking for a description of who you are as a brand, what you promise, and how you got here. It's there so that if someone finds you in the middle of the afternoon or the middle of the night, they want to suss you out. They have something to find - something they can learn about you.
Some prompts to help you write your brand story are:
Why did you start?
When did you start?
Where did the idea for this venture come from? What was your experience that gave you the lightbulb moment?
Where are you on the journey so far? What are the highlights and milestones you've already covered?
Where are you hoping to get to next?
How do you want to serve people? How do you want to do business? What makes the way you serve customers special and unique?
Who have you helped in the past - what type of work have you done?
What are you trying to do to the industry? What change are you seeking to make?
Who is on your team helping?
What problem does your product solve?
Some key things to keep in mind about your brand story:
How you present your brand story should reflect your Values and how you want to operate (let's say you value being candid and approachable).
Your Positioning - how you compare to others offering the same thing.
The tone you want to set for your brand.
Your Audience - what do your customers expect to learn from your story, and what do they care about? Remember what type of content your audience is looking for and what information they need.
For example, if you're a new-age bank, you might want to talk about how you put technology first because that's how millennials and Gen Z do banking.
If you're a coffee roaster, you might want to talk about how your guava-fuelled journey through South American coffee fields inspired the coffee you now sell to specialty baristas.
Let's look at the other type of Story.
The ongoing stuff, the continuous content that forms the conversation that is your marketing, these topics can relate to what's happening in your business - like new product updates or service regions.
Returning to the banking example, your continuous content might include updates on interest rates and how they affect customers.
If you're the coffee roaster, you might want to tell people you're doing a single-origin-batch-brew-special-one-off-experimental-blend, and only the first fifty DMs can buy a bag.
Note: it is possible to brainstorm, produce, and schedule your stories in advance. But be careful not to go too far ahead because the world constantly changes. If you invest too heavily in content planned for 3 months away, the world and what you need to say could change so dramatically that whatever you had planned becomes irrelevant.
This is an important point because your content-audience fit is what you're really looking for. The crossover between what you want to talk about and what your Audience wants to hear. A big part of finding that fit is responding to the conversation when it's happening.
How active you are in that conversation depends on your interest, availability, and the other factors mentioned, like Values, Positioning, and your Audience's expectations.
That's the Story - see you on the next one.
Last Updated: 28/Dec/2023