Telling your brand’s story, and how that’s different from SEO.

*This post is in-progress and will be finished in the coming days.

Brand storytelling.

Working for 9+ years in SEO, that’s not a term I heard often.

Sometimes, I’d hear it from the content or social teams at agencies I worked for. Seldom, if ever, did I hear it in the context of SEO.

That’s why I made the career change from focusing on SEO to doing brand-focused holistic marketing, because I believe brand storytelling is the future, especially in the age of generative AI.

In this post, I’ll explain what brand storytelling means, both in general and more specific terms, and elaborate how it’s different from traditional SEO.

Let’s start with some basics, using visuals.

Speaking of generative AI, Perplexity does a nice job with its Pro Search of uncovering information. (I used it when collecting tips for posting social content.)

Here are some visuals that depict brand storytelling (and here’s a link to view the sources):

Just in case you’re struggling to decipher what those images are saying — I’m looking at you mobile users 🤳 …

Here’s a general breakdown of what a brand story involves.

In short, brand story telling explains what you do, how you do it, and why you do it.

It includes describing your mission, values, vision, and beliefs.

In terms of goals, your story is about building an emotional connection with your audience that leads to engagement, trust, and eventually loyalty.

Some key elements of a brand story — which should be consistent across your digital presence, including website and socials — can include:

• Framing the story well.
• Making an emotional connection.
• Featuring real customers.
• Discussing learnings from failures.
• Explaining your points of innovation.
• Reiterating why the brand exists.

Every story can also be told using an arc, much like a film script.

Your arc can start with an objective, followed by a problem, a big idea or solution, a reason why the idea is important, where the idea is today, or its evolution, and how it relates to your audience’s needs and goals.

This story can also be told across marketing channels, which brings us to the part about it being bigger than SEO.

SEO as we knew it is gone, replaced by a new definition. At least, that’s how I discuss it on my website as a holistic marketing consultant.

Feel free to check out those links, or consider this scenario:

Imagine your users want to look up information about their problem. They might ask an AI chatbot like ChatGPT (or SearchGPT soon) or Gemini, or they might do a traditional or video search on Google and get returned an AI Overview.

What those answers have in common is they don’t take into account SEO the way it used to be considered for traditional rankings.

In the old days of SEO, the focus was on website content, and search engine algorithms looked for certain signals that tended to be associated with quality content, like backlinks or keywords in certain places.

Today, search engines can use natural language processing, knowledge graphs, and RAG to synthesize not only website but also social content.

This is exciting, in my mind, as it opens up new avenues for brand storytelling.

Rather than think about keyword research as the foundation for content marketing — say good bye to content hubs — focus instead on your customer journey and consistently telling your brand’s story arc.

This can be done across a variety of content types, including web and social content, which reinforce one another.

Brand story telling is bigger than SEO, and in the age of generative AI, framing your arc correctly can introduce more content marketing opportunities for you to get seen by your audience throughout their user journey.

What about how to tell your brand’s story?

Let’s delve into a list of ways to engage in storytelling for marketing:

• Case studies
• Customer stories and UGC
• Historical narratives
• Personal anecdotes
• Multimedia storytelling

There are different techniques for telling a brand’s story, but always start with your brand’s “why,” or why you exist and what problem you are solving. That, combined with authenticity, can help make an emotional connection, identifying with your audience’s pain points.

Until next time, enjoy the vibes:

Thanks for reading. Happy marketing! 🤗