SEO and Storytelling are two of the most effective Digital Marketing techniques to attract organic visits to your page and connect emotionally with your reader. Learn how to successfully integrate them in this article.
Stories are one of the best ways to communicate an idea. These generate an emotional connection and keep the attention of the person who reads or listens to them always high. In fact, when you share a story with your audience, their retention increases by 70%.
But what does this have to do with Digital Marketing?
You see, in the digital environment, Internet users are constantly bombarded with information and content from different sources, reducing the time they spend completely consuming a single content.
Therefore, it is necessary to implement techniques that help you create a differentiated content that manages to maintain the interest of your readers for longer. This is where Storytelling comes in.
Learn how to attract and keep the attention of people and search engines by integrating SEO and Storytelling in your digital strategy, to conquer your readers and the best positions in the SERPs.
What is Storytelling?
Storytelling is an English word that literally translates as "telling stories." For Marketing, Storytelling is an art and a technique that seeks to create content that connects with an audience on an emotional level.
Storytelling uses 4 elements:
- characters; environment; conflict; message or teaching.
It is mainly used as a way to convey a message in a simple but memorable way. One of its most common uses can be found in advertising.
For example, when athletes sponsored by Red Bull tell about their great feats or when Coca Cola shows how a whole family has consumed their drink generation after generation.
In addition to this use, Storytelling is a valuable technique for Digital Marketing when complex issues are explained or when you want to take customers through the shopping journey.
How does Storytelling apply to Digital Marketing?
Storytelling has a lot to do in Digital Marketing, be it to help you tackle a complicated topic, to differentiate your message from that of your competition, or simply to connect with your reader.
Now, by applying an integration between SEO and Storytelling, you can also improve the positioning of your content both in search engines and in the minds of your readers.
With recent updates to its algorithm, Google understands what kind of content is valuable to users.
Not only does it look at the SEO optimization of a page or the length of the content, but it also classifies its results under other variables such as the user's search intention or the length of time of a website.
We know that users like stories, because by adding them to your article, you encourage your readers to continue browsing your content or website. Google interprets this behavior as a quality signal and will reward your website with better positions.
Why integrate SEO and Storytelling into your digital strategy?
SEO and Storytelling are complementary techniques. They need each other to bring better results to a digital strategy.
Look at it this way: While SEO exposes your content to new organic audiences thanks to search engine optimization, Storytelling conquers them by telling stories they can identify with.
Without the application of Storytelling, your articles can feel somewhat mechanical, like a tool that seeks to fill out an SEO optimization checklist without improving the user experience, which is what Google looks for in the end.
On the contrary, by implementing the art of storytelling, you awaken the user's interest in your content, positively affecting the dwell times, reducing the bounce rate and, consequently, improving the positioning of your website.
What are the advantages of integrating SEO and Storytelling?
Next, we present the main advantages of applying Storytelling in an SEO strategy.
- With SEO your stories will be visible to people and search engines. With Storytelling your content will address a topic from a unique perspective, giving a differentiated value to your user. Stories will help you, in a non-invasive way, to lead your readers to the throughout the shopping journey You create an emotional bond with your audience You keep your readers' attention and interest for longer It will improve your positioning in Google by increasing the dwell time and reducing the bounce rate. Storytelling reinforces the message Your brand. Including stories in your content increases the likelihood of receiving inbound links. Content with a good story and search engine optimization generates virality. Applying Storytelling and SEO to content makes it easier to read and understand.Including stories makes it easier to explain and understand complex topics.
How to reconcile Storytelling techniques and SEO optimization?
Since you know the benefits of integrating SEO and Storytelling, now you will know 6 practices that will help you to make this integration naturally in your content.
1. Know your buyer persona
The first thing you should be clear about is who your reader is, that is, who would be your ideal client. A buyer persona can help you define, in a single figure, what kind of people fit these two profiles.
To design a buyer persona you must know not only the demographic information of your segment, but also understand their habits, interests and difficulties.
Only in this way will you be able to create stories that your readers can connect with, inspire and excite them.
2. Create your story with the hero's journey
You already know who you are going to talk to and what kind of story they are inspired by.
It is time to develop the 4 elements of Storytelling:
- character, environment, conflict, and message or teaching.
Lean on the hero's journey to create a memorable story.
You can apply this concept in 5 steps:
- You introduce the protagonist and his routine You introduce the main conflict You follow the journey that the protagonist must take to resolve the conflict The journey presents the hero with secondary challenges with which he gains valuable learning The hero faces his final battle thanks to his new skills, solve the conflict and learn its greatest lesson.
Following the hero's journey will make the reader know more details about the story, understanding the protagonist's motivations and empathizing with his journey.
3. Tell a meaningful story
Doing Storytelling is not telling an occasional story, disconnected from the rest of your content.
When you integrate Storytelling into your digital strategy, make sure it makes sense, pursuing a specific objective of your Digital Marketing plan and not just by using a trend that has worked for others.
4. Use the indicated tone of voice
Producing content for entrepreneurs is not the same as for artists.
Once you have your story -story-, you must know how to communicate it in the most appropriate way to awaken that empathy with your reader -telling-.
How you tell your story is what will leave a mark on your audience. So just as important as the message is is the language you use and the format in which you convey it.
Define if it is better to share a professional experience, a personal anecdote, create an article, make a video or record a podcast. Everything according to your buyer persona.
5. Optimize your story with SEO
Now that you've written your story in the best possible format, it's time to review the content under the SEO lens. After all, it doesn't matter if you have the best content in your hands if no one can find it.
If it is a written article, check aspects of SEO On Page such as the length of the title, the meta description, the density and distribution of the keywords.
If it is a video, the same recommendation applies: watch the duration of the video, take care of the tags and add a description with your keywords.
Make the corresponding modifications to optimize your content for search engines, as long as they do not affect the user experience or harm the impact of your story.
6. Measure the results of integration
Finally, both Storytelling and SEO are techniques that should lead you to achieve a goal. With this in mind, it is necessary to measure the performance of the content in which you have applied Storytelling to see its results.
With tools such as Google Analytics, you access relevant metrics and information such as the length of time of a page or the most visited articles. Hotjar, for example, allows you to see the specific behavior of your users thanks to heat maps.
If you see that the articles with the most interactions, dwell times and shares in social networks are those with Storytelling, it means that the strategy is working.
conclusion
SEO and Storytelling are great allies. While the former exhibits your content to new audiences, the latter conquers them with engaging stories.
After all, Storytelling helps you create articles that your readers like best and, ultimately, Google likes what users like.
