As one of the many businesses on the internet, what you want is thriving and being seen. The web has saw a lot of contents, and among them are yours. You may have succeeded in delivering your brand using contents. But do you know that you may tell a lot more stories than needed?
When you're selling your products and/or services, your content marketing is to highlight the power of what you're selling. The power lies on it, not your brand. Your brand is not for sale.
People are buying from you not because of what you do. It's because why you do it for them. Your consumers don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it in order to benefit them.
Marketing has came a long way. Some may have been full of nonsense while others came out powerful giving massive impact. As a business that wants to thrive on the web, you should talk less about yourself and what you do. You need to talk more about why you do things for others. This attracts people's attention because of one reason: people likes being noticed.
Your brand should have a core purpose of existing. Showing your audience that your business is focusing on them based on your brand can make you more successful in delivering your product and/or services to the masses.
Too Much is Never Enough. Know When to Stop
Businesses on the web have long created contents to help them sell things. Unfortunately, the internet is already preoccupied by countless of self-proclaimed evidence, making those contents completely useless. People are getting used to ignore more of those hyperbolic materials in the current interconnected world. So a pitch that describes you best may not be good.
An effective content marketing is to deliver content people actually want. Publish stories they actually will enjoy so they will read and share. Promoting yourself is beneficial as long as the amount can be contained by the overall explanation.
You may have a lot to say about yourself. But the world is not listening if what you say is "marketing yourself". Self-proclaiming can create identity, but that identity is not the one that is selling your products and/or services. Your brand is not for sale, it's just a symbol in which the things you sell reside, To make a powerful brand that sells, you need to focus more on how you can pitch more information that is beneficial to your audience, by reflecting your brand as a solution.
This affects small businesses the most, but large companies could stumble into the same problem if they lack the tone for powerful materials.
A Story, a Plot, and a Hero
When you're creating a content strategy, you need to address what your audience is expecting. By knowing what they want to hear from you, you can craft the message in a compelling way that it flows like a story by providing a unique value.
Just like any content on the web, your content needs to be appealing. In order for this to happen, it needs to be interesting. A great story that is relevant to your targeted audience is the key to attract attention. Never sell things on your story. You content is not an advertisement material. Make your readers the hero of the story, appeal them by crafting a plot down to the human level by tapping into their emotions.
Your brand stays where it belongs: as an observer who looks at what lies below. Never take your brand to your story because the more you promote your brand, the less the story will become effective. You need to make your content the platform of communication in which you will be able to make sales, on behalf of your brand.
Since fewer words often have better impact, your messages should be crafted in a way that every words in them highlight one simple yet powerful plot.
An Icon in the Making
Small businesses and large businesses have the similarity in which they want to sell their brand so they can get noticed. This is noticeable in many advertisements.
However, to make a powerful impact, you need to plant the emotion of your brand towards you audience, before you're attempting to sell your brand with it. Emotions are what ties people together, people may come from different races, religions and countries with different culture and language. But emotions can bond all without effort.
As one of the easiest example of emotions that apply to all human beings are those that are delivered in music. You may have heard songs sang from a singer you've never heard before, singing a song in a language you don't understand. But somehow the song makes you happy.
Why is that happening? A song, no matter what language it's delivered, it comes with a beat and rhythm. If the two appeals you, you're successfully bonded to the song's emotion.
And when it comes to content marketing, your message doesn't rhyme nor have lyrics. That is the reason why you need to create contents that have emotions in them in order for people to follow. It should appeal to people in common.
When you have successfully bond your brand's emotion with your content, people will recognize you anywhere they see you. And by that time, you can sell your brand to represent your products and/or services. You succeed in making yourself an icon among those that likes you.