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The Essential Storytelling Techniques to Implement Throughout Your Content

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The Essential Storytelling Techniques to Implement Throughout Your Content

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Content needs to be interesting in order to be useful. Your content should grab a reader’s attention and guide them along to hear what you have to say. This can be done by utilizing a variety of storytelling techniques throughout your content. Content marketing is not only about giving facts, but it’s also about reaching people through their emotions.

Storytelling is an art, and there are some techniques that you can easily utilize in your content marketing efforts. Think about the most important techniques that must be used in any story and then apply them to your content. While you need to apply these essential techniques, your content will be much shorter than a novel, for example, so you need to work out the details accordingly.

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Photograph by Nomad Soul via Bigstock

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Memorable Characters

A story should include memorable characters or characters that people like and can relate to. It is helpful to model the most important character of the story after your target audience. The character should be someone that readers can quickly and easily understand and feel close to. You have little time to provide information to readers, so you need to give them details that will instantly make them gravitate towards the characters.

Interesting Storyline

The plot is one of the most important parts of the story, but in order to keep your reader’s attention, it needs to be interesting. Keep in mind that the story should have some peaks and valleys, or it becomes too flat and boring. To create an interesting plot, you can think about the main problem or situation that your product or service resolves. For instance, an auto repair shop may have a story in which the driver hits a pothole and blows out a tire unexpectedly. Now you can show readers how your company or product will resolve the problem.

Satisfying Conclusion

Your story needs to come to a conclusion. If you don’t have a satisfying conclusion readers will not be able to identify with the story and worse, could even dislike it. People like to have endings that are not predictable. Do not leave readers hanging without giving them a satisfying ending. Remember that the resolution should show how your company can resolve the problem in the story.

When you use storytelling in your content marketing articles, you essentially need to give people a happy ending. The entire story including the ending has to be presented rather quickly. Most content marketing articles are 500 to 1,000 words in length so you will have to weave the details into your piece quickly and create an ending that makes readers see the value in your company’s products or services.

Cater to Your Target Market

When you create a story for your content make sure that you always cater to your target audience. If you’re selling dog beds, don’t tailor your story towards horse lovers. Before you can cater to your target market, you need to know who they are. If you don’t already know, conduct some market research or get professional help to determine who is most likely to purchase your products or services.

Utilize Various Types of Media

You don’t have to use just one type of media when creating your content. In fact, you can gain excellent results when you vary the forms of media that you utilize to tell your story. Some of the best and most effective ways to reach your audience is through social media marketing. Stories posted on Facebook can be shared hundreds or thousands of times and might go viral. You can also create a video that you can post on social media sites such as YouTube. These methods can give you a great way to share your story and at the same time offers a way for others to share it. That way you will get many more people able to view or read your story.

Storytelling in Content Marketing

Storytelling may not come naturally to everyone. The more you practice writing, the easier it will become. You can learn storytelling techniques from some of your favorite authors. Review the books you like to see how they convey important information to readers. Then, incorporate some of those same ideas into your own content marketing storytelling.

Even though you are telling a story in your content, you must still be mindful of the basics of content marketing. For example, you should incorporate basic SEO techniques and use keywords to your advantage in all of your content marketing articles and blogs.

Of course, you may not have time to write your own content.  It is helpful to hire a professional content marketing specialist to create the types of content that you need. A copywriter knows how to create high quality, interesting and useful content that will help convert website visitors into customers.

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Annie has over 20 years of experience as an editor and content creator and manager. With work in television and written media, she has dedicated her past 10 years to learning the ropes of online content creation, from writing to editing, from SEO to content management.

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