In my latest podcast episode, Storytelling for your Brand, I talk about how as a business, you have opportunities every day to find stories within your day to day activities that can be used to enhance your brand. These interactions can be as simple as a customer conversation, or even experiences that you as a business owner have.

The key is to identify what that story is, and how you might capture it and turn it into media. I like to see brand storytelling in the form of a picture ot a video over a blog. Being long winded in a blog can lose your audiences attention, however, capturing a customer’s emotion to your product or service in an image can have a higher probability of sharing on the Internet.

Look on social media at some of your favorite brands, what are they sharing every day? What’s the subject of that content? Is it images of people, words or video? What does an image say to your without reading a description?

The secret to good content is not paying hundreds of dollars for design. It’s about being authentic. I’m willing to bet that the content you are seeing has authenticity to it over design. Good brands do both, but they also have the cash to. As a small brand you need to operate on a comfortable budget for marketing, and that may mean using what you have.

When you capture content, ask yourself what does this say to me by itself? If you can answer that, publish it. Write a description as if your were telling a friend about it. Make it as real as you can.

The same should be said for video, email, blogs, or other content types. Be real. If you do this, your customers will connect with your content. This is the secret ingredient for shareable content. After all, if it’s worth you sharing, it’s worth sharing to them as well.