🚥4 Ways To Tell Your Company's Stories In 2024
DIY brand storytelling 101: Context Collapse #311
Note: This is a follow-up to our previous article on finding your brand’s stories.
Getting your company’s story in front of the public used to be simple.
You hired a public relations firm or handled it in-house, pitching newspapers, magazines, television stations, and talk shows. You crafted press releases, organized live events in key cities, and tracked your results on a spreadsheet.
But things changed. Media outlets shut down, journalists were laid off, and now random YouTubers, TikTokers, and podcasters have taken the audience you were targeting.
That was a little different!
I work as a consultant and help companies and agencies untangle their PR, marketing, and advertising challenges. I deal with this every day.
I also wrote a little while ago about finding your brand’s stories. Now, I want to focus on telling them. Here’s some free advice on how to share your company’s stories. Use some or use all—it's up to you:
1. Start a company blog—or update it frequently.
This is the easiest win for ROI. Write short weekly articles (500 words is fine!) on topics relevant to your audience. Add some art—public domain Creative Commons or free Unsplash works—and post to your blog. Email your list to let them know there’s new content and share it on social media.
If you don’t have a blog, set up one quickly on Medium or Substack.
Don’t use genAI to write the blog posts themselves, they’ll look like dogshit. Use genAI to come up with article outlines if you’re pressed for time, to come up with article ideas if you can’t think of any, or for help copyediting your articles. But using ChatGPT or Claude to write the articles themselves will doom you to the lowest depths of SEO and repulsed target audience hell.
2. Start YouTube and TikTok channels for your brand.
This is a bigger challenge. Aim to release videos weekly on YouTube, then edit shorter clips for TikTok (second priority) and Instagram/Facebook Reels (third priority).
Your videos don’t need to be polished—they just need to connect with your audience. Know who you’re making the videos for: potential customers, existing customers, influencers, journalists, investors, or a different audience entirely? Are you aiming to increase conversions, retain customers, or build brand buzz as a priority?
Whatever your goal, have a strategy. Even “let’s post different content and see what sticks” is a strategy. Just make sure you have a plan if you’re investing time and money.
Turn off YouTube comments because they tend to be toxic. Leave them on for TikTok, where the community can be harsh and helpful.
PS: Pay attention to your thumbnails—on both YouTube and TikTok. You can have great content, but a bad thumbnail will slash your audience by 90%.
More tips below! But first…
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3. Start a branded podcast.
This is a bigger time investment, but a regular podcast can boost sales and customer retention.
Your podcast should be related to your business. If you run a SaaS for dentists’ offices, focus on interviews with real life customers and productivity/business experts that are helpful for dentists and office admins. If you sell travel accessories, interview travel experts and influencers in your field. Make something that will help your audience.
The technical needs for podcasts have dropped significantly in recent years. You just need a quiet room to record, a professional microphone that costs under $100 from Amazon and a good internet connection for interviewing remote guests. Free tier podcast recording and editing software is readily available and is suitable for the needs of most early-stage podcasters. As with videos, focus on thumbnail art and descriptions. Distribute on RSS and make sure to how your finished product shows up on Spotify, YouTube, and Apple Podcasts.
4. Gated content, gated content, gated content.
I’m a huge fan of gated content—that is to say ebooks, white papers, and instructional guides that require you to give a name, email address, or other contact info in order to download. The investment cost is low and they offer a concrete reward with contact info for potential customers.
Put together something that makes sense for your target audience. Maybe it’s a technical walkthrough of your key products designed for potential buyers. Maybe it’s a survey that is useful for analysts and media. Maybe it’s an instructional guide for freemium users who you want to upgrade to paid subscriptions. Maybe it’s professional advice (How to market your business on LinkedIn! How to use ChatGPT in project management!) for potential customers who you’d like to make contact with.
Make sure that when your gated content goes live, you share it with your email list. It might sound counterintuitive to promote your gated content to audience members whom you already have info for, but these folks are likely to be your biggest promoters. And don’t forget to share to social channels!
What are your tips for telling your company’s story? Let us know in the comments.