Recent technological advancements have certainly come with more efficient tools which we can use to tell our stories. We now have several social media platforms we can utilize to teach and inspire people. We are all in the vocation of telling stories. No matter what your profession is – whether you are a designer, a writer, an entrepreneur or a footballer, your job is to write and tell your story. To do so even more efficiently and effectively, it is important for you to have a few strategies on lessons learned in life.
Strategies for Storytelling via Social Media
1. Listen to and know your audience
Telling stories on social media is a great way to create a connection with your audience and build a lasting relationship. The issue is that it needs to be done the right way. In recent years, many businesses have changed the way they tell stories on social media. It used to be all about promoting the brand, products or services provided. But today, the stories are mostly about the audience – meeting their needs, providing solutions for their challenges and giving them valuable and relatable information. But how can you do this if you don’t listen to and know your audience?
Using an audience-focused approach to tell stories is good, but it won’t really create a high social engagement if they can’t relate to the stories. There are various ways to interact with and know your audience:
- Create a questionnaire so you can ask them questions in exchange for some incentive.
- Make use of analytics (e.g., click through rates, social media engagement, and website traffic numbers), to know the type of content your audience wants.
- Use blog comments to communicate with your audience.
These are just a few methods you can use to interact with your audience, so you can learn and be more likely to tell stories that will be relatable.
2. Interact with your audience
It is important to remember that social media are meant to be for social interactions. Imagine going to a social event and being approached by a good-looking stranger. You become excited because the person is engaging you, only to have your excitement wane, because you soon realize that the person is only talking about him/herself without giving you the opportunity to participate in the conversation.
That’s probably how your followers feel when you spend all your time telling your stories or talking about your products or services. Providing valuable and relatable content to your social media followers is good, but it becomes even better when you give them the opportunity to tell their stories, ask questions, make comment, etc. This shows that you care about them and what they have to say. Once this happen, your interaction with your audience is going to improve significantly.
3. Use different media formats
The good thing about telling stories on social media is that there are a wide variety of media formats that you can use to build a strong relationship with your audience. You can write posts on Facebook, share videos on Snapchat, and upload images on Instagram. You can use all these media formats and more to tell your brand’s story on social media.
One of the advantages of using different formats is that you can significantly increase the size of your audience. This is because different people relate better to different formats; while some people love reading written posts, others might prefer watching videos. Using different media formats will also help you identify which format creates the most engagement with your target audience. Spending more time on that format(s) will be more beneficial.
We all have stories to tell and social media has given us the opportunity to do it more proficiently, provided we adhere to a few techniques. There are people looking forward to hearing, reading, and watching your story. Remember, we are all in the business of telling stories!
