The Value of a Good Story is That Your Audience Tells it for You

I had no idea who Tim Washer was before I saw this video, but he’s spot on when he talks about the power of content to tell stories and build engagement with your audience.

In this short video, Tim raises a number of excellent points that are critical to developing a successful business-to-business content marketing plan:

1. “73% of all people that read B2B blogs are people.”

Just because your product or service is specialized or complicated doesn’t mean your messaging needs to be. Remember, people make business decisions on behalf of their companies and you need to focus on connecting in a human way to a person who is going to interact with your brand. (I’m pretty sure that’s a fake stat – please don’t quote me on it. ;-) )

2. “Give your audience, give your community a gift, just by entertaining them.”

Giving is the key to social engagement. You will get more from social networking when you approach it with an attitude of giving. When you make someone smile or reflect thoughtfully on their life, you give them a gift. Make that the mission of your content marketing.

3. “Nobody really knows what’s going to connect and be a hit, so that’s why you just need to experiment and produce a lot.”

Salespeople will always tell you they have the formula for your success. They don’t. As a social business consultant, I bring skills and experience to my work, but I don’t have all the answers. I do, however, know a lot of the questions we should be asking. I’m firmly with Tim on this: Give creative people basic guidelines, then give them room to see what they come up with.

4. Don’t confuse content marketing and social networking with traditional marketing.

Traditional marketing is rooted in self-promotion and social networking and content marketing is rooted in storytelling. The value of a great story is that it builds an audience that tells your story for you. That’s WAY more powerful that mere marketing.

Here’s the segment with Tim Washer:

via Business 2 Community http://www.business2community.com/b2b-marketing/value-good-story-audience-tells-0697681?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=value-good-story-audience-tells