Today I visited a local marketing firm, to speak with the CEO about collaborating on a project. When I walked in the front door, a beautiful mid-size dog walked quietly from the back into the reception area to greet me. She was followed by a larger but equally quiet and friendly male dog. I crouched down to meet them both.

Later, as I was considering what might be the topic of my new blog article, I thought of the dogs. The CEO told me they were rescues that she received after promising that they would not be left alone at home, even together, each day as she and her husband went to work. Now, they are a fixture at her office.

Being a content marketer, this is an interesting tidbit that I would definitely want to tell her clients and potential clients. I know a lot of dog lovers who would appreciate the value of doing business with someone who has proven empathy towards animals.

This woman is a marketing expert and on her company’s website she has her dogs pictured with her and her team. It’s the first photo you see when you visit the site. Right away you are able to see for yourself that she’s all about team, animals and smiling friendly faces.

In other words, she does a good job of communicating some of the core values that envelop her business and her life. Right up front, she offers values that draw you, the potential client. She is showing the human side of her business and doing it in a natural and sincere way. So, she is humanizing content marketing.

There is no one set way to humanize content marketing but it’s safe to say that it means going beyond presenting your company as just a place of business where sound transactions are made and good value is offered.

It means showcasing the people that work for you and with you, including your internal staff members, your sales team, your clients, your warehouse distribution staff and any volunteers you might have working for you. These are your people.

In this era of digitization and automation, there is an increased push to bring back the human side of business. You already know this. This means presenting your business as a place of inclusion, equality, diversity and humour. Hopefully all these things are true about your operation. Obviously your people work hard otherwise your business wouldn’t be successful. But everyone works hard and that fact doesn’t differentiate you.

What DOES differentiate you is the unique stories that come from your people. They all have a rich life outside of work and bring with them a wide array of interests and hobbies. It’s valuable to how off these diverse personalities and speak about these interests and hobbies. It validates your people and proves to them that you care. It shows your clients and customers – and potential clients and customers – the same thing: you go out of your way to care.

So what are these stories that you can showcase? They may range from the skills and background that each of your people bring to your business, individual interesting things that they do socially and you do socially with them (as a work function perhaps), “things heard around the office,” visitors you have welcomed at your place of business, the family life of your people, causes that you and your people support, your community initiatives, environmental initiatives you have spearheaded around the office (because a healthy sustainable environment benefits everyone) … The list can go on and on.

Remember, the media likes a good story, and they are most interested in stories that relate directly to their human audience. So the stories need to involve and revolve around people. Everybody wants and needs something and has struggles. Everyone also has reasons to celebrate and be grateful. This is the root of good storytelling, and therefore good content marketing.

These elements can include blog posts, articles, written website content, photos and video. They will of course relate back to your products and services, your brand and your audience. Your content marketing initiatives are meant to highlight these things.

It’s the job of a content marketer like me to bring your stories to light, interview your people, discover and develop more interesting and relevant stories, present them in the ideal light for a diverse audience and your core audience, and publicize all this invaluable insight (on social media channels, primarily) for the world to witness.