Lift your brand with corporate storytelling
By Alicia Mollbrink
Make people care about your company - try to engage them in your company’s values by creating a corporate narrative. The narrative will work as a bridge between your business values and your target groups.
Everything is about stories, right? Modern humans consume a huge amount of information every day. A person that lived as a farmer a century ago would be faced with as many impressions over a lifetime as the modern person in the 21st century gets in one day. We meet a lot of people, we talk and listen a lot and we read a lot, but you don’t remember each of those impressions, do you?
People remember stories rather than facts or truths. We remember things that touch our hearts – those are the stories we will carry with us and share with others. Every company has both history and baggage to carry. Some companies have less controversial pasts than others, but most companies will have something in their history that they might not feel proud about.
Some events can cause tremendous amounts of chaos, while other things will just pass by without further notice. However, no matter if you are trying to recover your brand after a crisis or if your company is about to go through a huge rebranding, every business needs a story. If you want to change how your customers, business partners or people in general think and feel about you as a company, you need to change something. If you think you can do the same thing as you’ve always done and still expect a change in results or behaviour from your target groups – stop reading.
Creating your company’s story
If you know your core values, they can become the foundation of your corporate narrative and the start of your corporate storytelling.
1. Core values
First of all – what are your company’s core values? What do you believe in and what values do you work with in your business strategy? What drives your business? For example, potential core values for working in insurance might be wanting people to feel safe, taking responsibility and wanting to take care of people.
Safe, responsible and caring – three core values to underpin a corporate narrative.
2. Corporate Narrative
When you know your true core values, you can start to build stories around them and make history out of your company. If this is done correctly, people will be more likely to feel a connection to the narrative and link positive connotations with the name of your company. The end goal is to make them feel that they have something in common with your company.
3. Content strategy and planning
Strategy is key - don't start planning work before your strategy is set. Corporate storytelling should be included in your company’s overall content strategy. If you don't have a strategy before planning, you will most likely loose efficiency and money along the way. Set a clear strategy and long-term goals before you start to plan your actions. When you understand your strategy, you can move on to thinking about the execution.
Two other important things when it comes to corporate storytelling:
Be transparent. What does your company do? How do you do it? What countries are you operating in? What other companies or organizations are connected to your business? Do you do anything in your organisation that could be seen as controversial? If possible, communicate around those things to make sure no one will misinterpret your actions.
Learn about your target groups by analysing your market activities. What do people want to hear, when do they want to hear about it and where do they want to hear it? Your target groups and their behaviour is key when reaching out with your corporate narrative. Make this one of your highest priorities when planning your content marketing and corporate storytelling – evaluate your target groups’ behaviour and package your message in a way that will make them pay attention.
Comprend can help you with your corporate storytelling
Our content consultants have extensive content experience. If you want to learn more about your customers and their behaviour, we can help you evaluate your marketing efforts, work in a more data-driven way with Google Analytics and measure your most important KPIs to follow up on the work you put into your web and social channels. We can also advise you on setting your content strategy, plan for your corporate storytelling and guide you all the way through the process. We can help you plan your corporate narrative and we can create copy, articles, discussion articles, blogposts and newsletters.
No time for social media? No problem, our content consultants can help with that too. We offer strategic collaboration for your brand and corporate storytelling.
