Did it ever happen that you mistook or judged someone but got to know about a pivotal event in their life and suddenly everything about them started making sense? This is the power of stories. They can flip around your life and of those around you in an instant.
Ever since humans walked on the face of earth, storytelling has been an integral part of their communication. Originating from the events that happen in real life, the stories told are capable of shaping our future through their lessons, experiences, and connections.
The art of storytelling is a gift of God to us through which we can touch others’ lives in a very subtle way. Human beings are born with an instinctive need to socialize and bond with other people in order to function normally and thrive in their lives. Sharing stories is one way we can empathize and develop deeper connections with each other.
Exploring the Impact of Storytelling on Social Media
Social media, as we know and experience it today, has become so saturated with all sorts of information that it’s hard to stand out in the users’ news feeds. The competition keeps getting tougher day by day.
You need something really solid to cut through the constant bombardment of content on social media. Storytelling is one such tool that will help you make your mark in the crowded digital space.
It can elevate your branding game to the next level. When your content is knitted together to form a story, it has a greater chance of intriguing your audience and grabbing their attention. People are more likely to engage and interact with posts that are supporting or building a narrative rather than random segregated ones.
Stories add a human element to your brand. They let your audience visualize your brand persona in their minds. When people are aware of the story behind your brand, they can relate with your content on a deeper level.
The stories increase the chances of brand recall in people’s minds ten folds. A higher brand recall promises a better brand identity, more brand awareness, discovery, growth, conversions, and consumer loyalty.
What Makes A Story Worthwhile?
If we delve deeper into the psychology of stories, we can unleash the secret recipe to making a story worthwhile. It is not just captivating the attention of listeners, but transporting them into another world is what really gets them hooked on a story.
Think of attention as a spotlight that only shines on a limited space. If the attention doesn’t find an element of interest in the story, it will keep wandering around in search of it. However, if the interest holds attention for long enough, it will pull at your heart strings and move you to the core.
Even though you are not physically in the shoes of characters, you can exactly feel what they are going through. This happens when you are transported to the imaginative world of stories and they get you hooked. When the story ends, your life is not the same anymore.
Just like Heraclitus once said,
“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.”
Mastering the Art of Storytelling
If you are naturally good at storytelling, great. If you are not, don’t worry. The good news is, it can be learned like any other skill. With time and practice, you can enhance your storytelling abilities.
Brand storytelling, however, requires some more effort and work. Here, we present a comprehensive guide for mastering the art of sharing your brand stories and how you can use them to create a striking presence on social media.
Crafting A Story
When you are beginning to craft a story, ask yourself the following questions. The answers to these will help you develop and structure your narrative accordingly.
- Who do you intend to address in your message? Your target audience.
- What is the message that you want to get across through your story?
- What is the purpose of your message? To inspire people, evoke joy or nostalgia, etc.
- What is it that you want to achieve through your story? Increase brand awareness, build a better brand image, boost sales, etc.
Stay Authentic
It is very easy to pretend on social media. The real deal is being your authentic self. It’s a hard thing to do especially on a medium where people are ready to tear you down anytime out of the slightest misunderstanding.
Despite being aware of all this, choosing to be vulnerable is a highly courageous thing to do. No matter what you do, there will always be people who discourage you. But there will be more of those who are proud of your existence.
Authenticity has to be the core element of brand storytelling. This is what will appeal to people the most. If you are making up fake stories, no one will be able to connect with them. The result? Bad reputation, lack of a substantial narrative, poor engagement, lower conversion rate.
Strategies to Employ
Here are a few techniques you can employ to craft an entrancing story for your audience.
- Emergence
This is the quintessential way of narrating stories where the audience is a part of the process from the beginning towards the end.
- Adumbration
In this model of storytelling, the story opens at a part that played a major role in shaping or influencing the whole story.
- Spoilers
You mention a short summary of the climax which doesn’t reveal the whole thing, but it is intriguing enough to create suspense in people.
- Make it Meaningful
Make sure the story is meaningful enough for people to remember it. If it’s just suspense on the surface and nothing substantial within, it will lose its impact immediately.
- Begin With the End in Mind
When crafting a meaningful story, begin with the end in mind. Structure it according to your primary, secondary, and long-term objectives. It should reflect the core values and principles of your brand. See if you can continue the story later on from where you left off to create something like a sequel of the previous one.
Experiment WIth Different Posting Formats
When you are working on social media, do not shy away from experimenting with different posting formats such as videos, photos, reels, or stories. You can’t exactly know what works best for your audience unless you try it yourself.
There is no one-size-fits-all answer to how you should post your content on your social profiles. You have to work with a variety of formats and mediums and observe what your audience likes and engages the most with. Of course you can use a combination of different formats too.
There are no restrictions when it comes to choosing a posting format. You don’t have to stick to one of them either.
For example, short videos and reels are meant to perform really well on platforms like TikTok and Instagram respectively. The TikTok algorithm works in such a way that if your videos are good and intrigue the interest of people, it will automatically boost them. However, as a startup influencer you can buy TikTok followers just like many influencers do.
Whereas, things are a little different on other platforms. Their algorithms work way differently than TikTok. Although an Instagram viewer is already accustomed to the idea of instagram reel maker, it is hard to beat the algorithm sometimes.
Elicit Emotions With Your Story
Make sure your story elicits your audience’s emotions in one way or the other. It shouldn’t be so bland that no one feels anything after going through it. It has to be strong enough to spark an emotional response that leads to fulfilling your objectives.
Be it joy, suspense, sadness, nostalgia, anger, or a whole roller coaster of emotions you want your audience to experience. Using emotional appeals in your content marketing strategies can make them a lot more powerful.
They are more likely to stay with your audience for a long time and prompt your desired actions. Even as individuals, the stories we keep hearing since our childhood stay with us in one way or the other because we cherish them for how they make us feel.
We connect with those stories and people because they moved us and touched our lives. Same is the case with brand stories. The ones who capture our attention and make us feel that they are really created for us are the ones we value the most.
Sharing stories makes us feel we are not alone in our struggles. It inspires us to do better and to become better. Stories are what makes us realize how we relate to other people no matter where we belong to. They evoke empathy in us through shared experiences and joys.
Harness Visual Elements
You can tell how well a story is narrated by observing if it ignites your imagination. If you are able to visualize the events occurring in the story, it means the storytelling is fantastic. When a story doesn’t captivate you enough, there is no visualization in the mind.
You can make your story much more powerful by integrating visual elements within it. There could be several ways of doing it.
- Use intricate details to describe the events through words
- Include illustrations along with words
- Use graphics only
- Use animations or short videos
- Additionally, platforms like FlexClip provide user-friendly tools to integrate captivating visuals seamlessly into your storytelling, amplifying the impact of your brand narrative on social media
Invite Your Audience to Share Their Stories
If you have a platform with a bigger reach, there is nothing wrong with letting your audience leverage it so more people can hear their stories. In fact, you will get a lot of appreciation for doing this.
You can even create campaigns or series around this where people get a chance to share their stories through you. User-generated content is a great way to boost your engagement rates.
New creators, however, find it difficult to get started in the world of content creation without followers. That is where Social Followers come into play. It is tried, tested and trusted by many brands and influencers all over the world.
People feeling heard and acknowledged is a great way to uplift them. It is a great thing if they get this feeling through your brand. They will value you for life and even bring in a significant number of potential consumers who might turn into loyal ones. Who knows!
Harmonize Your Content
When you are employing storytelling in your content marketing, one really important thing to do is harmonize your content over all platforms. Putting this in simple words means that all of your social media profiles and websites should tell the same story.
The disharmony in content does not only disrupt your brand experience for the audience, it tarnishes your image as well. So make sure your story is well-incorporated in your marketing strategy throughout all the mediums.
Storytelling Ideas that Definitely Work
There are several storytelling ideas that will drive results no matter which one you choose to work on. These ideas could include:
- Brand Story
It could be a story about how the brand came into being. What factors led to the creation of the brand? Was there a passion to serve people, a cause that needed to be worked on, a problem that had to be solved, or what?
- Product Story
Your story could be about a particular product. The idea behind it, the process of making it, the stories of people involved in the process, how it reaches you.
- Consumer Story
You can share stories of your loyal customers who have been there ever since you started and how they evolved along with your brand.
- Industry Story
This could be a story about the whole industrial scenario of your brand. Where it stands, how it is revolutionizing the industry, and what value are they adding to it?
- Failure Story
This type of story could be used to narrate where the brand started, what struggles it encountered on the way, how many times they experienced failure but stood strong despite all odds, and how has the brand grown after all the failures?
- Values Story
Such a story could include the core values of your brand, the culture, the factors that led to it, and why they are important for your brand?
Measuring the Impact of Your Stories
Tracking the performance and impact of your stories is an essential part of brand storytelling. If you do not know how they are impacting your audience and whether they are engaging with them or not, how are you going to make adjustments accordingly?
Something you might have expected to perform well may not and vice versa. So you must keep an eye on their performance and notice how they are influencing your brand awareness, image, and experience.
The analysis helps you learn from your mistakes and find out what works for your brand and audience.
Keep Experimenting and Practicing
The most crucial part is to stay consistent, keep experimenting, and practicing to get better at this. The world of social media is constantly going through an evolutionary process. Things change here every day. You wake up, and things are entirely different the next morning.
So the process of learning never stops, especially on digital media. You have to keep pace with the advancements. And you have to keep experimenting to yield your desired outcomes. Continue practicing to get better at your job. That is the only way to truly succeed.
Integrating Storytelling in Your Marketing Strategy
Storytelling is an absolutely fantastic tool to employ in your overall marketing strategy. It allows you to engage and connect with your audience on a deeper level. If you wish to build a strong brand identity, you must consider making it a part of your content marketing persistently.
The element of story helps the audience resonate with the brand on a deeper level. They associate more with your brand than just a name that publishes promotional messages. This differentiation creates more potential to retain your brand in their minds.
Wrapping It Up
The idea of storytelling through your brand encourages people to think of it more than a name on their screens. They feel empowered when they are able to relate to a story associated with the brand that ignites certain emotions within them.
It builds your brand awareness, brand recall, and a striking brand persona in the audience’s minds. If they can find a common element in the brand persona, they can even begin to envision it as a part of themselves. It depends on how strongly they feel for the main character in your story.
With the constant noise on social media, storytelling is rendered a strong means by brands that makes you stand out of the crowd and allows more people to engage with it simultaneously. They make the audience feel like they can relate to the subject matter effortlessly.
Stories are capable of making their way to people’s hearts just like running water does through stones. It inspires people to take action out of their own will unlike forced promotional offers that are particularly designed to persuade people.
