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oday on the blog, I talk to Kendall Cherry, an experienced copywriter based in the US, who exclusively reveals how and why brand storytelling is so important for your business’ success in 2022.
Kendall discusses the importance of brand storytelling for your small business and shares her top tips on tackling entrepreneurship in 2022, as well as how to brush up on your copywriting skills.
I’ve always been a writer in some capacity, whether it was rewriting the words to Taylor Swift songs in high school or during my career path in corporate communications prior to entrepreneurship. I knew that I wanted to help other people find the words for the ideas that were bouncing around in their brains in a way that felt authentic to them.
This is something I’ve sort of been ruminating on for years. I’d traveled solo a few times and made several friends from the internet, and I could never figure out how to describe that instant spark and connection that would occur.
“Candid and kind” is the only way I could figure out how to bottle it up. It’s a mix of being candid, being honest with others and yourself, even if it means being vulnerable or feeling uncomfortable. And being kind with yourself as you do it – this is the idea that you can take up space and it’s okay to do so.
I think as we move more and more into a world run by online businesses, we’re discovering that not only is content king, but authentic content is king.
People don’t want to just buy from just anyone anymore – they want to connect with the product, the founder, and the story about why that product or service is so valuable to their previous customers.
There’s so much competition to make sure that your brand stands out, and storytelling is the key to tapping into that uniqueness. Nobody else has the exact same story as you do!
I find that as a small brand with a very lean team, the demand for creating lots of content right now is a little absurd.
I personally don’t have dozens of hours free every week to create and edit content for all the different channels (and I would never ask my team to put in a lot of time there, either). I’d rather invest more time in supporting our clients.
Email marketing is a great way to connect with your audience in a way that feels more intimate, without all of the logistics and coordination that’s required for creating content for social media.
Plus, there’s no algorithm for you to compete with and you can find clients through email by sending as little as one email per week. Compare that to 5-6 lots of Instagram content and it’s a no-brainer for me.
Be prepared to try an idea out at least 10 more times than you think. It’s so easy to ride out the high we get with a new idea and think “this is it!” and that this will be the game-changer. There are a few rare occasions where you try something new and it takes off, but most of the time that’s not the case.
In reality, and what most people aren’t sharing online, is that getting ideas to a profitable place takes a lot more time, and trial and error, than we ever anticipate.
This will be one of the biggest personal development journeys you will ever go on, but it will also be one of the loneliest. You can find community in all kinds of places, but ultimately, you’re the one responsible for steering the ship that is your business.
I’d probably tell myself to try and find more friends who are also entrepreneurs first and foremost. And then I’d probably tell myself to take the pressure off my shoulders of trying to get my friends and family, who aren’t entrepreneurs, to understand my experience.
I spent a lot of time trying to explain my motivation and getting them to understand it, and it was such a drain on my energy. Some things are just better left unsaid!
Yes, community is huge! I think my community in general is more on the introverted side, and they have a little bit of a rebellious streak. They really dislike a lot of the trendy marketing practices and it’s so fun to get to share what works for me, teach courses and work with clients from that vantage point!
Absolutely! I had a public podcast for about a year and a half and really enjoyed it, but I was feeling super burnt out during production. You don’t always see a lot of the moving parts that go into having a podcast, but I found the editing, writing the show notes, and creating content for social media a total drag so I stopped for about six months.
But later in the year in 2021, I really missed having a space to just show up every week and use my voice, separate from my writing. That’s when I decided to launch a private podcast for my email list and make it a really lean creative process for myself.
No editing, no content planning, just showing up and talking on a mic about whatever’s on my mind that week. It’s been SO fun and it’s had a great response so far!
I’d say study a lot more about marketing for your ideal clients more than anything. I’m against copywriting formulas (I don’t use them in our content and we don’t use formulas with our clients), because they don’t feel authentic.
I think a lot of them are so overused, especially for social media captions, that we tend to just block out the caption altogether which is the last thing you want.
There’s a really great book called The 1 Page Marketing Plan by Allan Dibb that has a lot of great little nuggets about communicating with your ideal client and the way they consume that I highly recommend diving into!
We offer copywriting services for essentially anything that needs to be written. We offer website writing services or monthly content packages, and we also do custom projects.
In the past, we’ve written client onboarding copy, email welcome series, and even case study blog posts for our clients. We can write just about anything you need, and capture your brand voice in the process.
You can connect with Kendall on Instagram at @candidcollectiveco and sign up to her podcast here. Be sure to visit her website for more information on Kendall’s services and all things copywriting.
Kendall was an exclusive guest speaker in December in the Blossom membership space. Every month we host up to two guest expert sessions (including a Q&A), as well as group coaching calls, general accountability support and relaxed co-working sessions.
**Email me at hello@ebbflowandgrow.com to find out more about joining the space.**
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