At a glance:
- Having good content for online use, social media and more is vital for many businesses
- Stories are an especially powerful way to help a brand succeed
- babelMonkey has the ideas and the copywriters to tell stories and lift our clients content to new heights
It was late, a dark night in an isolated railway station car park. The only human life was a small gang of youths crowded under one of the few lamp posts, smoking, shouting, and laughing. A woman emerged from the station having caught a late connection home. She still had to pick up her car and had a short drive ahead of her, but first she had to get into her car. She could have done without running the gamut of a gathering of boisterous unknown people half her age. Ignoring the youths, whose noisy banter accompanied her as she unlocked her door and got in, she was relieved to get the door shut and the car into motion. Then, bam! Two hands were on her bonnet and a young man was making faces at her. She froze, alarmed. Then he bent down, picked up a hedgehog, moved aside and waved her forward.
So much for appearances.
One of the tenets of marketing is ‘Content is King’. If you have share great, memorable content, writing and visuals about your business, and you can run that content through all your relevant marketing channels, it gets you noticed. More, it gets you read, it gets you loved. It can make you and your service or product sought-after.
Yet those three words ‘Content is King’ beg a question. Just what “content” is King?
The very best content uses engaging words, combined with video or images, that enables the viewer to connect with the business brand, run across multiple relevant platforms.
A story is even better, the Emperor of media. It can, as with the example at the start of this post, get a point across with maximum impact, and can surprise, reassure, or reinforce. After all, who doesn’t love a good story; they give us a reason to be invested.
A well-written, or spoken, story can help a reader or viewer connect in degrees from creating initial interest up to obsession with the person or business the story is about and what they stand for. That connection can be reinforced over decades. To appreciate this, you only have to read Simon Sinek’s book ‘Start With Why’ and what he says about the success of Apple and the creation of a ‘tribe’ of product consumers who buy in, time and time again, to the values shared by Steve Jobs in particular.
If your business or organisation is up for an award and your business is an expression of your philosophy and story, then you may have a Legend written about you as part of the submission process. That word, Legend, is appropriate. Your story is unique to you. Why you chose to start your business or organisation, the decisions you took along the way, the values you stand by, the mission, the milestones, they are all part of your story, your Legend.
Yet Legends aren’t for everyone. Some people shy away from being the front person of their own business and remain private. Sometimes, they put forward others in their companies to do the talking for them, and don’t use their own story. That is an option. It means different story telling. That is why a top writer, and babelMonkey has several, is essential. A top writer can provide:
- A great strapline for your business. Naming your business may have been easy, but summing it up in a handful of words? That is another skill!
- Different, expanded versions of that strapline that tell a story or summarise a business or convey a news item in different word counts. Depending on the media you are working through, from a short radio interview where you are asked to introduce yourself and your business very briefly at the start, to a biographical blog post where you share and expand on a point or points over literally hundreds of words, we have the writers who can tackle it
- Are you in a technical niche and struggling to convey your products and services in Plain English? We have copywriters experienced in working with scientists, financial advisers, solicitors, IT departments and more who can bring apparently dry topics to life
- Do you want to be on the TV, radio, in newspapers, podcasts, or any other form of media? Your story and the ‘hook’ used to capture journalistic interest is decisive, and we have the skillset to write the emails, press releases, and messages that can get their attention to help you build the fame and reputation of your brand.
An axiom of marketing and PR is, “You never know who is listening to or reading about you”. You can’t control that, but you can control what is read by the people who share your story in any format. babelMonkey can help you with that. Talk with us.
babelMonkey Top Tip:
An opportunity to share what you do via the media can add to general awareness of your brand and to your reputation. If you have such an opportunity, or if we find you one, take it just as seriously as your work for a client. The chance might not come again
