7 Tips to Promote Your Brand with Engaging Storytelling

At the heart of effective brand building will always be engaging storytelling. Consumers will struggle to build affinity with a product or company, but a great story can help solidify certain qualities that the brand represents. Whether it is a commercial, a social media campaign, or a print advertisement, there are ways to use storytelling to convey a strong identity. up.

Assuming you already have a business and product to offer, the following storytelling tips can be used to develop your brand.

Think About Your Hook

A good story will contain a hook that draws people into the narrative. Across all types of media, people are attracted to stories of underdogs and triumphs over adversity. Another common story is of a journey or quest to achieve a major goal. Alternatively, adding some humor can work, with a strange situation or a happy accident that helped in the building of your business.

Study Different Sources

There are really only a limited number of broad narratives you can use, but they can be shaped with their own characteristics. Studying a variety of sources, including similar brands, television shows, movies, and novels, will uncover a host of ideas you can adapt. Your story should be personal and unique, but don’t be afraid to draw inspiration from established sources.

Develop Personality

Personality is integral to brand development, with customers reluctant to trust a faceless organization. A brand does not have to be built around an individual person, but an ethos, identity, or outlook can give something to believe in. In many cases, though, the company founder may have an interesting story that can be developed. Many established brands are associated with founders who are no longer involved in the company, but the story still resonates with audiences.

Target Different Media

There are numerous outlets for promoting your brand, so look to tailor the message for the specific platform. Videos can tell a longer story, making use of narrative, visuals, and slogans. Social media and print ads have less space to tell a story, but you can still achieve a lot in an image. Various aspects, including color, font, logo, and design, all convey something to the viewer, so look to develop styles and threads that can run through all your promotional work.

Look for Authenticity

Inventing a compelling story might sound like an option, but this will lead to problems. A false story will eventually be found out as your brand grows, but most audiences can sense a problem before this happens. Look for authenticity in your storytelling, avoiding a disconnect between the company and the message. Of course, your story will need to be crafted for it to become memorable, but at its core it should be authentic.

Avoid Overt Marketing

There are occasions, such as a promotion on a shopping channel, where heavily promoting products will work. However, where you are attempting to build your brand over the long term, avoiding overt marketing will prove more successful. Focusing on the story of your brand, the emotions associated with a purchase, and the benefits of your products will help to make sales, but will stay with your audience far longer.

Be Memorable

A good story is hard to forget. Over time, whenever a person hears your brand being mentioned they will recall the emotions expressed through your advertising. Memorable branding can deeply embed an idea about your business, whether that is a feeling of luxury, inclusiveness, quirkiness, or any other powerful emotion.

Using these techniques, creating a compelling story is easily achievable. This story can be developed to build your brand across a variety of platforms. Many purchases are made for emotional reasons, so the ability to tap into these emotions can help you create a sustainable business that lives in memory.

How to Quickly Write an Effective Content Marketing Strategy

All business owners should have a content marketing strategy to make sure they get the most out of their content. Those who have a written content marketing strategy are more likely to find content marketing effective for their businesses, have less content-related stress thanks to knowing what they will do and when they’ll do it, and have a clear idea of what their ROI is. To put it simply, if you don’t have a content marketing strategy, you’re writing in the dark.

What holds most business owners back from writing a content marketing plan is feeling overwhelmed by the thought and not knowing how to go about it. Creating a strategy for your content marketing is not as complicated as it seems. Here are the necessary sections your plan needs to embody:

#1 Reasons for Creating Content

Your content marketing plan should include a short list of reasons why you’re creating content in the first place. It sounds simplistic but you’ll be surprised at how much power and focus you get from taking a few seconds to think about WHY you’re doing something. Whenever you feel low on motivation to work on content marketing, read your list of reasons why it’s so important to your business.

#2 Clarify Your Objectives for Content Marketing

After you know why you’re using content marketing, create a new section in your content marketing plan for objectives. Specifically, what do you want to accomplish with content marketing? Do you want greater brand awareness? More leads? Higher customer retention rates? The goals for your content marketing will determine the direction it takes.

#3 What Makes You Unique?

Also write down what makes you unique. How will you be different from your competitors in your social media usage? This is similar to determining a unique selling point for your business. In fact, what makes you stand out in the social space may be the same as or close to what your unique selling point is.

#4 Which Platforms Will You Use?

A content marketing strategy should have a section that outlines which platforms you will use to spread your content. Include your objectives and plans for successful engagement for each platform. Because every social media site has its own culture and methods that work, you need to address that for each subsection. Your approach should be catered to each platform and clearly defined, so that you can easily find your voice when marketing your content.

#5 Determine How You Will Measure Success

Next, you must write down how you will measure your content marketing success. Determine what metrics you will monitor and how you will collect the necessary data. The metrics you choose as indicators of your content marketing success will be based on your objectives. For example, if you want more leads, a metric to look at is clickthroughs. There are many social media analytics tools available, so research relevant tools and write down which you will use to monitor your content marketing progress.

#6 Target Audience Research

Another crucial section in your content marketing plan is target audience. Provide a thorough explanation of who your target audience is, what they need, what their pain points are, where they can be found, etc. Writing down the most important information about your target audience will help you consistently deliver the right message with the right approach. A way to make this even easier is to create a persona, so that you’re talking to one person every time you market your content.

Conclusion

You now have all of the necessary components of a good content marketing strategy. Print out your plan when you’re finished typing and editing it, and regularly consult it while marketing your content. Don’t be afraid to update it when necessary. The worst thing you could do is never look at your strategy again after writing it.

Adriana has an interest in a wide array of topics, such as psychology, natural remedies, and relationships. Her articles reflect these interests because she writes about what piques her curiosity. Adriana also enjoys horse-back riding and watching Asian dramas.

6 Steps to Become Willing to Take Risks

Many of today’s entrepreneur’s and business leaders will tell you that one of the ways to become successful is to take big risks. Business leaders take risks every day when making decisions. They have to introduce new products to an uncertain market, find new ways to outshine competitors and make daring decisions that pay off very well. How can you become a grade A risk-taker? Here are some handy tips to begin taking risks in your life!

1. Do your homework first.

Taking a risk isn’t exactly the same as taking a blind leap of faith into the abyss. Every good risk is preceded by the necessary amount of diligent research. You should examine all your options and find out the risks and rewards associated with your decision before you make it. What could possibly go wrong? What are the worst things that could happen if you fail?

2. Be prepared for failure.

Nobody wants to fail, but it is something that sometimes feels inevitable. After all, the Silicon Valley model is “fail fast, fail often.” If you do fail, will it totally cost you your business and leave you bankrupt? Or perhaps you will only lose a few weeks of time. Make sure you know the consequences of what will happen if you fail. You should also make sure that you have some sort of safety net to fall back upon.

3. Learn to face your fears.

You should never do a head dive into something you are totally scared of. However, there is another way of getting over your fears. Perhaps you fear to talk to new people or trying a new marketing strategy. The best way to get over such a fear is by facing it a little at each time. This is called exposure therapy, a means of facing your fears by slowly exposing to them a little at a time. If you fear talking to new people, start off slowly and start small conversations with strangers. If you fear a new marketing strategy, test it on a micro level and slowly scale upwards.

4. Don’t be a perfectionist.

Just because you can’t pull it off perfectly doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t do your best. Plans are hardly ever executed as they were intended to, but that doesn’t mean those plans are always unsuccessful. The fear of not doing something good enough is what keeps many people from taking risks at all.

5. Ask yourself what will happen if you don’t take a risk at all.

What happens if you don’t do anything and just stay still? What will happen if you decide to play it safe rather than being bold? What will the consequences be? For example, if you never went for your Bachelor’s degree in college, you might be stuck with a high school diploma flipping burgers for the rest of your life. If your company does not try marketing in a new industry, your competitors might overtake you.

6. See your failures as an opportunity to learn something new.

Even the greatest of us make mistakes. After all, Thomas Edison failed a thousand times before he successfully made a single light bulb. Just see your mistakes as something to learn from and know that your future endeavors will be improved because of it.

These items are by no means a comprehensive way of making sure that you are ready to take risks in both your business and personal life. However, these will serve as stepping stones for you to become less risk adverse and make the decisions you need to make. These items are by no means a comprehensive way of making sure that you are ready to take risks in both your business and personal life. However, these will serve as stepping stones for you to become less risk adverse and make the decisions you need to make.

When a Startup Benefits from a Virtual Assistant

The typical startup must conserve financial resources. In other words, an entrepreneur launching a new business venture does not usually have money to recklessly toss about. This means you have to use your time wisely!

At times, the need to spend money prudently seems to conflict with the necessity of building a team of competent people necessary to launch or get a startup to a new operational level. One alternative available to a startup is engaging the services of a virtual assistant to help with an array of activities and tasks. Indeed, there are a variety of benefits realized by a startup that utilizes the professional services of a virtual assistant.

Financial Challenges

Engaging a virtual assistant can provide financial benefits to a startup in a number of different ways. One big one is, cost savings. Accessing a virtual assistant is cheaper than employing a part time assistant, whether as an employee or an onsite independent contractor.

Another financial benefit arises from freeing up more time of the principals of a startup. I know that it can be hard to delegate work and many founders love to do it all themselves, however I promise that will only hurt you. Through utilizing a personal assistant, the principals of a startup are able to spend less time on essential but clerical and similar tasks. The principals are freed up to focus on activities that improve the bottom line.

Inability to Complete Key Tasks

The principals of a startup frequently find themselves unable to complete key strategic tasks that are essential to the direction and progress of the startup. This will dilute your efforts and throw your plans off course. As noted a moment ago, the principals spend inordinate amounts of time dealing with mundane tasks such as researching blogs, prepping social posts or even designing a website. You get the idea. Through the engagement of a virtual assistant, the principals of a startup can keep their focus on the key strategic tasks and activities that are integral to launching a startup or getting the enterprise to whole new level.

More Time Spent Organizing than Executing

On a related note, typically the principals of a startup spend a great deal of time organizing and not enough time executing plans to achieve objectives. One of the key benefits of a virtual assistant is the minimization of the time spent on organizing tasks and activities. Anyone who has started a business knows about this. There is a ton of organization required such as creating content calendar templates. Organization is essential to a strong foundation but a lot can be delegated so you can focus on strategy and big picture.

Outstanding and Overdue Tasks

A common complaint of principals of a startup is that they always seem to be behind in regard to important tasks and assignments. Outstanding and overdue tasks cause the development of a startup to lag. Through the use of a virtual assistant, a startup is better able to reduce the incidence of lag as well as outstanding and overdue tasks.

I think you get the idea. Outline what has to be done and then prioritize your time. From there, you know what you need to focus on and what needs to be delegated for support. Virtual Assistants can do a lot of various tasks. Everything from tech to writing. Maybe you need someone to manage your blog?

There are many services available. For example, here is a popular one you can check out–Virtual Assist USA

Or, you can check out the 2016 Virtual Assistants Review here.