Maintaining an active blog on your brand’s website can help you increase online visibility and acquire more customers. However, it is vital that your blog writing reflects your brand’s storytelling voice.
If the tone, style, and voice of your content vary from blog to blog, you will have a difficult time connecting with your audience. Below, we discuss how you can define your storytelling voice, identify some great storytelling strategies, and outline ways to improve content consistency.
How Can Your Brand Define Its Storytelling Voice?
If you hope to produce blog content that is tonally and stylistically consistent, you must first define your brand voice. You should choose a voice and style that resonates with your ideal target audience. (If you don’t know who your target audience is, keep reading.)
Your storytelling voice should also align with the industry that you operate within. For instance, a company that offers B2B products should keep its content tone professional and knowledgeable. On the other hand, a business that provides consumer goods to a younger demographic of customers may want to adopt an informal, witty voice.
Best Practices for Creating a Target Audience
Before defining your storytelling voice, you must first determine who your target audience is. This is a multi-step process that involves:
Identifying Demographics that Would Find Your Product Appealing
Who would find your products or services appealing? What are the demographics of these prospective customers? While it is certainly acceptable to target multiple demographics with your marketing content, it is essential to identify each of these groups.
Storytelling content that is geared towards college students may need a different tone than blogs written for older audiences. Additionally, certain types of storytelling are more effective among some demographics.
Consistency is always an essential component of storytelling. However, identifying the demographics you wish to target can help you understand when it is appropriate to adjust your tone.
Creating Customer Personas
After you have identified the demographics you want to target, you will need to create customer personas. In the B2B space, these personas may include a budget-conscious C-suite executive, an IT department head, and a middle manager.
When creating content for these various personas, your voice must be consistent. However, the specific topics that you address will need to vary. For instance, content written for the executive may emphasize how you can save their company money. On the other hand, content targeting the IT department head should highlight your solution’s user-friendly design and minimal upkeep requirements.
Addressing Each Audience Segment’s Pain Points
The wider the array of audience segments you target, the more opportunities you will have to acquire new clients and drive growth for your business. However, it is essential to remember that each audience segment will encounter slightly different pain points.
Your storytelling content must address all of these challenges. This does not mean that you should instruct your blog writer to go heavy on the sales language. In fact, your blogs should remain informative and educational while simultaneously incorporating your brand’s style into the content.
Storytelling Practices You Can Leverage
Storytelling does not have to be objective. Your stories should be intentionally subjective. They should highlight your company’s values, beliefs, style and tone while also generating a high level of reader engagement.
A multitude of different storytelling practices can help you craft intriguing blog content. A few examples of storytelling that you can incorporate into your blog writing strategy include:
- Testimonials/customer accounts
- Case studies
- Illustrative or explanatory stories
- Fictitious stories
- Mythbusting guides
These examples only scratch the surface of what is possible via storytelling-style content creation. Your ability to use stories to accomplish business objectives is only limited by your creativity.
How to Maintain Storytelling Consistency
Consistency is key if you want to get the most out of your brand’s storytelling efforts. A lack of consistency can alienate your audience and diminish trust in your brand. Some consumers view inconsistent brand messaging as a sign of unprofessionalism. They may even develop concerns regarding the quality of your products or services.
Fortunately, you can enhance the consistency of your content by leveraging a few proven tactics, which include the following:
Create a Brand Style Guide
A brand style guide is a comprehensive manual that should be a roadmap for all marketing content creation efforts. The style guide should incorporate concepts we’ve already reviewed, such as your brand voice, target audience and customer personas.
If you are engaging in blog storytelling without a style guide, you are setting yourself up for consistency issues. If you currently have a style guide and still have concerns about your voice consistency, then you should review it from top to bottom. Ensure that your style guide aligns with the expectations of prospective customers so that you can effectively communicate with them.
Brainstorm with Your Marketing Team
Typically, marketing efforts are divided into a series of campaigns. A campaign can last for a predetermined amount of time, such as a month. Alternatively, you can create a campaign to generate hype about a new product or service. The latter type of campaign will usually ramp up as the product release draws near.
Regardless of how you divide your campaigns, each one must be followed by an after-action brainstorming session. You and your team should discuss what worked and what can be improved upon. This is also a prime opportunity to evaluate the consistency of your messaging.
Hire a Writer
The best way to improve storytelling voice consistency is to hire a freelance writer. More specifically, you should partner with a content creation team that employs both freelance editors and writers. Working with such a firm is far more cost-effective than hiring in-house writers and editors.
A talented writer from PowerPublish can use your style guide to craft high-quality, tonally consistent storytelling content. This content will further your business goals and help you connect with consumers in a meaningful way.
So what are you waiting for? Work with PowerPublish today and start leveraging the power of consistent blog storytelling.