Abstract:

The importance that the content acquires on the Web requires in the business context an increasing investment in hiring professionals who know well the paradigm of the digital reader. This reader is more and more demanding and informed, he does not waste time reading very extensive and descriptive information and, therefore, he focuses mainly on the titles and subheadings, the numbers, the keywords and the first paragraph. However, he let himself be conquered by stories that excite and help him solve his problems.

Humans likes stories since Aristotle. Stories allow to please, to inspire and to delight the listeners. In business communication, the use of storytelling aims to foster the memorization and sharing of strategic message, as well as captivate and thrill the audience/consumer.

The story that best positions and attracts the consumer attention is the history of the company: the story that integrates the page About us of the website company and that should be unique. People like to know the history of the company. So often, when a consumer chooses a brand to consume, he chooses it because of the entrepreneurial company/brand history, the challenges it faced, the mistakes it made and above all what it did to achieve the victory.

The present study is part of a research in which the data were obtained through the administration of an online questionnaire survey to a sample (N = 89) of SMEs protocoled with the School of Technology and Management of Águeda - University of Aveiro (ESTGA-UA), in Portugal, within the scope of the curricular internships of the Degree in Retail Management and the Higher Education Training Course (TESP) in Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) Management.

In the first part of the study, a diagnosis was made that allowed to know the reality and to draw the digital picture of these companies in three dimensions: to identify the social media used and the importance attributed to it; to assess whether SMEs have a strategy for managing and producing digital content; and to identify the profile of the person responsible for the production/management of these contents.

From this diagnosis it is concluded that SMEs, although they value and use social media to communicate, do not have a defined communication strategy, mainly due to the lack of human resources with specific training. In addition, it was also concluded that SMEs give great prominence to the platform of social interaction Facebook, although they consider the Website the most important digital platform.

Based on this conclusion and on the studies that recognize the Website as the most important platform for the digital communication strategy (because it presents itself as a "gateway" to the company through search engine searches and allows to direct the users to the other channels of communication) we analyze the website of all the companies surveyed who consider the website very important.

It is intended to understand how the page that tells the story of the company and/or shows it can captivate and thrill the audience while at the same time is able to create value to the brand.

Keywords:

ESTGA-UA, Storytelling, Website, Digital content, Business communication, SMEs.