Emotions drive decisions, prompt actions, and change mind-sets, leading to strong loyalty and a deep personal connection with a given brand that can extend beyond its rational attributes. Find out how to craft your branded content so that it makes an indelible emotional connection with your audience.

Stories make life interesting and give people a way to connect. People crave them, which creates a big opportunity for brand storytelling. Here are a few basic questions to answer to help you reach the heart of your brand's story.

As important as a captivating design is to your content marketing, stories (and the words that tell them) are what make people decide if they like you, if you understand their needs, and if they want to do business with you. Brand storytelling can’t be done with visuals alone. While great design might lure someone in, it’s not enough to sustain a real relationship. People communicate through conversation, and the words are essential to that dialogue. Imagine if you were planning a wine tasting trip in Napa and you found beautiful pictures of vineyards but no descriptions of the types of wines they offer, or the notes or history of the grapes? What if you were searching for a new camera and just found visuals of cameras, with no information on features, and no product reviews? Words matter, and brands that tell their stories — not just show them — win.Continue reading

The most important things that brands must understand is that they can create, and must own direct relationships with people; and think of these relationships and the content they create in terms of the mobile world. Here are the five movements that we are primed for in content marketing.

The new Facebook Timeline format will officially be applied to all business pages at the end of March, but some are already experimenting with the feature. Here are 5 new features that businesses can use to tell their story through the Facebook Timeline, and examples of several companies already doing a great job.

Your website content is your personal greeting to potential or existing customers. Think of it as your front desk, your introduction and an opportunity to connect with someone you haven’t even met. When your company offers a variety of products and services, it can be a challenge to get just the right message across on your home page. A focused message not only explains what you can do for people, but grabs their attention and makes them want to learn more. Here are a few important ways to streamline your message and create welcoming home page content to get customers through the front door (virtual and actual).Continue reading

Digging in to reveal the vital nuggets of information that tell a brand or company’s story is an essential first step in the content development process. At SPROUT Content, one of the first things we send to clients is our content questionnaire. This simple yet informative Q&A doc is tailored for each client to help us get to know them better. The goal is to bring out the most important information about their history, goals, offerings and industry. It’s like an online dating profile for businesses. The questionnaire   Regardless of if you are working with a client or managing your projects in-house, it’s a good idea to use a tool like the content questionnaire because it sets the foundation for the editorial content strategy, key messages, voice and positioning.  It also reveals where more agreement is needed. Continue reading

The groundbreaking Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends research from Junta42 and Marketing Profs showed the differences in content marketing tactics used across industries and by companies of all sizes. It was revealed that when it comes to content marketing, large companies (more than 1,000 employees) and small companies (10-99 employees) use content marketing in very different ways.Continue reading

I recently wrote a blog about creating a social media conversation calendar and was excited to learn how many people took action after reading it. As a follow-up to the blog, I wanted to share an example of client who is successfully using a conversation calendar to engage with and grow their fans on Facebook.Continue reading

If you were an architect building a house, wouldn’t you pin down a few concrete details before laying the foundation? Establishing the number of bedrooms and bathrooms needed, knowing who will live in the house, and choosing the best location for the home would be no-brainers.  The same process is true for creating content.Continue reading

It’s well known that social media presents a tremendous opportunity for businesses to connect directly with their customers and potential customers.  But, at Sprout Content, we hear all too often, “I started a Facebook page, but what do I say?” Social media Conversation Calendars are a great way to not only develop your content strategy for social media, but also make the process more efficient and keep your posts updated regularly. Here are few guidelines that will help you get started.Continue reading