Blogger insights this week: Brand messaging for the Social Web

You know it’s true.

To build your brand and engage with customers on social media you need to tell stories. If you’ve been marketing on social media for a while, you’ve probably heard the benefits of brand storytelling:

• It humanizes your brand
• It gets people’s attention
• It builds trust for your brand
• It makes your message stick

So, how’s it working out for you? Still struggling with communicating your brand message?

Help is here, my friend, from two great posts in the spotlight this time.

Spotlight: How to tell a memorable brand story on social media

Brands as storylines via Branding Strategy Insider

The temptation when you’re working with a brand, writes Mark Di Somma, is to continue to treat it just as a product or service. But, what if you begin to treat it as the personification of an idea?

Instead of creating campaigns, you develop an evolving brand story that treats each year as a new season in a running plotline like a television producer does. A serialized storytelling approach builds momentum with your audience across multiple media channels and is much better suited for social media marketing.

Intrigued? Read more about it here.

Marketers: Put down the fire hose via Social Media Explorer

The fire hose principle is pretty easy for us to understand. We experience it every day on social media. In this post Danielle Terreri likens it to interacting at a party. “The millions of things I want to share are not nearly as well-received by friends as just a few great stories would be,” she writes.

To shut down that fire hose we need to simplify our brand message. The advice is simple, but not easy for tangent-prone marketers. It begins with identifying your key messages and then only sharing information that supports them.

Click here to find out exactly how to do it.

Best of the Web: Blogger highlights

Social Media Marketing

5 ways to maximize visual content on social media via Socialnomics

20+ awesome ways to get more followers for your Google+ business page via KISSmetrics

How to get more than 250 shares on Google+ via Robert Ryan

What if everything you know about social media marketing is wrong? via Experience the Blog

Content Marketing

How to create a content matrix via Kevin Cain

How estimated reading times increase engagement with content via Marketing Land

The pressure of long-form content via Blog Tyrant

From 0 to $100,000 per month: 20 lessons for building a profitable blog via Boost Blog Traffic

How to approach content and inbound marketing via Smart Blogs

Response Marketing

Teaching the old dog of email some very cool new tricks via Duct Tape Marketing

7 tactics to generate content for automated emails via Silverpop

Email is alive and well via Exact Targeting

7 types of landing pages that will make your Web visitors stick like fly paper via KISSmetrics

Branding

9 timeless PR positioning strategies via Sword and the Script

What you write about doesn’t matter as much as you think via Goings Writer

Develop your brand voice: 3 keys to killer messaging via Marketing Profs

How to rebrand your social media accounts via Moz

Integrated Marketing

A concise overview of cross-channel marketing models via Marketing Land

4 ways to enhance cross-channel marketing via iMedia Connection

8 ways to integrate social media with existing marketing via Practical Ecommerce

Are your content channels working together? 8 steps to find out via Marketing Land

Visual Marketing

Credit: tomfishburne.com

Newswire

Digital Marketing Weekly via JGO Digital

Too busy to read the news last week? Catch up on the top digital marketing stories in 10 minutes: FCC net neutrality rules let ISPs play favorites; Facebook rolls out new mobile ad network; Google+ is minus its leader; LinkedIn Content Partners program lets you brand other’s content; More stories here …

Need help with a digital marketing strategy that tells your brand story? Let’s talk! Message me to schedule a time to chat on the phone.