If you want to captivate your audience you need to tell them something fresh and informative in a style that will hold their attention.  Gone are the days when companies primarily issued formal press releases about a new product or service as their main customer communication.  Internet Marketing particularly Blogs and other Social Media Marketing techniques have changed forever the way a business communicates, engages and interacts with its customers and prospects.

Blogs which have a good readership usually have one thing in common – they are all written by people who can write a good story – story telling has been a major part of all our lives since childhood. We all like to hear a good story.  Good blog writers do not always look to promote what they are good at – they share their disasters as well as their successes.  Why?  Because we all have disasters from time to time and sharing these online helps to reassure our readers that we are human too!  Admitting our mistakes will also help to build credibility and trust and it will also, hopefully, help our readers to avoid making those same mistakes.

Good communication via your blog, online articles or any other digital channel requires you to tell a good story, a story that will entertain and educate your readership.  We give below a couple of tips to help you create a good story:

Set the scene

Most people use the internet for ‘entertainment’ as well as information seeking, product research, best deals etc.  You do not have to produce high quality video footage and post it to YouTube to be entertaining.  Most people find a well written story about real life experiences equally entertaining.  Like all good stories you need to create the main characters.  For instance if you are writing about a particular product or service let that be the ‘hero’ of the story.  The solution to the problem, the ‘villain’ you have highlighted in the story.  Not all heroes need to be like Superman – they just need to be able to do their jobs well.

We can apply this ‘hero’ role to most everyday items.  Let’s say you are posting a blog about a new cosmetic product.  The product could be the hero that turns a plain looking individual into a super-model!  Your story should focus on the emotional change – the change in how the person feels wearing the new product and not how she looks. Your story should be about real life issues that are important to your readers.  If you are reading a ‘beauty blog’ how you look and how you feel about how you look is likely to be important to you.  If you are reading this blog, you are likely to either have or be considering creating a blog for your business and want to know how to get the best results from it.

These examples may sound obvious, but you would be surprised how many blog posts on the internet fail to tell a good story.  Story-telling and including real life dramatic experiences in your story can often captivate more readers on the internet than a detailed product description.

Your content does not always have to be in paragraph format.  It is often useful to summarise your story at the end by way of a bulleted list showing the main points (show the benefits rather than features) and always include a call to action – let people know what to do if they want more information.  Happy story telling!

If you would like more information about Blogs or copywriting please leave a message below or visit WSI IMS – WSI Internet Marketing Services in Surrey, Sussex, Kent and the South East of England.