Brand Storytelling in a Multichannel World: 5 Tips for Success

Storytelling has become an integral part of the world we live in. Through different channels, we have been able to express ourselves and evoke emotional responses in the audience.

Similarly, good storytelling is the foundation stone of successful marketing campaigns and advertising efforts. Social media for example, like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, are important tools to portray our stories the way we want them to be told, rather than replicate impersonal, sterile content.

In today’s multichannel landscape, the opportunities and means for brand storytelling are numerous. But, how can you differentiate your brand from the competition, make your story stand out, attract the right audience but also keep them and develop it into a community? Let’s go through some basic guidelines on how to build an enticing storytelling strategy.

How You Can Become a Successful Brand Storyteller:

1. Differentiate Yourself

Billions of content posts are created and shared daily, it is quite possible that your content could get lost in the crowd, but it doesn't need to be that way. You need to create the type of content that differentiates you from all others and find your signature.

It isn't always about facts and figures but rather about creating content for your audience that is meaningful, thoughtful, and, most importantly, authentic. Instead of following the crowd, you should focus on your brand's story and best utilize your existing digital assets, and use them as the stepping stone to creating an emotional response from your readers. Nobody can tell your brand's story the way you can.

Use things like these to create a good emotional relationship with clients:

Your brand's history
Success stories
Client feedback
Brand interaction.

There are many different ways to be a storyteller. It can be through the power of images or the more traditional route of words.

2. Maintain Consistency Across Channels

Being consistent with the story you want to tell to your community is of paramount importance. While it does hold true that different audience segments gravitate towards different social platforms, utilizing these differences can help expand and strengthen the ranking of all of your channels.

Instagram’s visual approach and Facebook’s predominantly textual approach go hand in hand with a website that should display the long form of the content you’re dealing with. In creating content for different platforms, you should keep some of the features characteristic of your brand image the same. Visuals, percentages, text style, and structuring should all remain the same.

As is generally held, keeping your unique elements present in content for different channels can help significantly with conversion rates and keeping one and the same atmosphere throughout the audience’s experience of your content. This can be a difficult thing to maintain, so using multichannel creation tools can help keep the elements consistent to your brand in place. Content production and multichannel publishing solutions, such as WoodWing Studio, take away a part of the mundane tasks and streamline the process of optimization for different channels for you.

3. Leverage New Technologies for your Benefit

Staying on top of your competitors means non-stop optimization and workflow rethinking. Sometimes, the most minute of changes can add up and move you up a notch on the ladder to being the top in your field. AI solutions have, for example, been used with great success in predictive analytics.

Other solutions, such as optimization software have reduced keyword research time significantly, ultimately leading to a more streamlined business and higher chances of long-term survival on the market. However, since both funds and staff are limited, investing in automation may be the best solution for those who want to keep growing.

WoodWing Eos, for example, is a cloud-based platform that offers the tools to streamline your content creation workflow and automate mundane, repetitive tasks. It offers the flexibility, accessibility (remote work comes to mind), and customization options that many other solutions are lacking.

Or take Headless DAM software as another example. It takes away a large chunk of time from the publishing part of a product or service launch. If you advertise and sell a product or service across different platforms, you can save a lot of resources by making changes once in your DAM system. These updates are then automatically updated across all platforms. Metadata and meta descriptions, even the availability can all be updated in one go.

Get the State of brand storytelling now

Download our research and discover how marketers are using technology for creative production

Download now

4. Build a Community – Not an Audience

An audience member or client does not want to be seen as only a part of a larger money-making scheme. So, take the time to build a community, a tribe, show all of your clientele exactly how much you love, and appreciate their support.

For a brand to be recognized and loved by their clients, they need to be more than only a product or service, and that is where storytelling comes into play.

Here are a few things you should think about:

What are they receiving when viewing your content or purchasing a product?
How do they feel after interconnecting with you?
What message are you conveying about your brand when you are posting content?
What does your brand mean to them?

You need to tell your story, allow your customers to be a part of the bigger picture, involve your audience in your business, ask them what they would like to see from you, and think clearly about conveying your message to them.

Tips for building a Community:

Start conversations with your clients or viewers
Ask them about the services you conduct and how they would like the experience changed.
Ask them for engagement, but do it strategically
Tell your story by creating an emotional attachment.

You should treat your audience with respect and understand that a good story to tell combined with mass marketing may not be sufficient. You should be able to find your exact storytelling goals and focus on the best places and best practices to approach your audience.

Only this way can you set your brand apart from others and make a meaningful difference in your niche.

5. Be Humane in Communicating With Your Clients

A brand does not only need to be noticed on your webpage, but it should rather be present in your clients’ minds. A good brand knows how to use storytelling and emotions to present the humane character of their business and to make every client feel understood and appreciated.

Since there are such a massive number of brands out there, audiences demand companies to continuously prove their worth and show how their profits are making a change, like supporting a good cause. It may sound quite ironic, but when clients see that you are using profits for the good of others, they will be more likely to support you and buy from you.

As previously mentioned, a brand's story is an integral part of its success. Our natural emotional response is triggered when we see a business use its profits to make a change - this will leave a lasting effect on your consumers and give you a memorable impression.

There are always those that are pessimistic about their long-term outlook. While it may be true that COVID-19 shook the world to its foundations, the sheer number of those who learned to swim in the newly turbulent marketing waters of post-COVID-19 should rather serve as inspiration. Post-COVID times mean that new solutions to storytelling and marketing procedures need to be thought of, rather than completely reinventing the brands.

How can you make your brand more humane and less generic? Storytelling!

Your brand's personal story will set you apart from all of the other businesses out there and could be the reason why customers decide to choose you instead of your competitors. A brand with a good story will also result in your content being shared frequently because you are not just after the money – you want to make a change.

What Marketing Strategies Can You Use to Be More Humane:

Speak your truth: Tell consumers what your business is about, and let them know why their hard-earned money will have such a significant impact on your brand.
Transformation: Think about how you can transform the lives of your consumers and the lives of many struggling individuals out there (Find a meaningful cause you genuinely care about)
Put positivity back into society: Many people believe that the goodness of society has come to a crashing halt. Show your buyers that you think differently and show them that you want to make a change.

The key is to provide your customers with a unique (but true) story that convinces them that you are the brand to buy from. In addition, you should create such a deep emotional connection that they don't want to view your competitors and only want to support you and the good causes you wish to help.

So far, we have covered the 5 tips for success in the multichannel storytelling world. From being able to differentiate yourself in your niche of the market, to creating impressionable content and building a meaningful community, we’ve touched upon all the necessary milestones that your best practices for multichannel storytelling should cover.

So, what makes you a great storyteller for your brand?

As a B2B or even a B2C marketer, you understand the scope of information that has to be processed both during the initial planning stages and throughout the storytelling and marketing process. Digital asset management, content creation automation, or even better, an integrated approach to orchestrating your content processes might be solutions you want to consider to streamline your multichannel publishing activities, shorten the process and ease the burden on your team.

Platforms such as WoodWing allow you to elevate your unique story and provide you with the tools to keep your story relevant even when times are changing, and you are unsure what platform will make the next big appearance. You may be able to get a sneak peek into the future of technology and resources by reading a few articles on this blog. They will be able to bring to you the notions of digital asset management, workflow and publishing closer so that your business can benefit the most.