B2B content creators often find themselves telling stories to drive their readers to take action. Usually the desired action is to do business with the company telling the story. But as Redlands-headquartered company ESRI demonstrates with ArcGIS StoryMaps, there are many ways to tell a story.
Why tell stories?
Now you could easily adopt a “just the facts” approach to sharing the necessary information, but your potential customers’ eyes may glaze over.
About a year ago, when I was selling Bredemarket’s services to a potential biometric client (obviously before I announced Bredemarket’s change in business scope and stopped providing services to finger/face clients), I started off by presenting a SWOT analysis. For those not familiar with the term, “SWOT” stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
For the topic of discussion with my potential client, I went through my independent analysis of all four of these items, engaging the people in the meeting who suggested some improvements. This SWOT analysis led into a presentation of the services that I could provide to the firm—services that addressed the weaknesses and threats that we had mutually identified.
What happened? I signed a contract with the company and worked on multiple projects to successfully address those weaknesses/threats.
Do you see what I did there?
As you probably noticed, I just told a story that had a conflict, actions, and a final resolution. “And they all sold biometric products happily ever after.”
Now SWOT analyses may not be your preferred type of storytelling, and frankly I usually don’t use SWOT analyses to tell stories. Stories can be of the “what happened to a company” or “what happened to me” form. For example, I recently told a “what happened to a company” story when talking about Conductor’s use of Calendly.
And some stories emphasize the “where.” No, not as one of the six factors of authentication, but as a setting for the story.
Enter ESRI and its ArcGIS StoryMaps product.
What does ArcGIS StoryMaps do?
On April 20, 2022, ESRI announced its introduction of ArcGIS StoryMaps, saying that “StoryMaps Allows Content Creators to Unify Digital Experiences in One Place Furthering Esri’s Mission to Bring the Geographic Approach to All.” In its announcement, ESRI started by presenting the problem:
Capturing and sharing life’s experiences today often requires multiple platforms and tools, which can result in disjointed storytelling.
From https://www.esri.com/about/newsroom/announcements/esri-brings-powerful-mapping-technology-to-everyone-with-new-storytelling-tool/
ArcGIS StoryMaps seeks to allow marketers and other content creators to use a single easy-to-use tool to tell their stories. As ESRI’s video on ArcGIS StoryMaps states, “Every story has a place, and every place has a story.” StoryMaps helps people tell place stories.
For an example of a StoryMap, go to https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/42b1a6fe6a524b578becd12c0bee4b4c to view “Sounds of the Wild West: An audio tour of Montana’s four major ecosystems.” Be sure to unmute the sound! (It’s an audio tour.)
What about YOUR story?
Now ESRI hasn’t asked me to tell stories for them (yet), but perhaps your Redlands-based company might want a storyteller. Consider the Redlands, California content marketing expert, Bredemarket. I provide marketing and writing services in the Inland Empire and throughout the United States.
Here are just a few examples of what Bredemarket can do for your firm:
- Blog posts.
- Case studies and testimonials.
- Facebook posts.
- Newsletter articles.
- LinkedIn articles and posts.
- Proposal services (managing, writing, editing, other). And yes, I’m the Ontario, California proposal writing expert also.
- White papers.
I can provide many more B2B services; a complete list can be found here.
Before I create a single word, I start by asking you some questions about your content:
- Why, how, and what do you do?
- What is the topic of the content?
- What is the goal that you want to achieve with the content?
- What are the benefits (not features, but benefits) that your end customers can realize by using your product or service?
- What is the target audience for the content?
After you’ve provided the relevant information to me, I’ll create the first iteration of the content, and we’ll work together to create your final content. The specifics of how we will work together depend upon whether you have elected the Bredemarket 400 Short Writing Service, the Bredemarket 2800 Medium Writing Service, or something else.
When we’re done, that final content is yours (a “work for hire” arrangement).
If I can help your business, or if you have further questions about Bredemarket’s B2B content creation services, please contact me.
- Send me an email at john.bredehoft@bredemarket.com.
- Or go to calendly.com/bredemarket to book a meeting with me.
- Or go to bredemarket.com/contact/ to use my contact form.
Bredemarket 