What if you could take the timeless narrative of Robin Hood and wield it as your secret weapon in business content? Imagine standing up for the everyman, just like Robin Hood, and positioning your brand as a champion for your audience. We discuss how to craft messages that resonate with people, and paint you as a modern-day Robin Hood, returning from successful heights with valuable knowledge to share.
Using the example of a marketing expert who, after working with big brands like Coca-Cola and Nike, decides to share their hard-earned knowledge with small local businesses, we unpack this powerful concept.
The power of the Robin Hood narrative is immense, it can transform your business into a force for equity and fairness in your industry. Tune in and learn how to become the champion your audience needs!
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If this episode sparks off any new ideas, we would love to hear them! Please email us at info@writebusinessresults.com OR fire us a DM on social media. Links to all our favourite haunts are below:
LinkedIn:
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What if you could take the timeless narrative of Robin Hood and wield it as your secret weapon in business content? Imagine standing up for the everyman, just like Robin Hood, and positioning your brand as a champion for your audience. We discuss how to craft messages that resonate with people, and paint you as a modern-day Robin Hood, returning from successful heights with valuable knowledge to share.
Using the example of a marketing expert who, after working with big brands like Coca-Cola and Nike, decides to share their hard-earned knowledge with small local businesses, we unpack this powerful concept.
The power of the Robin Hood narrative is immense, it can transform your business into a force for equity and fairness in your industry. Tune in and learn how to become the champion your audience needs!
---------------------------------------------
If this episode sparks off any new ideas, we would love to hear them! Please email us at info@writebusinessresults.com OR fire us a DM on social media. Links to all our favourite haunts are below:
LinkedIn:
Instagram:
Hey, what's up, guys? This is Ivan Meakin and you are listening to Content Untap, sponsored by Riot Business Results. This is a show where I go on a mission to unpack all those tiny little details that make up fantastic content. I report my findings back to you and I try and give you some practical tips that you guys can take home into your next project. If you do like what you hear, please do all those classic podcasty things you know, like share, subscribe, tell your friends about us all that kind of stuff that helps us spread the word and reach more people just like you, which is awesome. Also, if you wanted to have a more in-depth conversation about what you're hearing today, just set us up on LinkedIn. You can go to the Riot Business Results LinkedIn page or you can go to my own personal LinkedIn page and at Enfire as a DM. We can spark a whole conversation there. Thanks, guys. Let's just crack on with the episode.
Speaker 2:In the dead of night, under a moonlit sky, skilled and daring figure moves stealthily through the corridors of Prince John's castle. This is Robin Hood, the legendary outlaw and hero of the common people, and he's come with a purpose to reclaim the gold that the greedy prince has extracted from the pockets of the already struggling population. In his hands, robin Hood holds a sack of gold coins, hard-earned money that Prince John has hoarded away. But tonight this gold won't be lying in the royal coffers. Tonight it will be returned into the hands of those who need it most, as dawn breaks and a humble village faces light up with joy and relief, as Robin Hood with his band of merry men generously distribute the stolen gold. Finally, parents can feed their children, craftsmen can continue their trades and hope is restored at Nottingham, all thanks to the champion of the everyman.
Speaker 2:And that is a story that most of us will probably be familiar with. Right, the tale of Robin Hood robbing the rich and feeding the poor. But what's really interesting about Robin Hood is he's so much more than just an art character in a story. I think Robin Hood represents a powerful narrative archetype seen in so many other stories across different cultures. Think of those classic vigilante tales. Right, you have the Mexican hero, zorro, you know, doing exactly the same thing standing up for the everyman in the face of a new greedy age. You've got the Australian Ned Kelly, who, although incredibly violent and did a lot of terrible things, for some reason people still revere him as some kind of folk hero, because he was going outside of the law, rebelling against a corrupt system, and we love them for it. What's really interesting here is this kind of narrative can be a really powerful tool for business content, okay, one that, if you know how to leverage properly, can add a huge amount of resonance to your story and bring people onto your side. And today, what we want to do is take a trip into nodding off. We want to look at this timeless, heroic law narrative and how it can inspire content creators to craft messages that position you as a modern day Robin Hood right, a hero returning from successful heights with valuable knowledge to share with the masses. And if you can do this right, it's going to be an incredibly powerful narrative for your content. So let's just take a look at why this might work.
Speaker 2:Okay, well, the Robin Hood narrative can set you and your brand up not only as people who strive for every success and strive to be at the top, but also can reach back down and pick people up. This is the kind of essence of that Robin Hood message in business storytelling. What we want to do is, rather than hoarding knowledge and advantages for ourselves you know the modern day Robin Hoods can see value in sharing what they know and ensuring that others can join them on this journey to success too. It's the perfect example of businesses that adopt a mindset of abundance, let's say, rather than scarcity. You know, they know that there's enough to go around for everyone and make it their business to champion those people who are less fortunate. So, although the world of business content doesn't necessarily have swashbuckling, sword fights and royal carriage heists although that's a massive shame, because if it did again it would be incredibly awesome but it's about positioning your brand as a champion for your audience, a kind of guardian figure who'd come back from the battlefield of industry with insights and knowledge that they're now willing to share freely with the common folk for the common folks good. So let's use an example here, right, let's say that there's a seasoned marketing expert who's for years been working at the top of the corporate ladder in large marketing agencies has been working on brands like Coca Cola and Nike, for example, and now that they leave and they want to set up their own little consultancy.
Speaker 2:Well, here a great little narrative or marketing tool might be that they position themselves as people who are sharing industry secrets and proven strategies that worked for Coca Cola and Nike with small, local businesses so they can equip them with the tools that they need to compete with the giants. And if you can do that, what you're doing is you're setting yourself up as that champion of the every man, this person who's trying to level the playing field and become that folk hero in their own little niche. So in a way, this is kind of like redistributing the wealth of knowledge that people have. The top of the big companies hold on to all of their secrets because they don't want everyone to know, because they operate a super competitive kind of capitalist way of doing business. And if you can challenge that and say I'm leveling the playing field, I'm giving out this information for free because everyone deserves to have access to this information, you're going to set yourself up as a really popular figure in your niche industry and in fact, that's how a lot of great small businesses begin right.
Speaker 2:A lot of thought leaders and business owners started their businesses because they were fed up with the way things currently work and they wanted to try and fix it in some way. And for these people, right, creating a kind of Robin Hood style narrative can be a great theme for a content campaign, because you can share certain stories and knowledge for free that others might charge for, and, if you do it well enough, you can even potentially disrupt an entire industry. By showing the world how things really work, or showing that behind the curtain scene and inner workings of the way that other industries operate, you might expose some secrets that might get some people upset or mad or inflame their passions in a way, when they see something that's a slight injustice, and they'll see you as that noble figure who's lived in the veil giving them that information. Now, great, but I'll be hit. Pretty dramatic example to this is someone like Edward Snowden, right, he's probably got one of the most compelling stories in modern history because he felt compelled to share knowledge that no one else dared to, and we love him for that, although, to be fair, he has paid the price for that. I'm not sure that many people would be brave enough to do that. But if you can kind of take an essence of that and show that you're brave to go outside this data score and comment on things that normally other people wouldn't or don't think they should be able to comment on, because that information should be kept private, you're going to set yourself apart from everyone else and show that it's you're on the side of the every man, and it's you and the people versus the big system.
Speaker 2:So the Robin Hood message is about kind of portraying your business or brand as a force that strives to create a fairer, more equitable situation for your audience. Think of your tribe or your team as your own little band of married men and women, and it's a narrative that says hey look, we're on your side, we're fighting for you against the big bad system, and it's a fantastic way to make your brand stand out from the crowd, right? But even at a more simple level, it's also a great hook for blogs, posts, reels and even a book. Just make sure that you're not like peddling snake oil or harmful products, right? Because one thing that springs to mind here is those spammy ads that you see about dentists, right? Dentists will hate these three things of teeth whitening which, to be fair, a lot of those products are super harmful.
Speaker 2:So don't like get wrapped up in this idea of clickbait. Make sure you're doing it from a very genuine place. Okay, so how do we actually? Okay, so how do we actually begin to develop a Robin Hood style strategy here? So remember, the first thing that we need to do is become authentic and have a sincere desire to help people. Remember Robin Hood's backstory he's forsaken the wealth and the prestige of nobility and the upper echelons of society in order to give back to the people, because he saw something that was unfair with the system. So it needs to come from a place of raw passion and belief, and that's the most important. So if we want to start building on top of that, let's break it down into some actionable steps here.
Speaker 2:The first thing that you have to do to create a Robin Hood narrative is establish your authority, because before you can really adopt this figure of Robin Hood in your industry, you obviously first have to establish your expertise as a credible person who has the knowledge to give back to people. So this could involve sharing your background, sharing your struggles, your victories, the reason why you left the big bad corporate world or the big bad industry that you left to share some secrets, the injustices that you have. You could talk about some of the successes that you had in that field before you decided to leave and the lessons that you've learned along the way as well, and chronicle that in a podcast or a book or a series of social media posts. Whatever your medium right, just make sure that you are establishing authority and credibility. So the second thing is you have to identify your sheriff of not yet. So you have to know what it is that you've come from and what kind of information that you're bestowing on people to enlighten them on something they didn't know before.
Speaker 2:Okay, every Robin Hood story there's a villain, and every and then, in fact, in any story that there's a villain. But in the Robin Hood story, the villain in particular needs to be something that is holding on to information or holding on to value for potentially nefarious purposes or just because they feel like they don't want to share it. So in the world of business, this villain could be an unfair system. Perhaps it's an outdated way of thinking or maybe a problematic industry standard that you want to break. Okay, just be careful that you're not attacking anyone in particular. You're more attacking like a general system. You don't want to finger point at, like a specific CEO of a company or like an old boss or something, because you're going to be burning some bridges there. So just don't point the finger or blame anyone in particular, unless, of course, like it's Donald Trump. Okay, let's go for it.
Speaker 2:So the third thing that we want to do is we want to define our group, our little tribe, our niche, or like our think of it, as our little nary band of men and women. Right? So who is it that you're fighting for? We have to clearly define our target audience the people who were passionately striving to help, and what industry secrets or hidden knowledge do they need to know that's going to give them the most value? Because if you're adopting this Robin Hood kind of narrative or this Robin Hood archetype as a business, you have to make sure that what you're giving back, that goal that you're stealing from Prince John to give to the people, is actually going to be valuable to them and help them solve a real problem that they have that they couldn't otherwise solve. So what industry secrets or hidden knowledge are going to give them the most value, and how is this going to help them solve a problem they have?
Speaker 2:Okay, once you've established that, then you can move on to the next bit, which is sharing the wealth. This is where the giving aspect comes into play, so you have to regularly share valuable, actionable insights with your audience, and that could be through blogs, podcasts, social media, downloadable tools. You know different resources that you can give them for free. This is coming from a place of complete generosity and value giving, so the first thing you have to do is give them a windfall of information that they didn't otherwise have. You know, although we may not be the most obvious Robin Hood brand at right business results, we do try to stay up to date with things like publishing information, to provide you with latest updates on what people are looking for in the publishing world and what books are being published and what industry standards are looking like. You know, we're not obviously we're not in defiance of the publishing industry, so I wouldn't necessarily label us as a Robin Hood brand, but we do try and provide knowledge to businesses and to authors that they may not have had access to before or may not have access to otherwise if it wasn't for us, kind of with our publishing connection, providing people with that kind of information.
Speaker 2:Okay, so this is a form of taking knowledge from a big industry and giving it to the people who need it, so you don't always have to develop an aggressive campaign against an industry. It can just be something that here's an industry secret that you may not have known before, and, from our experience working in the industry, we're here to share it with you. So that's the kind of softer approach, but you could definitely lean into this a little bit heavier, especially if you do feel passionate about changing things socially, or positive change for social cause as well and there are injustices in the world that are getting in the way of that. This narrative could be a great way of getting people on your side. So the final thing here is just keeping it real.
Speaker 2:Okay, authenticity is key if you want to be a Robin Hood brand. Right, you want to create a message that doesn't just feel like a marketing gimmick, and if you do create something like that, it's likely going to backfire. Just remember that we said earlier on. The backstory of Robin Hood is that he's forsaken wealth in order to give back to society, so you have to make sure this is coming from a place of raw passion and belief, and if your audience can't feel that from you, you're going to end up sounding a lot more like a sheriff of Pottingham than a Robin Hood, okay, so just make sure you get that bit right.
Speaker 2:So I believe that the Robin Hood style of messaging can be a really powerful technique, but you have to use it responsibly. You know the risk does lie in potentially like villainizing others in your industry to put yourself up. So pushing others down to pick yourself back up, which can create a kind of negative atmosphere and a lot of finger pointing and even in the most traumatic cases leads us to a lawsuit. So you have to position that sheriff of Nottingham correctly and it should be more about like what you are fighting for rather than who you're fighting against, if that makes sense. So, as I said before, it's not about like pushing someone down to bring yourself up. It's about commenting on a wider topic or a wider industry or a wider problem in a way that allows you to give information back to the common folk that they wouldn't have otherwise had or they've been stopped from receiving beforehand, or maybe didn't know, but maybe it was like a secret that they weren't privy to you before. Okay, all from the place of giving them value and bringing people up with you.
Speaker 2:So, just as a quick recap, the Robin Hood narrative is a pretty powerful tool, and here are the four ways that you can begin to start crafting one for your brand. The first thing you do is establish your authority okay, your story, your experience, your backstory and knowledge. You have to be able to show them that you have the gold to bring back and offer the people right, otherwise this won't work and make sure you share it freely. The next thing you need to do is identify that sheriff of Nottingham figure. You know the problem or systems that you're helping your audience navigate or overcome. Then you have to define your band of married men or, with it, you don't have to know exactly your niche tribe and who you're helping, okay. So you have to know who whose lives are. You know you're aiming to enrich through the giving back of that information that you currently are holding on to.
Speaker 2:And then you have to share the wealth.
Speaker 2:You have to think about what medium, what piece of content, or how you're going to get that message in front of people, how you are going to distribute the gold. Is it going to be through a product that you give away for free? Is it going to be through free content that you send out there? It could be social media posts, it could be videos. Just think about what it is and how you want to share that message and share that wealth out and finally, just keep it real. Like you're going to adopt the Robin Hood like narrative, just to make sure you're doing it from a genuine passion and a genuine kind of raw, a desire to help people.
Speaker 2:Okay, and if you can do all these things, you're going to be able to create really powerful content that sets you aside from the competition and allows you to side with the everyday people. Okay, that are going to be the ones that you're going to help, and if you can begin to get on their side and be able to comment on a wider problems and they can begin to see you as that kind of folk hero who's come from upper echelons of an industry to bring back knowledge to them, they're going to be much more willing to want to work with you. So I hope that was useful, guys, and until next time, just ask yourself are you ready to don the green hat of Robin Hood, are you prepared to become that champion of that folk, hero of your industry? If so, I hope this helps.
Speaker 1:Hey guys, thanks again for listening to another episode of content untapped. If you are interested in finding out what we're up to at Right Business Results create content to grow loyal audience please do get in touch at info at rightbusinessresultscom and we'll get back to you post haste. Secondly, if you wanted to continue the conversation about creating great content or anything that you're listening to on this show, give us a DM to the Right Business Results LinkedIn page, where you can DM my personal page, and we can spark a whole new conversation about any of this stuff. We love having conversations about content, so the more the merrier, guys. Thanks again for listening and I will see you next time.