People enjoy stories. Which would you find easier to recall: a set of facts or a narrative that incorporates them? Writing content for a website requires you to tell a story in order to captivate readers with attention-grabbing marketing language and convince them to stick around long enough to hear what you have to say.
Most of us already know how to tell stories – we just forgot to do so when we sat down to write marketing content. So much advice about fonts, colors, and formatting has been given to us that we have forgotten about using content as a tool for storytelling.
These five techniques will help you develop appealing marketing material for your website while simultaneously telling a story.
Be aware of your target market.
This may be the most important tip any writer can give another writer. You need to understand who you’re talking to before you can create worthwhile material. Marketers create a buyer persona to give a particular demographic, or audience, to specifically target.
When you’re aware of your target market, you’ll be able to decide on a writing grade, where to begin, and what information to include. The audience’s fundamental needs will not change, but this will as the buying process moves on to the next step.
Choose the Frame and Premise.
The audience’s perspective is the frame. A serious vegan and a barbecue enthusiast will see the world differently. A sixteen-year-old boy in high school has a different perspective on the world than his forty-five-year-old mother. Knowing your audience will help you present the story in a way that makes sense for their context. Who are you writing to?
The way the story is told is the premise. This is how the framed story is presented to the audience in a way that captivates and carries it along, which builds the dramatic tension. How can you tell the story in a way that appeals to your target audience’s worldview and makes sense to them?
Choose a focal point.
What forms the core of your narrative? Boy and girl cross paths? Does Bo know baseball? When a story lacks focus, scope creep can occur. You quickly lose the momentum of a personal experience when you try to speak to everyone at once.
You ought to be able to use a noun, a verb, and an object to sum up your focus in three words. These phrases suggest what the client desires.
Create a Character
Stories about people are always more engaging, especially if those people are members of your target audience. Your humanized version of your buyer persona is your character. You name it and use it to add a human perspective to your narrative.
For instance, Bob Businessman got a call from a prospective customer that had the potential to truly make his company famous. However, it took him three days to compile a proposal, and the customer chose a business that finished theirs in a matter of hours. Bob pondered whether his proposal process could be made more efficient.
Observe a dramatic trajectory
There is a beginning, middle, and end to a story. The dramatic trajectory drives the narrative forward bringing the reader with it.
- Beginning = Exposition – This is the starting point where you give the reader context and a beginning for the action
- Middle = Conflict and climax – The middle is where the problem is presented. You are telling the reader about the change in circumstances that creates a problem that must be resolved.
- End = Conclusion: The end tells the reader about the resolution to the problem and ties the story up. It is logical and/or emotional stopping point.
With a captivating hook and an engaging plot, your reader will be compelled to follow along. Provide them with a satisfying resolution at the end.
The best way to draw readers in and encourage them to become customers is to present content on websites as stories. Stories are how knowledge was transmitted in the world before written language existed, so the ability to comprehend and recall them is ingrained in the human psyche. A story becomes memorable and shareable when experience is incorporated into it.
Two of the most crucial elements of well-written website content are memorability and shareability.
I hope you found these tips for crafting compelling content helpful; if after reading this article, you’d like to talk to me about possibly writing your content for you, check out this writing project on Upwork.