How it all started
Last year I went on a hike in Switzerland (called Bärentrek). It's an 8 day trek through crazy Alpine views of four-thousand-meter-mountains including legendary ones like the Eiger. I went by myself, carrying a 10kg backpack and spent the nights in mountain huts along the way. Some of them are at the height of almost 3000 meters. It was a hell of an adventure, I met a lot of cool people, went paragliding, did a lot of thinking and felt really alive.
Upon my return I really felt the urge to tell my story to my family and friends through an article and pictures I took. So I've set up a blog to do it. Almost a week later my article was finally finished. Took me a lot of time and effort to write my story, but in return I've got a lot of cool comments from my friends and family.
So after some time I decided I wanted other people, who don't know me, to read it too. So I've set up a Medium account and rebuilt my article there. It took me some time, having to copy-paste the text, rebuild the layout and insert all my pictures again. At first the results were not so great, until I included my article in a Travellers Group inside Medium. My story finally got some traction!
Actually if I really wanted to enlarge my audience I would also post this article to other groups inside Medium, publish it on other channels like Blogger, make a fanpage on Facebook, setup Twitter account, Instagram, do a mailing to my contacts etc..
But for me it was just a hobby article, and I don't have so much time to rebuild my article again and again to go omnichannel. And oh yeah my blog was still a desert.
How to apply this to your business?
But what if you're a company and you are struggling with these problems all the time? Publishing only to your website and share it to social media is really not enough. We are now in an omnichannel state. Every niche audience has it's own channels and communities it's in. And it's expanding as you read. So if you are working in contentmarketing, or just trying to promote your business or a product through stories it's better to bring those stories to people's handpalm, instead of sending people (who already follow you) to your website to read it. Your article must stand on it's own on a lot of different channels where your audience is (so are your potential customers).
So try to post your article on Medium, become a writer in some Medium Publications about your topics, setup other blogs outside your website, add more social media channels, build up an audience and do some email campaigns, use new mobile channels like Facebook Instant Articles and Google AMP to increase the read rate.
Sounds easy, but it's not, it's very time consuming as you have to rebuild your article again and again.
Distribute with one click
So last year, together with my colleagues and good friends, I started working on a startup which solves those problems. This is how Story Chief was born.
Story Chief allows you to make your article once and publish/schedule it to different websites, blogs, communities, social media, email campaigns and make social posts with links to your article. All in one click. It also allows you to collaborate with your colleagues and measure the stats of your stories in one dashboard.
Don't worry about duplicated content issues, as we cover that technically.
Story Chief also packs with an editor, inspired by the one Medium has. It's very easy to use, but it's real power is that it does not send any layout to your channels. Instead Story Chief sends raw data through, which is then picked up and translated to the layout of the channel itself. This makes it truly seamless.
Lead generation
If you sell a product or a service through contentmarketing, you can add lead captures to your stories, which come into a certain dealstage in your CRM. Like that sales people know from which topic this lead came from and can sell better.
This makes a full circle. Create beautiful, quality content that truly speaks to the customer's needs. Deliver them right into your potential customers fingertips and generate more reads, but even more importantly, valuable leads!
If you are interested in how Story Chief can help you save more time, take a look at Story Chief website or try it yourself.
