We start with the who. In storytelling, each story has a character who is trying to overcome an obstacle to achieve a goal. When brands can tell stories that help their customers overcome their obstacles to reach their goals, they build trust. And trust is your ultimate competitive advantage. It builds brand loayls, and encourages them to tell their friends.

Now it’s time for the what. And there are three inputs to finding what content you need. First, what does the brand need to tell customers about who they are, how they are different, and why people should care. Then, we look at the data. What are people searching for? What are their questions? Data should inform but never dictate content.

Finally, there’s my favorite part. The magic. This is where you uncover stories within the brand (whether it’s on your manufacturing floor or the story of one of your customers) and weave those in.

At this point, you have the type of content you need to make. Now, it’s time to look at your customer’s journey. I use the aware, consider, evaluate, buy, enjoy, advocate, bond model from Harvard Business, and think through what message a customer needs to hear or see and where they need to see it along their journey. This becomes my roadmap for making content.

Preproduction

When it comes to telling stories, it’s both an art and a science. Preproduction is the science. I always start with pre-interviews.

After the pre-interview, I pull their story into Brian McDonald’s seven steps, built around a 3 act story structure. Using this method helps ensure I’ve got everything I need to tell a story, I know who my character is, what their obstacle is, and how they overcome their goal. Then, I write the script. 

Pre-production also allows the team to identify all the final deliverables so that on set we are prepared for each asset we need to capture.

Content works when it reaches the right people, in the right place, at the right time. Strategy has helped us identify our audience and messaging. It also helps us know where we think the content will resonate with our audience. So now, we distribute it. Details mean everything here, taking the time to add metadata, title tags, and SEO-informed titles, for example, will help you build that organic reach over time, even as you pay for distribution initially. When it comes to distributing content, I act as if we have zero money, optimize everything for organic, and let it do its magic. 

What should we start? Stop? Change? We take a look at the content and see how it’s performing. Are we using the right keywords? Is it resonating with our intended audience? Or a different audience? Is that a new audience one we’d like to engage with? We work our way back through the stack. Is it distributed correctly? Is it the right content? Is it the right strategy? And depending on those answers we pivot or dig deeper.