Don’t Forget to Tell Stories

Does your content tell a story? The story of who you are? What you do? Why customers should stop to listen to you? Or does it tell a story that inspires people to change their lives.

Ikea – along with Volvo Sweden’s most recognisable brand – are brilliant storytellers. Their catalogue tells the story of how they see Swedes living in cool, urban settings from season to season, surrounded by furnishings that make life easier, slightly more stylish.

Each year the catalogue falls into my postbox I flick through it with interest, looking at the story of how they see functional living improving the quality of our lives.

The Ikea catalogue is a brilliant piece of content marketing because it doesn’t look like a catalogue. It’s a narrative in pictures and words that tells me a story that’s easy to grasp and very easy to buy into.

What’s Your Story?

If you’re clear about your corporate story, it will permeate everything you do so your staff and customers know it. That’s why it’s essential you get to the heart of your company’s value proposition, and developing narratives – text, pictures, video and audio content– that will connect with your customers, prospects, investors, employers and so on, and in turn grow your business.

Don’t Stop There!

If you go back to Ikea you can see that it’s not just about developing one story and then coming up with a new one for the next catalogue. Each year, Ikea further builds on their corporate story of a store that makes life easier with functional and affordable interior furnishings.

So once you understand your story, develop it, refine it, but most of all reinforce your story with every marketing communication that you produce so you can move your business ahead.

What about you?

Do you think about the story you’re telling with your business? Is it something your clients, customers and prospects can easily grasp? If you’re not clear on your story, how can you expect others to clearly understand your value proposition?

This post is #8 in a summer series of 31 Blog Posts in July