The next installment of our ‘five secrets of natural storytelling’ blogs (slowly becoming Skout’s worst kept secret) is how it can help with inbound marketing. This is a marketing tactic that involves you creating the content that will bring the audience in.
Natural storytelling can help you compete for your customers’ attention and help you educate and inspire your audience. It’s not an opportunity to plug your brand, but one to educate your readers and to give them an insight into resolving issues that are currently affecting them and steps they can take to solve those issues. It’s a chance to spark engaging dialogue and discussion with your audience.
So how has Skout helped its clients use its natural stories to help with inbound marketing. As a B2B PR agency we often work with our clients to produce ‘top tips’ type articles which offer guidance to other organisations in certain situations. One example of this is a blog by one our clients that made it into Supply Management, in which we took an issue that many organisations are currently facing and issued guidance on how to prevent the problem. As it was current, genuine and of real interest to a particular sector, it works as an inbound marketing tool engage with and bring attention to an issue our client can help with.
The key to inbound marketing is not to tell your audience what you can do for them, but to relate to their day-to-day issues and create content that helps them find solutions to their problems. Educating and informing your audience on issues that matter to them will have them revisiting your website wanting more.
Alex Brown has just started his career at Skout PR and will be a regular contributor to the Skout blog.