the magazine from the Content Marketing Association _ issue one
Are you sitting comfortably? Then we’ll begin… Once upon a time, there lived a bird. What the bird wanted more than anything else was to be heard by the flock, to speak to those who might like to hear what it had to say. But his voice was lost in the chatter of everyone else. Then, one day, the bird planted the seed of an idea, which grew so that his voice could be heard in many different ways across the land. Through this simple action he made many loyal friends who came to hear his story. The key to effective content is storytelling – engaging the customer in a developing dialogue that rewards their interest with entertainment and emotion. Get your customers emotionally involved with your brand and you’ll not only have their attention, you’ll have their custom. Good content is now a currency, where brands and organisations create value for their customers in return for their engagement. Brands that fail to enter into this value exchange with their customers will find themselves lagging behind, as customers turn to organisations that provide them with more relevant and compelling content. The bird realised that using different ways of speaking to his friends had got his story noticed, but he also knew he had to keep discovering and evolving new methods of doing this to keep the flock interested.