On Brand with Nick Westergaard How Stories Can Help Your Brand Stand Out with Aaron Orendorff
“It’s almost cliche to say but the Internet is challenging. There’s so much noise. Why do weed another blog or another channel?” While digital media has provided more opportunities for building brands online, it’s also created a level of noise that’s hard to break through. Aaron Orendorff helps college students, speaking audiences, and marketing clients do just that. We discussed all of this on this week’s episode of the On Brand podcast.
About Aaron Orendorff
Aaron Orendorff is a regular contributor at Entrepreneur, Lifehacker, Huffington Post, Fast Company, Business Insider, Content Marketing Institute, Copyblogger, Unbounce, and more. When he’s not terrifying college students in the public speaking classroom, he’s busy “Saving the World from Bad Content” at iconiContent.com. Grab his Ultimate Content Creation Checklist or follow him on Twitter.
Episode Highlights
How heaven and hell play a roll in your marketing. “We’re all looking to be saved from hell and delivered to heaven.” Aaron reminded us that this classic structure along with these dramatic stakes can help us connect with our audience on an emotional level.
Your story shouldn’t have your brand at the center of it. We have to make our audience an actor in the story. “It’s not just ME! ME! ME! in focus. We have to get into our customers’ shoes. What are they struggling with?”
More content isn’t always better. Aaron and I spoke at great length (irony alert!) on the fact that too often we think that to get better at content creation we need to create more of it. “Everyone loves skyscraper (blog) posts but you can just be a retread of what others are already doing.”
Where do you start with an Ultimate Content Creation Checklist? “I make people start with thinking a lot about who they serve. What stories do you tell internally today? And who do you admire? Which brands do you connect with viscerally?” You can download Aaron’s FREE content checklist here.
What brand has made Aaron smile recently? “I’m a borderline cult member to anything Tim Ferris does. The thing is, he isn’t the one talking about how great he is everywhere.”
To learn more about Aaron, you can follow him on Twitter and check out theiconiConent website. He also just wrote a piece examining the Trump vs. Clinton campaigns.Check it out now.
As We Wrap …
Before we go, I want to flip the microphone around to our community … Recently Marie Gabrielle gave us a shoutout from the Philippines for our episode featuring Erica McGillivray from Moz. Thanks for listening Marie!
Did you hear something you liked on this episode or another? Do you have a question you’d like our guests to answer? Let me know on Twitter using the hashtag #OnBrandPodcast and you may just hear your thoughts here on the show.
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Until next week, I’ll see you on the Internet!
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