Storytelling can be a profoundly powerful way of connecting deeply and authentically on social media platforms with your target audience. And with more and more people flocking to use social media in their downtime — one study estimates that social media users will rise to six billion in 2027 — connecting with your target audience online is more important than ever.
Storytelling on social media has become more important than ever. With the ceaseless noise of content on the internet, connecting with your audience through stories can mean the difference between languishing in internet obscurity and a consistently engaged audience and follower count. Partnering with an experienced social media agency can help you convey compelling stories on social media to connect with your audience.
Why is Storytelling on Social Media Important?
Broadly, social media agencies help businesses establish a solid social media marketing strategy. This includes a number of things:
- Conceptualizing, creating, and putting up content — photos, stories, videos, live streams — that match your brand’s image and goals.
- Creating, optimizing, and maintaining your online presence through your social media accounts.
- Engaging with your follower base by responding to likes, comments, and shares. Following relevant accounts like customers and influencers to create a community around your brand.
- Keeping a close eye on your online reputation. This is a particular vita metric for social media agencies to keep an eye on.
- Paid social media marketing and influencer marketing allow you to boost your reach on social media platforms through paid channels.
Good content on social media isn’t just about high-quality pictures and posts. With platforms like Instagram and Facebook themselves prioritizing short-form storytelling, the best social media agencies understand that there’s no more effective way to connect with your audience than storytelling.
Before You Begin: The Essentials
Before you gather your audience around a metaphorical bonfire and begin with “once upon a time,” there are a few things every social media agency worth its salt looks into:
- Understanding your audience. You cannot tell a good story without understanding who you are talking to first. For instance, you can’t tell a gaggle of five-year-olds a gory story of blood, guts, and glory, right? Social media storytelling is no different. It’s vital, therefore, to understand who your audience is, what they like on social media, and where they hang out the most on the internet.
- Speak to them in their language. One of the most effective ways of relating to anyone is to speak to them in a way they understand and are familiar with. The best kind of social media storytelling accomplishes this with ease and makes its audience find themselves in the story. Social media agencies understand this keenly and make it a point to account for it in the course of their planning.
- Centre the customer; make them the lead in your story. While you might naturally lean toward making the story about you and your brand, you will have more success if you make your story about your customer.
A Quick and Easy Guide to Storytelling on Social Media
The best social media agencies tailor storytelling to specific brands. However, a few fundamental tenets are common to all successful storytelling on social media. The best social media stories include:
- A clear vision of your brand. What do you offer? What do you stand for? What are your values? An effective storytelling campaign around your campaign should convey a clear sense of your brand and its offerings. A social media agency can not only help you chart out your brand image, but they also know how to make it shine on social media.
- The humans behind the scenes. Whether that’s you or your employees, the people behind the scenes of your brand belong in the stories you weave around your brand. A social media agency can help you strike the perfect balance between this, your brand, and your customers.
- The humans in front of your scenes. In other words, your customers! They are, after all, the bread and butter behind the success of your business. Centre them, allow them to find and see themselves in the stories you tell, and you’ll inevitably mark a mark in your audience.
- A focus on how you want your audience to feel. Do you want your audience to be amused? Do you want them to be moved? Do you want them to be curious or excited? When you center an emotion in a story, you tap into the core of compelling stories.
- Clear goals and objectives. Like all digital marketing activities, your endeavor to tell stories, too, must have a clear goal. This can be boosting followers or engagement, developing a relationship with your audience, or even just going viral. It’s important to understand why you’re telling a story and what you want out of it before you get started, however.
- Solve a problem. An excellent reason to tell your audience a story is to offer them a solution to one of their problems. What does your product or service do? How can it help them? Why should they need it? Weave a story around the value and utility of your products while centering your audience.
- Tell them what to do next! There is no point in telling a great story if your audience doesn’t know what to do with it after the fact. Do you want them to follow you? To sign up for your newsletter? To make a purchase? Make it very clear what they should do next after having engaged with your story.
The Upshot
Storytelling is powerful — there’s no denying it. After all, haven’t we all grown up with them? Aren’t we surrounded by them? Telling a good one, however, can be a profoundly powerful way of making a mark with your audience. This is where a social media agency like AdLift comes in. They are experienced in the art of telling a good story: they will do so by centering your audience and your brand.