Arabian Nights And The Most Powerful Form Of Content Marketing On The Planet…

Yesterday, I posted about the need for small business owners to use content marketing to connect with their prospects.

Today I want to show you the most powerful form of content marketing there is, but first let me ask you a question…

Have you heard of “Arabian Nights”?

I had heard of the “Arabian Nights”, but I didn’t know the story behind it.  And when I heard it I realized it revealed one of the most powerful forms of content marketing there is.

You see, Arabian Nights contains a whole bunch of different stories from the Middle East and India that were put together in one volume.

This one volume has other famous stories like “Ali baba and the 40 thieves” and “Sinbad”.

But the cool thing is that all of these stories actually come framed within a larger story!

And it’s this larger story that reveals the most powerful form of content marketing that exists…

You see, the “frame story” is about a Persian king and his new bride.

The king’s name is Shahryar. King Shahryar finds out AFTER he marries his wife, who he thought was a virgin, that she’d been with other men before him.

He’s gets so angry that he has her executed… and then he takes it a step further.  He declares all women to be unfaithful.

You’d think he’d be done marrying women after that, but he’s not!

Instead, he begins to marry one virgin after another, but ends up executing each one the next morning.  So he marries them one day and kills them the next morning.

Finally, his administrator, whose duty it is to provide the new wives to him, can’t find any more virgins.

And that’s when the story takes a unique twist.

The administrator has a daughter named Scheherazade, who offers herself as the next bride.  Her father doesn’t like the idea, because he knows what happened to the other wives, but finally, reluctantly, he agrees.

On the night of their marriage, she asks to say goodbye to her younger sister. Little did the king know this was all a part of her plan!

Scheherazade told her little sister to ask her to tell her a story when she came with the king and so she did.

Scheherazade begins to tell her little sister a story and the King lays awake and listens with awe as Scheherazade told her first story.

The story kept going and going, and it got later and later, until Scheherazade finally had to stop – right in the middle of the story.

The King asked her to finish, but Scheherazade said there was not time, because it was almost morning.

So, the King spared her life for one day to finish the story the next night. But guess what happened the next night?

Scheherazade finished the story, and then began a second, even more exciting tale which she stopped, again, halfway through, at dawn. So the King again spared her life for one day to finish the second story.

And so the King kept Scheherazade alive day by day, as he eagerly anticipated the finishing of the last night’s story.

At the end of one thousand and one nights, and one thousand stories, Scheherazade told the King that she had no more tales to tell him. (The stories of Aladdin, Sinbad and the rest – are some of the stories she supposedly told.)

But that’s when something unexpected happened.

You see, during these one thousand and one nights, the King had fallen in love with Scheherazade, and had three sons with her. So, having been made a wiser and kinder man by Scheherazade and her tales, he spared her life, and made her his Queen.

This legend shows us the power of stories.

They have the power to capture a person’s attention, the power to keep them waiting and wanting more and, in the end, change their heart and lives!

Stories are the universally powerful tool that has been used in almost every culture for centuries to teach and share truth.

That’s why stories are the most powerful form of content marketing that exists!

If you want to capture your prospects attention, you have to know and harness the power of stories!

Stories are powerful.  Stories capture people’s attention.

I’ve watched a group of people transform from a half-asleep, zombie state to wide awake and on the edge of their seats – just from a speaker going from telling a fact to telling a story.

What you need to learn to do with your content marketing is not just to give bare information and facts (which are needed and important), but to reveal it in the form of a story.

When you tell them about yourself try and do it in the form of a story or using the elements of a story.

When you tell them about your product/service tell them about them in the form of a story or using the elements of a story.

When you begin to learn how to harness the power of the most powerful form of content marketing on the planet – stories, then you’ll discover:

-the power of keeping your prospects attention
-the power of getting them to want and wait to hear more from you
-the power that can change their hearts

That’s the power of stories.

On Monday, July 12th, I’ll post the method Don Hewitt, the original creator of the news show “60 Minutes”, discovered that helped him transform the news business.

It can help transform your content marketing too.

Until then…

Spread the word! Link to it.  Tweet about it.  Blog about it. Send smoke signals.  Whatever!  Here’s how…
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Thanks,
Scott @rampbusinesses