Do you remember the story about Goldilocks and the three bears? If you don’t, here’s the highlights! And if you do here’s a little refresher:

Goldilocks stumbles into a house and is lost, hungry and tired. She sees no one is home, so she sits down on a chair, eats the porridge on the table and decides to take a nap. (Yes, we agree: That wasn’t very polite of her). Throughout this story, she finds what is "just right" for her — being Baby Bear’s breakfast, chair or bed.

When it comes to developing content that grabs your audience’s attention, your brand also needs to give them solutions that are just right.

And that’s where brand storytelling, pop culture and an industry landscape come in; together, they create the perfect recipe for content strategy success. Put on those chef hats and let’s get cooking!

The ingredients: Brand storytelling, culture and industry

Brand storytelling
When you start with telling your brand’s story, you need to communicate:
  • who the brand is
  • what it does
  • who its trying to reach, and
  • how these individuals are being reached.
This also means you are sharing what value your brand can offer your readers.

It contributes to finding the sweet spot because it focuses on how the information is delivered to your target audience.

Pop culture
This relates to topics, trends or media that is recognised by large numbers of society at a particular time. Think in terms of what is popular. But remember to keep your audience’s interests in mind — individuals who grew up in the 1990s might not care how Olivia Rodrigo got her driver’s license.

Pop culture’s role as a key ingredient in your brand’s strategy is to create that ‘just right’ feeling in the content. This is possible because of the way it uses viral trends to create brand awareness. Can anyone say newsjacking?

Industry
The content that your brand produces should be relevant to the industry in which you operate. An apparel brand will not write about how skincare works — that’s obvious. But when pop culture joins the party, it can be easy to get stuck in irrelevant trends or threads and drift away from conversations that will benefit your marketing.

Its role in this strategy is to ensure relevance.

Mix together brand, pop culture and your industry

So you have your ingredients stacked on your metaphorical counter, but now you need to combine them. But cooking can still go wrong if the ingredients are not combined in the right way.

You can use the following steps to avoid potential content flops:

Step 1: Identify topics that interest your audience. The topics should relate to popular ideas and can come from movies, music, art, politics or even social media challenges.

Step 2: Think about how the topic can relate to your field, and more specifically, your brand’s role in that industry. The aim here is to see how you can teach your audience something — be it through imparting knowledge or selling products or services.

Step 3: Now that you’ve brainstormed content ideas and have a relevant connection to your brand, it’s time to blend them with some good old storytelling. You can draw in emotional triggers and creativity to achieve your brand’s goal — whether it’s creating awareness, informing people or persuading them.

As an example, your brand can draw from a popular movie franchise, such as Star Wars (like we have), that your audience enjoys. Mixing in your industry knowledge and sprinkling in your creativity to tell the story creates a content piece that’s in the sweet spot.

Fresh out the content strategy oven and tasting sweet

The main reason why any brand should find this Goldilocks zone in their content strategy is because it combines things that interest your audience.

You grab their attention and engage them, and your audience is able to find you much easier. This is because your content is fine-tuned with the very keywords that they are searching for.

This approach to your content strategy ensures your brand has shareable content. If content marketing is part of your goals, then it allows you to have a soft-sell on the products or services that you are generating interest and awareness for.

Do you use pop culture as a part of your content strategy? Let us know in the comments below.

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Ready for a change? Perhaps It's time to switch up your content marketing strategy? Read our article. 
*Image courtesy of Canva