“I love you so much.” “You are an amazing friend.” “You have changed my life.” “This lasagna is the best!” Five little words but all of them carry a lot of power.
Often, when I’m working with new clients on a content strategy, I’ll ask them to tell me five words that they want people to associate with their business.
These aren’t keywords but are often words used to describe the business, the people within the business, or the service they provide.
I work with a construction company, and their five words are: trustworthy, in demand, efficient, thinking outside of the box, and nice.
In addition to building a brand’s image with keywords, choosing your five words (or phrases, as is the case for the construction company) is important. You want people to use these words to describe you.
But in order for that to happen, you have to show people that you can live up to those terms.
Storytelling
How does one show trustworthiness? That’s not always an easy question to answer, and it isn’t going to happen overnight. Truthfully, showing your best qualities is generally done by storytelling.
Often, you’re creating the stories by blogging or updating spaces like Google+ or Facebook, where you can have longer posts that enable you to truly capture a story.
Sometimes, you’re telling stories about yourself that others created, such as sharing social media posts or asking people to write endorsements of your work.
Personality
Finding your five words is pretty easy. They’re simply words that you would love to hear people use when they’re describing you.
If I was at a party, and someone was introducing me to someone else, I would love for them to say, “This is Keisha. She’s a sensational copywriter. You should check out her site. Her posts are usually kind of funny and very insightful. I have learned so much from her!”
My construction client would love to hear, “Hey, this is Dave. He’s the owner of Dave’s Construction. They did some great work for me a while back and were super efficient. Dave was really nice, and he really had to think outside of the box to come up with a solution to my problem. But he managed to do it for me.”
Humor
Defining your five words helps you set the tone for your storytelling. If I want people to think I’m funny, I need to inject at least a little humor into my blog posts.
If I want people to think I’m insightful, then I need to provide an experience where everyone walks away from my blog posts thinking they’ve learned a little something.
Having those five words as a focus helps me to remember that I need to include some humor in most of my posts and that I need to make sure that every post enriches the reader’s life.
Defining Your Brand
Your five words will be different, but they will impact how you tell your story the same way. At all times, you want to be the one in control of what’s being said about your brand.
And if you define the five words that you want people to use, then you’re one step closer to that control.
Then you can look at every piece of content that you’re putting out into the world and can ask yourself if it contributes to at least one of those five words.
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What Are Your Five Words?
If you have ideas that you feel like sharing that might be helpful to readers, share them in the comments section below. Thanks!
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