It hardly is news that tech has marked a new era for storytelling. Stories are thriving, making themselves available in multiple formats for audiences measured in the billions. We, more than ever before, live in an era of stories.
Not long ago, stories were equally beloved by our ancestors. However, the processes of production and distribution were by rule far more expensive than now; as a result, the amount and diversity of stories were limited. Can you imagine how much did it cost to print tens of thousands of newspapers and physically distribute them across cities, states, and countries?
Nowadays, things are different: writing encompasses no paper at all, reaching audiences can be done by hitting the ‘enter’ key, and producing a multimedia feature requires nothing but a smartphone. By the time blogging became a thing – think the early 2000s – dozens of millions were publishing stories on a daily basis. Soon after, there were hundreds of millions and along came the inbound marketing explosion.
Generally speaking, inbound marketing is about creating content to generate awareness and, eventually, leads and customers. While most inbound marketing actions consist in the production of texts, there is no limit to what can be done. Infographics, video, slide presentations, art and beyond: everything can be tuned-up to fit an inbound marketing strategy when the main goal is to tell brand-related stories.
However, the production of text has two key advantages that make it an inbound marketing darling:
- It’s SEO-friendly. A great way to improve a website’s visibility is to produce relevant content, which will impact on its ‘search value’.
- It’s inexpensive. As long as you can rely on someone (ideally, a writer) to produce content, you’ll be fine. Publishing and distributing? Well, websites do that. For the most part, they’ve been created for that.
Notoriously, inbound marketing currently stands as an opportunity. Given that production, publication and distribution costs have dropped, developing stories has become an affordable endeavor. In addition, those who share our view of brands as stories in development will find that inbound marketing is a perfect fit for what a brand needs: a space and time to share its voice, its past, and future – the way it wants.
