storytelling“Content is king” has been the mantra of the content marketing world for years now. In essence, the saying is true — it is difficult/expensive to increase your websites visibility and loyalty without content. All web marketing starts with content. But I believe we can go a step further. As Google has shown us over the last 3 years with Panda, Penguin, Payday Loan, Authorship updates and many others, growing a sites visibility and loyalty isn’t only about content… It’s actually about the story.

Content without a story is generally considered noise. Content in the form of a story, engages the reader, is comment worthy and is also more shareable. Stories are entertaining. Stories tell accounts of successes and failures in a life. Newspapers, television, YouTube, social media are all filled with stories. And the stories behind each of these mediums are what have driven their success.

An engaging story about your product, service, successes or failures posted to your blog instantly becomes content that can be shared via email and social media. It also engages the visitor to your site and encourages them to hang around to read the rest of the story.

When we first engage with new clients, they generally struggle with how to create content. Most doctors, business owners and managers we work with are not wordsmiths by trade. While they may not be writers, they do fully understand the need to consistently produce engaging content to grow their sites visibility, loyalty and leads. And often the easiest way to create this content is to tell a story. Tell the reader about a recent client success with your product or service. If you really want to draw the reader in tell a story about a recent failure you had with a client and how you grew from the experience. This honesty and transparency is the making of a great story and is the key to building trust and admiration in the virtual world. And in my book, getting someone to trust and admire you are the first steps in building long-term client relationships.

So let the rest of the world have their bland content that ranks today and Google penalizes tomorrow. The next time you go to post to your website, tell a story.