By Ross Young
How do you share your story with the world?
Answering this question can help you, as a small business owner, better engage with your customers and reach new audiences.
But telling your story isn’t easy.
In contemporary marketing, you can share your story with the world in many ways. Many business owners use TikTok, while others rely on Instagram. Others stick to professional posts on LinkedIn.
No matter how you do it, Seth Godin, marketing guru extraordinaire, reinforces the necessity of storytelling in today’s competitive world:
“Marketing is no longer about the stuff that you make, but about the stories you tell.”
I love this quote. And I absolutely agree with it.
Before I joined Magic Word Media, I ran a small coffee business with my family. Our story had many layers, and we often grappled with how to tell it.
Even before I became a professional writer, I loved to write in my spare time, so instinctively, I set up a blog. The blog aimed to tell our story and engage with our potential audience.
Our blog didn’t change the world, but it did help tell our unique story. While working in the coffee business, many of our customers started asking me about some things I was writing about, including our work in African coffee-growing communities.
As a result, I instinctively felt that many of our customers better understood what was different about our little coffee business. And, in turn, why they should choose us over our competitors.
So, as a former small business owner and a current writer, I want to share some super simple blogging tips I learned from my first dalliance with business blogging.
Whether you work with African coffee or financial services, these tips can help you kick-start your small business blog:
1: Cut the BS
Grandstanding your achievements is not the way to go when telling your story.
Whether accurate or complete BS, boasting about your business won’t get you far. It will likely set you up to fail, as people will expect exceptionally high standards right out of the gate.
People aren’t expecting your small business to change the world. But they are expecting high-quality products/services and a friendly face.
So, my number one piece of advice is to cut the BS and keep things relatable. Don’t overpromise. Don’t boast about how great you are. Keep things honest and level-headed when telling your story, and bringing people with you on your journey will be much easier.
2: Authenticity should be your number one priority
So many small business owners focus on what they think their story should be, and they pay far too little attention to what it actually is.
While everyone loves a rags-to-riches tale or a classic underdog triumph, if it’s not relevant to your story, leave it out.
The best small business brands are authentic – you can relate to the people who work in the business and the journey that took them to where they are today.
3: Show people, don’t tell them
Showing people what you’ve done to get where you are, rather than telling them, can be highly impactful. While a blog is primarily a word-based marketing tool, including images and video content is essential.
Going back to my example, one of my earliest blogs included pictures of me on African coffee plantations, speaking to coffee growers, and learning how to process coffee. The images were helpful as they reinforced the story I was trying to tell.
Getting my hands dirty in Africa was a big part of my storytelling success. I wanted to show people, not tell them, about our family’s coffee story. It also helped with the authenticity of our story, particularly when sharing images in the early stages of growing our far-from-perfect coffee (below)!
4: Quality always trumps quantity
Don’t get caught up in hitting a magical word count when blogging and telling your story. The purpose of telling your story isn’t necessarily to improve your site’s SEO (though it may help), so don’t worry about whether your first post is 500 or 5,000 words.
As long as you’ve got your message across and are happy with the output, it doesn’t matter how long it is. Rather than fixating on a word count, get some words on the page before you and begin crafting your story.
5: Help is available
I’m not sitting here telling you that writing is easy. It can be time-consuming and difficult if you don’t know where to begin. But the good news is that you don’t need to go it alone when crafting your story.
At Magic Word Media, we have helped numerous small business owners like you tell their stories in various ways.
We can write regular blog posts to tell your story and update your audience with your business achievements. We can also help you develop and implement a social media strategy that keeps your followers on board.
If you’re keen to tell your business’s story but are unsure where to begin, we’d love to help. Contact us today for more information or to ask us for more blogging tips for small business owners!