Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Customers own the story of the brand now. What brands say is far less important than what brands actually do to serve the well being of the faithful. Whereas before, the brand conversation was based on delivery and interruption, successful brand conversations are now participatory in ever more technology driven channels.

Storytelling is at the very heart of how we humans share and connect what we value about our heritage, our communities and ourselves. Brand storytelling is about connecting the outer value the brand provides to the inner values of the customer. There must be a deep affinity between the two or the relationship is just a transaction.

The foundation for this affinity is built on the shared stories between brands to consumers, customers to brands, and consumers to consumers. Like all relationships, there has to be chemistry. Brands have it or they don’t. How well these collective stories line up with the experience customers have is what creates “insistence without substitutes” in the minds of customers....

...No. It’s no longer good enough to force the customer to rationalize with their inner self why they’re friends with a laundry detergent. You have to give them another reason to like you, to be an online resource in their daily (or weekly) life, and to serve a need that is above and beyond your actual product benefit.

In a word: content.

Content marketing is the key to building not only links, but enduring popularity. While some may say that content marketing has been forced upon SEO’ers by Google’s recent updates, it simply flies in the face of human nature NOT to focus on quality content. Which is exactly why Google updated their algorithm in the first place - to get people what they really want....