Many businesses shy away from content marketing. It's a term that gets thrown around, but that is often misunderstood - and, so, organisations conclude that it is best avoided.   

Writing for Entrepreneur, Toby Nwazor provides a brilliantly clear explanation that gets to the heart of the matter. He says: "To keep things simple, I like to say that content marketing is just good old storytelling. Make that storytelling to a targeted audience, with a precise purpose: to convert your audience members into customers."

Put like that, it's easy to see the value in content marketing - and Toby goes on to outline five reasons why businesses shouldn't keep ignoring it. His first reason is: everyone reacts to a good story.

From novels to films, news articles to personal anecdotes: we read, watch, listen to and tell stories every single day. They are powerful entities - and that makes them a powerful business tool as well. 

But, like any story, content marketing stories have to be worth telling. So, a rambling blog post describing, in intricate detail, the features of your latest product? That's a no. But, a well-written blog post highlighting an issue that your audience faces and explaining how your business (and product) can help them to solve it? That's a yes. 

Toby says: "Almost everyone will slow down for a beautifully told story or other creative content."

And, if you can get the right people to slow down, you can power up your business.