Sharing Your Brand Through Stories

“Marketing is no longer about the stuff that you make, but about the stories you tell.” – Seth Godin

Every piece of content you create plays into your overall brand message. The more compelling your content, the more attractive your brand becomes. It seems like a simple equation, but it is imperative for startups to make your content applicable and engaging enough to create a storyline that customers feel invested in. Instead of a transaction, interactions with your brand are now building relationships with your customers. And relationships are personable, create loyalty, and even have the ability to create a tribe of fans that promote your company for you.Content Marketing Institute has highlighted “Facebook Stories,” a fairly new marketing initiative from Facebook that aims to add brand value by emotionally connecting with its users, simply by telling their stories. These stories are powerful enough to change a viewer’s perception of Facebook from just another social network to a platform where a teenager can help children in the Philippines get to school, and Australia can reflect on the year that One Direction was their most talked about topic (no comment). Trending topics become a reflection of our culture, and a simple status update can become a story of a changed life.In a world where statistics and status updates can become compelling stories, we are more keenly aware than ever of one common denominator among all of us: an appreciation for great storytelling. If your startup can do this well, you are on your way to building a deep community of folks invested in your brand.Most of us don’t have brands that can pull on emotional heart strings like Facebook Stories, but we do all have some type of story that can be told with humor, emotion, graphics, statistics, or even logic — it’s your pick. The key is to tell it as a story with a persona that reflects your brand and invites engagement from your customers.

A version of this post first appeared on Pardot's blog.