Have you ever found yourself struggling to articulate your brand’s story? You’re not alone. As Agorapulse’s Chief Storyteller, I recently faced this challenge head-on. With a packed schedule of podcast interviews and meetings, finding time for deep thought seemed impossible. That’s when I decided to try something different: I turned to AI for help.
What unfolded was an incredible journey of collaboration, insight, and creativity. Today, I’m excited to share that journey with you, along with the lessons I learned along the way. Whether you’re a seasoned marketer or just starting out, I believe this process could revolutionize how you approach brand storytelling. I originally shared this to Threads and so many folks were interested in the idea and process, I decided to elaborate here.
Understanding Brand Stories
Before diving into the AI-assisted process, let’s quickly recap what a brand story is and why it matters.
A brand story is more than just a chronological account of your company’s history. It’s a strategic narrative that encapsulates your brand’s essence, values, mission, and vision. It goes beyond listing facts or features, weaving together your company’s journey, challenges, and triumphs into a compelling narrative that resonates with your audience.
Why are brand stories important? They create emotional connections with your audience, differentiate you in a crowded market, build trust and credibility, and provide a foundation for consistent messaging across all channels. In short, a well-crafted brand story can be a powerful tool for business growth and customer loyalty.
Exploring Brand Story Frameworks
To kickstart the process, I asked my AI assistant (in this case, Claude, via Magai) to outline two popular frameworks:
a) Donald Miller’s StoryBrand Framework:
- A Character (Your Customer)
- Has a Problem (The Villain)
- Meets a Guide (Your Brand)
- Who Gives Them a Plan
- And Calls Them to Action
- That Helps Them Avoid Failure
- And Ends in Success
b) Tamsen Webster’s Red Thread Approach:
- Goal: What does your audience want?
- Problem: What’s stopping them?
- Truth: What do they need to understand?
- Change: What’s the new perspective they need?
- Action: What do they need to do?
I had just interviewed my friend, Tamsen, for one of my Agorapulse podcasts and had talked at length about how marketers focus too much on emphasizing prospect pain points, so I wanted to avoid that.
After discussing these frameworks with the AI, I explained my preference for Tamsen’s more positive, aspirational approach. The AI suggested we could combine elements from both, particularly Miller’s emphasis on a clear call-to-action. This hybrid approach became the foundation for our brand story development.
Collaborating with AI: The Process
Now, let me walk you through the step-by-step process of how I worked with AI to develop Agorapulse’s brand story:
a) Initial Conversation: I started by explaining my challenge to the AI and asking for help in understanding brand stories, their development, and their use.
b) Developing a Custom Questionnaire: The AI created a 12-point questionnaire covering Agorapulse’s product, history, customers, culture, brand voice, roadmap, success stories, and differentiators.
c) Providing Brand Information: I answered all the questions, uploaded our brand voice guidelines, and linked to testimonials and case studies.
d) AI Analysis and Initial Draft: With this information, the AI illustrated our brand story framework with specific elements and produced an initial draft.
e) Refining Tone and Style: I provided three articles as examples of our preferred style and tone, asking the AI to revise the draft accordingly.
f) Key Questions for Deeper Insights: We then dove deeper with three crucial questions which I posed back to the AI to answer, based on everything we’d discussed so far:
Who is our target audience?
The AI’s response was far more robust and expansive than my initial list of ICPs, identifying not just marketing agencies and mid-market social media managers, but also B2B social media strategists, data-driven marketers, and social media educators.
How does Agorapulse help these customers?
The AI provided a comprehensive list, including streamlined management across platforms, proving ROI through unique analytics, facilitating team collaboration, adapting to platform changes, and elevating social media from a necessary task to a strategic asset.
Why does Agorapulse do what it does?
The AI’s insightful response spoke to Agorapulse’s passion for helping customers bring clarity to the chaos of social media. Here’s the summary it provided:
“Agorapulse empowers social media professionals to elevate their role from content creators to strategic business assets by providing tools that demonstrate tangible ROI, streamline workflows, and foster continuous growth. We’re driven by a genuine passion for the industry and a commitment to shaping the future of social media management, positioning it as a critical component of business success.”
The Results
With all this groundwork, we crafted a two-page brand story that articulates everything Agorapulse does in a conversational and relatable way. While I can’t share the full story yet (it still needs to go through channels and my team will polish it), I can say it’s really, REALLY good. For an SMB, it’d be a home run. For a mid-market SaaS like us, it’s a solid foundation for our marketing team to build upon.
Lessons Learned
This experience reinforced several valuable lessons about AI collaboration in marketing:
- AI can be an incredible brainstorming partner, offering fresh perspectives and helping to organize thoughts.
- The quality of output depends heavily on the quality of input. Being thorough and specific in providing information is crucial.
- AI can help overcome writer’s block and provide a structured approach to creative tasks.
- While AI can produce impressive results, human oversight and refinement are still essential.
For instance, while crafting one section of the brand story, where AI was looking to pull data from several shared case studies, it instead pulled data from an article that had been provided earlier as an example of tone and style, in which the data being talking about had nothing to do with Agorapulse and therefore wasn’t a relevant statistic.
Conclusion
The best part of this entire process was how fun and collaborative it felt. It wasn’t just about getting a task done; it was a journey of discovery and creativity. I even popped the whole document into NotebookLM for fun and had a 10-minute podcast discussion on brand story frameworks and Agorapulse’s as an example!
I’m excited about the potential of this approach, not just for brand storytelling, but for various aspects of marketing strategy. Hopefully, I’ll be able to share the results soon as a new Agorapulse About page!
Mike Allton is the Founder and CEO of The AI Hat. He’s a seasoned digital marketer with over 15 years of experience helping businesses grow online. He’s also a recognized expert in AI, with a passion for sharing his knowledge and helping others succeed. Mike is the author of the popular blog The Social Media Hat and a sought-after speaker and consultant. He’s committed to making AI understandable and accessible for everyone, and he believes that AI can be a powerful force for good in the world.
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