The best tactic for providing valuable content to your audience

What happens when your social media content is focused on pretty pictures and common call-to-actions? It makes your digital marketing strategy unappealing and fails to deeply engage with your audience, avoiding community building; and this is a significant issue.

Social media platforms nowadays are precisely that: spaces where individuals seek to establish relationships that provide them with a sense of belonging. That’s why it’s crucial to understand that in your content strategy, you must incorporate storytelling that allows your community to feel identified with you.

This is where the significance of delivering valuable content becomes evident, implying the exploration of subjects that transcend price, location, product, or promotion. By doing this, you enhance your brand identity through communication that mirrors your business’s character, while also fostering a loyal community.

One of the best tactics for creating impactful value content is applying the hero’s journey to your content strategy. I’ll tell you everything you need to know about this tool.

What is the Hero’s Journey?

In 1949, Joseph Campbell published his book ‘The Hero with a Thousand Faces,’ in which he described a narrative structure called the Hero’s Journey, to define the formula of many stories. Besides identifying a similar development in these narratives, he revealed that this type of storytelling captures attention and is quite successful.

For Campbell, every good story consists of a hero who leaves the ordinary world behind due to a call to adventure. Upon accepting and confronting a significant challenge, the hero returns home with profound spiritual and personal renewal. This structure is evident in films such as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, The Matrix, and even in more recent examples like Barbie or Dune.

The Hero’s Journey structure is divided into 12 stages:

1. The ordinary world: This signals the start of the tale, where the protagonist dwells in their everyday surroundings, exhibiting traits that allow identification with them.
2. The call to adventure: The hero receives a call to action, an event that pulls them out of their ordinary life to confront a mission or challenge.
3. Refusal of the Call: The hero initially rejects the call due to fear of facing the situation and a preference for the comfort of their safe place.
4. Meeting the Mentor: At this stage, the hero is guided to gather the courage to confront their challenge.
5. Crossing the Threshold: Here, the hero begins their adventure by stepping out of their comfort zone.
6. Tests, Allies, and Enemies: The journey positions the hero in diverse scenarios, offering challenges, enemies, and allies.
7. Approach to the Inmost cave: At this point, the hero reflects on their journey, discovering fears and internal conflicts.
8. The Ordeal: The hero’s acquired knowledge and skills are tested with a significant challenge they must face to survive.
9. Reward: After overcoming the ordeal, the hero emerges from the battle with a physical, emotional, or spiritual prize.
10. The Road Back: The hero begins their journey back home with their reward.
11. The Resurrection: This stage represents a final battle for the hero, fraught with tension, from which they emerge victorious.
12. Return with the Elixir: The hero returns home, and their reward brings personal or community-wide advantages. However, despite being back, everything has changed due to the adventure.

Here’s how you can implement the hero’s journey into your content strategy:

To give your storytelling a twist with the hero’s journey, you don’t have to go through all 12 stages; you simply need to tailor your communication to the core structure: a call to adventure, its acceptance, and the ultimate reward.

Let’s say you’re communicating the features and advantages of a credit card. Users know they need one, but they may be uncertain about which one suits them best.To effectively position yours, you should offer them value-added content that allows them to identify that your option is ideal.

Call to Adventure

During this opening phase, you must extend a call to adventure that integrates the product with the user. You’re not merely selling a credit card; you’re offering the opportunity to step out of their comfort zone.

To accomplish this, you need to uncover your user’s deepest desires, as common aspirations like traveling or purchasing a product only scratch the surface. A great way to discover these desires is through an empathy map that reveals the needs and aspirations of your target audience for success.

In this stage, it’s vital to create content that presents your product as the pathway to fulfilling this desire. For instance, if your target audience seeks a sense of security and protection, you can customize the content to narratives that offer them with this sense of security.

Acceptance of the Adventure

What would your buyer persona’s life look like after acquiring your product? Provide communication that serves as a trigger for accepting the adventure and engaging in this journey that will bring them growth, development, and the opportunity to fulfill their deep desire.

Reward

This is the moment when your target audience embraces your product and discovers that with it, they can fulfill their desires and experience a moment of rebirth.

Begin incorporating the hero’s journey into your storytelling because this circular narrative will liberate you from the social media “noise” we’re accustomed to, and it will also guarantee that the  story of your business, its identity, and community are consistent with each other.