Marketing is no longer just a matter of placing an advert and hoping the audience buys it. But then, it never was. Take cue from Mad Men, which tells of the birth of marketing as we know it. Even in the 1960s and 70s, the fictional Sterling Cooper advertising agency knew that marketing was all about telling stories. And that’s what it did. When Don Draper presents his pitch for The Carousel to Kodak executives, he tells them a story: an emotional, nostalgic trip down the memory lane of a family’s shared moments. And when Peggy is trying to coin a phrase for Belle Jolie lipsticks, she comes up with “A basket of kisses four words which expand into beautiful chapters.

If you publish your readers’ stories, they will appreciate it, feel emotionally engaged and provide you with more content

Of course, every story needs plots and characters. And that depends on the product that you have on offer. If you’re selling clothes, then storytelling is easy: you can interview stylists, keep readers up to date with the latest trends, and give precious tips on how to create this season’s looks. But what if you’re selling sugar? Not only is the product boring in itself, but it also comes with plenty of negative and unhealthy strings attached.

However, as centuries of storytelling have taught us, everything and everyone has a story to tell: even the most mundane of objects can inspire a story. It all depends how you package it into engaging content, the kind that gets an emotional reaction from your audience. Get it wrong and the audience will turn the proverbial page. Get it right and your audience will get involved and will want to share your content, contribute to it and ultimately transform it into brand equity and sales.

Connect and share

Storytelling is not just about stories. It’s also about connecting with others on an emotional level. Good stories remind readers of other stories and involve everyone in a creative process.

In order to do this, stories need to have a deeper meaning than your average blog entry telling your customers about your products and services.

Moreover, stories need to be immediate. There is a difference between a novel and content marketing: whereas the former involves a conscious decision by the reader to sit down and invest time in a good story, the latter has to grab the reader’s attention and shout louder than all the other stories being told by your competitors.

Content also has to be constant. The moment you stop telling stories, website traffic, shares, likes and engagement stops. Give your readers something new every day.

Involve the reader

For postmodernism, the author is dead. However, for content marketing, the author is very much alive.

When choosing authors for your content, go for people who enjoy a high degree of influence and authority. After all, people want to read stories told by people they know and admire, rather than by someone they don’t know, and therefore don’t care about. Of course, these authors would also need to know how to tell a good story that resonates with your audience.

To create quality content, you can also involve your readers. Encourage them to tell you their stories: ask them for feedback, photos, advice and experiences and package these into a story. Giving your readers a platform is a sure way of getting your content shared: after all, people love seeing their name in print and they will want to tell their friends and family all about it. ‘Storify’, for instance, is a social network service that lets you create stories using social feeds from your readers and followers.

If you publish your readers’ stories, they will appreciate it, feel emotionally engaged and provide you with more content. In turn, this will boost their loyalty.

Apart from authors, you also need an editor to make everything more readable. A content marketing manager can commission and source stories and turn them into quality content.

Variety Is the spice

Content isn’t just words. The more varied your content is, the more people it will engage. Video, for instance, is very effective at simultaneously educating, entertaining and engaging your audience. Video is also a welcome break – someone who has been reading or writing a report for three hours straight needs a visual break. This explains the massive growth of video as well as infographics and images within social and mobile channels.

Staff reporters

An office is like a microcosm of society. There is the party animal, the guy who knows his ingredients so well that he must have been a chef in a previous life, and the girl who models in her free time. Everyone has a story to tell because everyone has a life outside the office.

All the members of your staff have stories that are just waiting to be told. Maybe someone collects whisky, someone else has a passion for motorsports, and a colleague has a talent for telling jokes.

Give them the opportunity to tell their stories on your company blog, channel or newsletter. Not only will this help you generate quality content but it will also make your company appear more human.

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