How Owning Yourself Will Make You a Better Blogger, Content Marketer, and Storyteller

by Gab­by Espos­i­to / School Comms Lab

June 20, 2021

If the pan­dem­ic showed us any­thing, it’s that we won’t accept mud­dy com­mu­ni­ca­tion. 2021 has raised the bar with a new stan­dard of mar­ket­ing and a more dis­trust­ing con­sumer; a world where com­mu­ni­ca­tion which doesn’t seem trans­par­ent and authen­tic doesn’t cut it.

This is where con­tent mar­ket­ing gets its val­ue. Key word: val­ue. Con­tent mar­ket­ing offers some­thing use­ful to con­sumers oth­er than what you’re selling. 

The blog

Under this sea of con­tent mar­ket­ing, lies its mon­ster: the blog. While con­tent mar­ket­ing comes in many shapes and sizes, the major­i­ty and most suc­cess­ful of it resides in this reverse-chrono­log­i­cal feed of infor­mal articles. 

The rea­son? Blogs offer val­ue in the form of authen­tic, help­ful and enter­tain­ing con­tent. The age of the inter­net has made it eas­i­er for con­sumers to detect insin­cere mar­ket­ing. We have all been there as the con­sumer where this sort of “in your face, tell me what I want to hear” mar­ket­ing just becomes annoying. 

With that said, suc­cess­ful blog con­tent can be gen­uine if it is approached that way. For exam­ple, in schools, you should dis­cuss top­ics relat­ed to what your edu­ca­tion­al mod­el is like or your spe­cial ser­vice areas with­out direct­ly pro­mot­ing yours is the best. Or, if you are a con­sul­tant, share tips and research that can help your read­ers do their jobs bet­ter or make their lives easier.

Essen­tial­ly, you want to share your knowl­edge with­out over­pro­mot­ing your­self; the read­er should see you as a trust­ed resource.

The way to do this and sound gen­uine? Write authentically. 

This sounds like it should be easy, but for many peo­ple, it can actu­al­ly be a dif­fi­cult process because we are too con­cerned about our “brand” or pub­lic perception.

And, for those who dis­like writ­ing or are sim­ply dry on writ­ing juices, con­sec­u­tive­ly pump­ing out an arti­cle may seem like you are back liv­ing by school del­e­gat­ed dead­lines. While it may be nice to feel younger for a few moments, you quick­ly real­ize that you are only adding wor­ry lines stress­ing over the writ­ten content. 

Grow­ing up with an Eng­lish teacher for a mom and a right sided-brain, writ­ing always was my strong suit. That is to say, my grades in Eng­lish and social stud­ies class­es were always clos­er to the begin­ning of the alpha­bet. Even so, I nev­er enjoyed writ­ing like I do now and I was nev­er good at it like I am now. The dif­fer­ence? More expe­ri­ence, worse pos­ture, and learn­ing to own myself in my writing. 

When did we stop owning our writing?

The cap­i­tal­ist way of think­ing we are nur­tured by is not the only evi­dence that our worth is often defined by the approval of oth­ers. Ever reliant on words of affir­ma­tion, for many of us, it isn’t until some­one else tells us that our writ­ing is great that we con­sid­er our sto­ry­telling worthy. 

The act of writ­ing has sim­i­lar­ly become a form of expres­sion which is con­flict­ed by an idea of what our sto­ry and its deliv­ery should be like to be worth read­er­ship. Ulti­mate­ly, we find our­selves forcibly writ­ing words and a sto­ry that is not an authen­tic expres­sion of our truth.

There is noth­ing wrong about being dif­fer­ent from your com­peti­tors and stand­ing out. In fact, it is actu­al­ly a breath of fresh air for your ide­al customers/families who will be attract­ed to your mis­sion, vision and values…as long as they are artic­u­lat­ed in your writing.

Sound like yourself 

Okay, for­get about gram­mar and spelling for a sec­ond. Go back to that when all else is done. To sound like the neme­sis of your high school Eng­lish teacher, this part does not make a great arti­cle or essay. Maybe it makes a sol­id one, but the dif­fer­ence between a sol­id one and a great one is the voice and the story.

Think about the first sto­ry you ever remem­ber writ­ing. Mine was in sec­ond grade in my class jour­nal. It was about the “coc­tales” we had at my grand­par­ents house the week­end before. I remem­ber this sto­ry because my teacher had some ques­tions for my par­ents after she read about how I liked eat­ing the olives out of my grandpa’s mar­ti­nis. It was so ordi­nary and had prac­ti­cal­ly no cor­rect spelling or gram­mar, yet it was a sto­ry my fam­i­ly (and prob­a­bly my teacher) won’t ever forget. 

Slow­ly, as we grow, the sto­ries that flow nat­u­ral­ly dis­si­pate behind a fence and fil­ter of gram­mar, facts, aca­d­e­m­ic style and lit­er­ary analy­sis. Our own voice becomes unre­li­able. We for­get how to tell a sto­ry with­out care. We tell a sto­ry that some­one else expects because our grade depends on it. We learn to write for approval from a per­son expect­ing a cer­tain voice and story. 

While this is an impor­tant part of edu­ca­tion, there are symp­toms to years of qui­et­ing our own voice. We become self-con­scious writ­ers and rule-fol­low­ers; as if we didn’t already have enough of these atti­tudes in our lives! 

With this in mind, the most use­ful tech­nique that I use is my own voice. I mean that lit­er­al­ly. I write how I would talk to some­one I was com­fort­able with. Think of some­one in between an inter­view­er and your best friend. Keep in mind, you can always edit things out unlike a real con­ver­sa­tion. I find my words flow faster when I just have this con­ver­sa­tion. Some­times they are not good words and that’s okay. 

This brings me to my next piece of advice….

Start writing from a place of vulnerability and you will get relatability and reliability 

I have found that being vul­ner­a­ble auto­mat­i­cal­ly makes you relat­able and trustable. Vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty is our most com­mon­ly felt and least com­mon­ly shared emo­tion. With that in mind, it is my own the­o­ry that a com­mon­ly under­stood, but uncom­mon­ly writ­ten truth is what defines the best works of writing.

I get it. Often, we do not have the free­dom to choose just any top­ic. Many of us are assigned a top­ic which we may not be all that expe­ri­enced with and much less pas­sion­ate about. Whether this is the case or not, find some­thing in com­mon with your top­ic. What would you say about the top­ic? What is your rela­tion­ship with the top­ic? Start here. 

Be vul­ner­a­ble and reflect. By vul­ner­a­ble, I mean tak­ing the risk of express­ing and expos­ing things about your­self that you might not like to think about, much less look to for inspiration. 

The sto­ry which comes from a place of raw sin­cer­i­ty is the one that res­onates with peo­ple. We are raised to keep vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty pri­vate. When we read some­one elses’ writ­ing where some of this vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty comes through it some­how feels more relat­able and more per­son­al. As the read­er, you form more of a con­nec­tion to writ­ing that is say­ing some­thing which makes you feel not alone. 

The essence of good con­tent mar­ket­ing is estab­lish­ing a trustable rela­tion­ship with the con­sumer. Own­ing your human­ness is what fos­ters a sense of integri­ty despite the iron­i­cal­ly unau­then­tic medi­um through which it is being done.

And, what should you do if you have to write on behalf of your employ­er on a top­ic you may not know a lot about or care to learn about? Get inside the heads of your read­ers. What do they want to know? What con­tent will help them bet­ter under­stand your school or organization?

From there, brain­storm, make lists and, as I said ear­li­er, let the imag­i­nary con­ver­sa­tion flow onto paper or your screen. Imag­ine hav­ing a face-to-face con­ver­sa­tion with one of your read­ers and let the words go. Edit as need­ed for clar­i­ty and brand align­ment, but be sure to stay authentic.