Graphic from http://blog.visme.co/storytelling-content-marketing/

For years, I’ve been working to explain the importance of storytelling to businesses and organizations.

Perhaps it is the term “storytelling” that confuses business  owners. Maybe it evokes an image of nursery rhymes and campfires.

What I mean when I say storytelling in terms of content marketing and strategy is our ability to connect real stories, real emotion, to our messaging.

To develop messages that will inspire or evoke a feeling within potential clients, motivating them to buy that product or sign that agreement for services.

The excerpt below is from a fantastic blog written by Ivan Temelkov for Curatti.

We are living through the best years of human history. A world where technology continues to evolve and digital as a whole is an essential part of our lives. An era heavily driven by digital technology, content, and social influence. Content particularly though, plays a dominant role within the digital marketing mix. Something that consumers are paying strong attention to especially on their mobile devices.

Content and storytelling definitely aren’t new endeavors by any means. The storytelling aspect dates back to the 1700s. In the early days a verbal conversation could have been classified as content. One individual sharing information with another. Content being shared and communicated between two parties in a very casual way. The principles have not changed though. As a matter of fact they are stronger than ever before. However much content in the modern digital world has amplified, it retains the core of its origins. It is also becoming extremely common and more widely used as means of prospecting or even in sales endeavors.

The emotional targeting era is on the uprise. Content marketing will be taking on a much more prominent position in digital marketing. There are a lot of obvious reasons why content marketing and storytelling will be the new wave of future digital marketing endeavors. For the most part, each consumer possesses two type of mentalities when it comes to product or service purchasing.

• Psychological
• Emotional

Think about it for a second. What crossed your mind when buying a product or service? You consider the needs for which you are purchasing the product or service. Also, there is an emotional ingredient in each that determines the way you feel towards something.

Does it provide happiness, satisfaction, or sense of fulfillment? Will this product or service satisfy your need?

Companies and marketers equally need to be putting forth stronger attention to detail on the emotional and psychological aspects of digital marketing. Content marketing particularly is an avenue that can assist with emotional consumer targeting.

Context & Substance

In the earlier days of content marketing, everything was about quantity of information. Any brand that was pumping out consistent content would ultimately position itself as a go-to leader in a particular industry or vertical. Those were the great days where bulk content would attribute to more web traffic and leads.

As content marketing continued to evolve it started to become a lot more saturated. Consumers became frustrated with the clutter of information. The competition levels skyrocketed as more and more brands began to experiment with content marketing and storytelling endeavors.

These days everything in content marketing is about context and substance. Obviously, quantity matters but quality, context, and substance serves of utmost importance.

It is extremely difficult to resonate with a target audience on an emotional level. Especially when every other brand is attempting to do the very same thing. It is need quite challenging to accomplish this.

Hence why you should invest valiant amount of time in evaluating the context and substance of your messaging.

Read the rest of Ivan’s blog post.