Can Someone Else Tell Your Company's Story?

The story of how I came to be a business owner is very personal: my own entrepreneurial drive grew out of working for the businesses owned by my parents, grandparents and other relatives. When I talk about my company, those experiences help me to explain why I approach problems the way that I do, why I want to work with certain kinds of clients and even how I’ve chosen the services and products I offer.

But when I need help with marketing — when I need someone to help me tell my business’ story — I can face a problem. Having someone else share that sort of story is difficult, at best. When you consider how many small business’ value is based on the expertise of the founder or trust in one particular person, having someone else market that expertise or make promises based on that trust is incredibly difficult.

But it’s not impossible

Any number of companies have found ways to bring in help with marketing. The big sticking point seems to be be social media: there are plenty of social media specialists who will happily set up a Twitter account or a Facebook page for you. The problem is that asking them to provide content for those accounts day in and day out is not only expensive but ineffective. Social media, just like networking, relies on a deep understanding of how your business operates. Both current and prospective customers may reach out to you through social media, asking for questions that only someone who is involved in your business on a day to day basis can answer.

Furthermore, one of the most critical reasons to build up a presence for your business online is to convince customers that they’re dealing with a real company with real people, rather than with just a series of zeros and ones. You can do so by providing insights into how you operate, what day-to-day activities look like for your company and so on — but an outsider may not know those critical details.

Finding a storyteller

In order for your story to be told effectively by someone who is outside of your company, you need a very talented storyteller. The person that you bring in to help you with marketing, whether it’s online or off, needs to be as familiar with your business as possible. If you’re working with someone who doesn’t ask too many questions about your business, you may not be working with the right person.

It’s also important to be proactive about providing that information. Put together as much information about your business, how you operate — even the reasoning behind your decisions — as you can. If you can educate the people helping you to tell your story about the details that make it up, your social media and other marketing efforts will be that much better, even if you aren’t working with someone who’s been in on that story from the beginning.

Image by Flickr user photobysg

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 13th, 2010 at 8:00 am and is filed under social media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.


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