Use storytelling in content marketing

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Have you wondered how to get started using storytelling in content marketing? Starting out as a mum blogger in 2009 to fulfil my need to keep writing while on maternity leave from journalism, I quickly reached a point where I attracted the attention of brands.

They started reaching out, asking me to write blog posts about their products. One of the companies sold breast pumps - something I happened to need as a breastfeeding mum.

I started writing a rather dry review about all the technical advances the company had made to improve the performance of the breast pump. As I wrote it, my eyes were glazing over. What hope did I have of my readers actually reading it?

Flicking the switch, I decided to share my rather honest experience of turning my living room into a dairy to churn out regular vats of milk for my baby girl, using a bit of humour along the way. If readers could have a laugh while learning about this new product, then I felt like I'd educated and entertained all in one.

I may have even dropped the line "weapons of mass lactation" once or twice!

That blog post generated a lot of interest for the brand, traffic to their website and I'm sure sales of their product too. All because I shared a story that made readers feel something.

What would it mean if people could feel what it was like to work with you, what it was like to have the outcome you provide or know that you "get them" based on your own experiences?

Storytelling marketing can work on all different levels. And we can use all manner of techniques when it comes to storytelling. If you look online, you'll notice when you try and search for business storytelling and marketing storytelling it can become pretty overwhelming.

Some of it is quite technical and may even put you off wanting to use marketing stories. What I want YOU to focus on is the story's emotion.

I was able to make people laugh through that product review, without having to go deep into studying who the character was and what was the plot.

For sure, it's important to understand who the character is and what the conflict is, because we need to have conflict in a story for it to be a story. However, I want you to get back to the things that make a story matter - like the emotion.

Here are a few tips to help you start using more stories in your content marketing.

Let's dive into a few tips so you're not held back by some of the overwhelm you might currently have around trying to write stories within your blog posts.

Start with a hook

Now, the first one is to hook them from the beginning.

If you've ever read a book where they've set up the scene, then spent quite a while explaining the characters, and slowly you find you get to a point where you think, 'ugh, I can't get into this'.

Often, we can reach a point in a book where it's make or break for us. If that action doesn't start soon or it doesn't start piquing our interest, we reach that point where we're reading the same line three times and still not processing it.

So when we're looking at blog posts, we don't want to do too much of that set up stuff. We want to dive straight into the action. And we want to hook them from the beginning. Because that's our first key when it comes to writing.

Of course, once they're hooked, then you need to KEEP them hooked to the end. That's another post for another day.

In the meantime, what can you do to hook them? Here are some ideas:

Start with a quote. One of my previous newspaper editors said lazy writers start with quotes, but sometimes it can work to throw the reader into the story straight away.
Open with some conflict or action. This could be a scenario that uses conflict OR it could be bringing the reader into a problem situation from the beginning. This will often leave the reader intrigued to know how this is going to unfold and what the outcome is going to be.
Make a bold claim or a statement that stops them in their tracks and makes them wonder how you're going to back it up.
Post a question that highlights their pain point and has them eager for the answer.
Share some statistics or facts you've collated on your own or from another source you can reference. If those statistics are particularly shocking, you'll hook people from the beginning AND entice them to want to keep reading to learn more.

So, think about how you can hook them early in you writing or videos, so from the very first sentence they're wanting to hear more.

Humanise your storytelling in content marketing

Humanising your story simply means finding the character or the protagonist. When you've read a lot of those technical storytelling posts and books, they'll talk about the protagonist. To simplify this for you, what you need to think about is: who is the main character?

Now, in marketing terms, it's often your reader - this means you use words like "you" so you're allowing the reader to experience it firsthand via reading the story of themselves.

And that's a REALLY key part of storytelling - someone feeling like they're experiencing something while reading, as opposed to reading from an external point of view or looking in on the story. We want them to "feel" it!

Another approach is if you're writing a case study, you might tell it from your client's point of view. This is when you use words like "she/he" or "they".

Finally, the other approach is to share your own experience. You're writing about you, what you've lived through and what you've done. This is where you use words like "I".

Obviously, there's a few different angles here you can take immediately to determine what is going to be the most effective approach for you to write this story.

Which perspective works best for your story?

One of my latest newsletters required me to use an "I' perspective.

Here's the example to inspire you:

We went rollerblading on the weekend - for the second time.

I was helping 8-year-old Holly around the rink and, as we came back to the start area, I could see a circle of orange witches hats around someone lying on their side.

"Oh dear, someone's had a crash." I said to Holly.

As we got closer, I instantly recognised the grey t-shirt and jean shorts.

Hooking Holly's hands over the rail and telling her to hold on, I raced over to find Julian pale faced and with tears in his eyes.

"I can't move. It's my back. There's so much pain."

In that moment, a million things went through my head. Much of the next few minutes are hazy - someone telling me they'd called an ambulance, a lady leaning over him explaining she was a nurse and the rollerskating rink manager wanting to offer a refund.

The rollerblades had come out from underneath him and he'd landed perfectly on his bottom which, in turn, meant his spine compressed like an accordion. When he'd tried to get back up, his legs wouldn't work.

Once at hospital and an MRI and CT scan had been done, we discovered he has a compressed fracture in his vertebrae and now has a 6-8 week road to recovery ahead - and lots of pain management.

While this week has been hard, we're incredibly grateful it can heal and life will return to normal.

It's been another reminder to be grateful for having a systemised business with the ability to be flexible when I need to be.

Create conflict for your story

Now we need to have conflict in our story, otherwise, we don't really have a story. It's pretty bland and boring if somebody has a problem and it's just solved instantly.

Most people go through a bit of a challenge or have some real concerns around how they're going to be able to overcome the problem that they have.

So what you need to think about in the blog post that you're writing is:

What is the challenge?
What is the conflict?
What is the thing that holds someone back from being able to achieve something?

With me telling you about storytelling, the big problem here is there's so much technical information out in the market. How do we get this to a point where we can make it achievable, make it actionable and for us to actually start writing stories ourselves?

Think about your own blog post. What are the challenges or conflicts the reader is having and what is the outcome you want to present?

Enhance it with emotion

As I've mentioned before, emotion is so important in storytelling. You may not have a plot and your character might not be well defined, but if you don't have emotion, then your story can flop.

This is really where stories fall down. If you've ever watched a movie and technically it is perfect storytelling, except for the fact it's devoid of emotion, you'll know what I mean. That's where we share with friends how "the movie was OK, but it was missing something. I can't quite put my finger on it".

The missing part is the fact you didn't feel something.

You see, we not only want to know how to write great blog posts that engage readers, but also how to make people feel. I'm not talking about them breaking down into tears necessarily or being completely overwhelmed with emotion. That's not really what we're after. We're just after them feeling something.

That could be the:

fear of investing in something that's a big project
nostalgia over something that happened that now they look back on and see it's related to what they're doing now.
pride in actually achieving something.

But one thing you need to remember is that script writers for movies and TV shows will throw out more stories than they keep. So you need to give yourself a break if you don't get the reaction you want.

Simply go back and try again. The more you keep writing stories, the more chances you'll get a winner. And, to be honest, storytelling is subjective. What you like, the next person might not.

Ask yourself: What do you want to make someone feel as they're reading this piece of content?

Often that can help trigger some specific stories you can tell within a blog post that highlights certain aspects of the key point or the message that you're trying to get across.

Add in visuals for storytelling

Sometimes our readers need a little help with visualising the story we're trying to share and that's where visuals come in.

I spend quite a bit of time thinking about the visual or image I want for a blog post when I write it, and even for social media posts as well.

What is the feeling you want to elicit via this image?

And it doesn't have to be an image, either. It can be an infographic, or it might be a video. You've seen me doing videos from my office, from my lounge room and even in the dining room.

Health experts can be outside in their activewear and foodies can be in their kitchen. Sometimes our surroundings can elicit a specific feeling.

My eight-year-old daughter at the moment is going through a phase where she's doesn't want to read chapter books unless they've got visuals in them, because she wants the book to do the work for her.

So how do you want to illustrate your blog post and what's the feeling you want to achieve?

What is the goal of the blog post?

The last point is to think about some of the stories you have that can help with the goal or the outcome of this particular blog post.

First, you need to come up with the goal. This blog post talks about determining what your blog post's goal is.

Then you match it with a story. When it comes to the story, what story is most going to help you move the person to the actual outcome that you want?

So thinking about the character and their point of view, the emotion and the outcome, what story helps bring all of those elements together?

It may be a story that's about overcoming some objections your ideal client has through telling a story of your own situation where you've overcome something in life that helps highlight that.
It may be that you're telling a client case study story to add some social proof because that's what you need to most do to get someone to take action.
Or maybe it's telling your why story that people need to understand to trust you and understand your bigger purpose and vision on what you're doing and why you're doing it.

Learn more about marketing story types you can use.

Stories can come from:

the past,
something that's happening to you today as you walk down the mall doing your shopping or
they can be vision stories - stories that haven't happened quite yet but you'd love to see happen in five or 10 years' time.

I have a storytelling guide that goes into finding specific stories. But as far as writing your content, you need to think from a holistic point of view.

What is the big goal that you want for this piece of content?

What is the point of view that you want to tell that story from?

And of course, what is the emotion? What is the thing that is going to allow people to move through this piece of content and feel something at the end and want to take action?

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