Insights are incredibly important for businesses that sell expertise. By packaging up useful information, ideas or research, sharing insights can be a great way to explore the problems your audience faces and share views on how to solve them. In doing this, a business can position itself as a thought leader, reinforce its internal expertise and establish a link between the audience’s needs and its solutions.
With the internet full of business insight pieces and lots of aspiring thought leaders competing to be heard, it’s all too easy for your content to fall flat though. So, what’s the difference between an insight that captures attention and one that misses the mark?
Balancing insight with relevance
Let’s imagine you have spent weeks collating expertise from busy people in your team, drafting an insight-filled blog or white paper, only for it to not attract sufficient attention or drive traffic.
It can be disheartening, but it’s important to understand what could have gone wrong. Maybe the article didn’t meet the quality checking tests of search engines. Or perhaps the article didn’t include keywords that the audience uses. Just as likely though, the published article simply didn’t tell a strong enough story to convince readers to read on.
It’s not enough to show that an insight showcases your expertise. It needs to explain how your expertise can help potential clients solve the problems they’re worried about. And why they should choose you to help solve their problem instead of one of your competitors. This is where storytelling can help.
What even is storytelling?
Storytelling has become something of a buzzword that is sometimes used interchangeably with a range of non-specific marketing terms. But we are clear about what we mean by storytelling, and how it can transform an insight from a list of things a business knows to an explanation of how a business creates value.
A golden rule in written communications is to ask yourself ‘so what?’ to sense check what makes your knowledge or insight relevant to the reader? Perhaps the right ‘so what?’ in one article is explaining how legal changes will impact your clients’ business, while in another case it might be demonstrating why your services are important to clients. The ‘so what’ is what makes your expertise relevant to your clients and gives them a reason should read on.
Storytelling is an important part of communicating the ‘so what’. Telling the right story starts with a deep understanding of your audience and then helps you guide them through to a successful resolution, showcasing your impact and value along the way.
The core pillars of effective storytelling
We take a consistent approach to generating insights, which involves fleshing out the essential pillars of a strong story. These are:
Core truth + tension + unique solution or strong opinion = valuable insight
1. Core truth
Before anything else, a good insight needs to demonstrate an understanding of its audience. From your reader’s operating market to common challenges they may face, setting the scene and establishing understanding is an important part of engaging your audience early on.
2. Tension
Outline the tension or problem your readers face and demonstrate an understanding of how it is holding them back. For example, do tax changes pose a problem to supply chains? Will new data protection laws mean businesses need new privacy and data protection software?
3. Your solution or opinion
With the key challenge outlined, it’s important to show how your solution can help your clients overcome it and, ideally, help them advance towards their strategic objectives.
An effective insight doesn’t just trumpet your expertise – it takes your readers on a journey and showcases exactly how your services can overcome their problems. Skilful storytelling can help you do this by aligning the value you bring with your client’s needs.
At Stratton Craig, we apply the critical skill of storytelling to all manner of communication and stakeholder engagement challenges. Guided by data and insight, we develop brand language, content strategy and copy that inspires trust, belief and loyalty at every interaction. Find out how we can help you.
