Is your brand telling the right story?
It’s fashionable to talk about business storytelling—how each business owner should paint the narrative of her or his brand. That worked out really well for me—a journalism expat who now produces branded content. And it’s a great message—stories are way more engaging than just shilling your product or service. But saying brands should tell their story isn’t quite accurate.
It would be more correct to tell business owners that, whether intentional or not, they already are telling a story. Every interaction with the public is a line in that story—every press release, customer interaction, branding choice, social media post (or decision to abstain from social media)—all of these things tell a business’ story.
The problem is that a lot of the time, the story a business tells about itself isn’t very interesting.
We are this business. We make this product or provide this service. Our customers are these people. Please clap.
That’s a really safe story. Wait, let me revise that—it’s safe in the way that wearing the same nondescript outfit for the duration of your career is safe. No one will criticize you, because no one will notice you. And yeah, that’s safe day to day, but deadly in the long run.
You need to learn to tell your story in a way people find engaging. The best definition I’ve heard of a good story is by author Donald Miller in his book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years.
A story is a character who wants something and overcomes conflict to get it.
OK, so there’s the crumb. Are you ready for the sales pitch? Here it comes. On Thursday, April 12
Other Dixon Schwabl all-stars Will Browar, manager of web development and user experience, and Cathleen Wells, director of digital strategy, will present a separate session about making your website an engine for business growth. You really can’t lose here.
Hope to see you there!