How to Effectively Tell Your Brand’s Story On Social Media

Storytelling. It’s a nice sounding marketing buzzword, but what does it mean and how do we do tell our brand’s story effectively on social media?

Great stories have an emotional impact. They challenge the norms and show people overcoming all odds to do the impossible. They give the audience a chance to dream and want to become better to help those around them. They give the audience a sense of belonging and promote goodwill.

Today’s customers want relationships. Time. The promise of a better life. Insights that change their views on life. And, they want all of these things at a glance.

If you can find the “magic” that your business has to offer, and combine that in such a way that it inspires your customers or solves their problems, you just found the secret sauce to compelling storytelling that your audience actually wants to hear!

Step 1: Overcoming Obstacles

Before we just jump into the “how-to’s” of storytelling, we first need to get past our own objections and possible the projected objections we think our customers will have.

• Our own fears. It’s common to have a fear of public speaking, even if it’s to a video camera. It’s natural, so give yourself a break. Do your best and the more you do live videos, the easier it will get. Just keep at it.
• We think that no one is going to find our story interesting, or maybe our business doesn’t have anything huge to offer…hogwash! As business owners, we sometimes get lost in the day-to-day redundancies of the job and often lose sight of what’s interesting about our job or business. If you can take a step back and think of why you started your business or what you really love about your job, that passion will come through your storytelling and make your customers excited to want to do business with you! You & your business definitely have something to offer! And sometimes, great things come in small packages 🙂
• We tell ourselves we’re just not creative. Ok, some people have more creativity than others, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have ANY! Again, don’t sell yourself short – find the creativity and express it!
• We may think it’s too difficult or too time consuming, and it may be time consuming for you when you’re forcing it. But they say “write what you know” and it will be easy – and once you simply get started, you’ll find you’ve written at least 2 pages just like that!

Step 2: Who Are You Speaking To?

The next step is to know the audience to whom we are telling our story. What does your ideal target audience look like? Are they younger or older? Do they have families or are single? Are they online or geographically centered? What interests do they have? What kinds of problems do they have that your product or service can fix?

Your business cannot be all things to all people, so once you drill down and really identify your ideal target audience, the easier it will be to tell your story because they will have specific needs/wants that you can market your business, and then you can get a better sense of how to tell your story.

Step 3: Look For Examples to Get Your Creative Juices Flowing

Think back to something you recently read or saw on tv that resonated with you – and ask yourself, why did it resonate with you? What made it so relatable? How did it make you feel? Did it make you want to take a particular action? And if so, why? How can you take this concept and apply it to your business?

Read industry members tweets and Facebook posts for inspiration – learn what others are doing and improve on it for your business. Please don’t copy it exactly or you can find yourself in some hot water, but use what we learned in school – put the ideas into your own words, use your own businesses examples.

Step 4: Use Storytelling Formulas

If you’re still stuck, we have another trick up our sleeve that can help bring out your creativity and tell your brand’s story effectively: use storytelling formulas!

The most common and straight-forward formula is the 3 Act Structure.

1. Set up – set the scene & introduce the characters
2. Confrontation/Rising Action – present a problem & build the tension
3. Resolution – provide a solution that solves the problem

Buffer has some other great storytelling formulas that you might prefer or find easier to use for your business:

Step 5: Don’t Complicate Things

The best way to do this is get to the point succinctly and quickly – keeping things simple and don’t complicate the story by rambling.

If you’re writing what you know from personal examples or lessons, your passion will show and inspire others to want to do business with you. What’s your favorite way of storytelling? Do you have an effective method?