The storytelling in social networks is fashionable, but in reality, the origins go back many, many centuries ago, since humans would gather around the warmth of a campfire to hear the stories of our tribe.
The elements that make a story move and engage us have not changed much since then, but the resources we use to tell it to have. Both before and now, creativity is a fundamental ingredient for our stories to have a spark. Do you want to improve your storytelling on social networks? Don’t miss these 10 tips!
Table of Contents
Here Are The 10 Creative Storytelling Tips On Social Media
1. Think About What You Want To Achieve With Your Story
Stories can fulfil different functions, and in turn, these are aligned with the marketing objectives of your company. To decide what kind of story to tell, you need to know how you want your audience to feel or react when reading or listening to it. And that will depend on your main objective:
Tell who your brand is: You can connect with your audience by explaining your challenges and difficulties, successes and failures. Consumers appreciate brands that show themselves as they are.
Incite to action: Generally, marketing seeks to generate a reaction in the consumer, for example, leaving us their data or making a purchase. You can use storytelling to show how something was achieved in the past and how the reader or viewer can achieve it as well.
Educate: In some cases, the solution to a consumer need is not obvious, but the brand has to do educational work to show it. One way to achieve this may be to tell a story in which the protagonist tries different solutions before finding the final one.
Increase your visibility: Many times what we seek with storytelling is to promote virality, creating stories that excite and that users want to share with their contacts.
2. Know Your Tribe
For many years that have passed, human beings continue to organize and identify with tribes: people with life situations similar to ours, who share our values and our way of seeing the world.
Each tribe has its own stories, and the resources that work with one group can leave another indifferent. Therefore, for your storytelling to achieve the result you are looking for, you first have to know exactly who you are addressing and what their motivations are.
3. Think About Emotions
The storytelling in social networks is not based on rational arguments, but on emotions. They are the key to connect and generate the response we seek.
Before defining the specific details of your story, think about what emotion you want to generate in the audience. Do you want to make them laugh? Encourage them to act in the face of injustice? Leave them with their mouths open?
4. Define The Structure Of Your Story
Regardless of the medium with which they are told, all stories have a number of elements in common.
For a story to be engaging, it has to have a well-defined structure. The easiest way to tell a story is through a presentation, a development and an ending, so those are the minimum elements that you should include. From there, you can look for other more complex narrative resources, such as the hero’s journey, that will help you to know what should happen in each moment.
5. Create Unforgettable Characters
The characters are one of the essential ingredients of the story. Whether they are evils who represent the challenge to overcome or heroes with whom the audience identifies, it is important that they are well defined and that they are not a simple collection of stereotypes. For inspiration, you can think about what your favourite fictional characters are and what makes them special.
6. Use Different Resources And Formats
One of the main strengths of storytelling in social networks is its flexibility . For example, we can combine written stories, videos, animated GIFs, images, and even interactive elements.
In addition, we can also go one step further and integrate user-created content into our stories. A very typical example would be customer testimonials.
7. Adapt Your Story To The Available Space
Long posts on social media tend to be avoided, as they are believed to generate less engagement. But some brands dare to turn this trend around and tell entire stories in a Facebook post or Instagram caption. In this way, your publications are enriched and more opportunities are generated to connect with the audience.
If you decide on this option, check the limits of the different social networks (for example, on Instagram you can include a caption of up to 2,200 characters) and take into account elements such as hashtags.
8. Divide Your Story into Episodes
The “To be continued…” is one of the most effective resources to keep the audience engaged and to increase the interest and engagement. For example, you can use ephemeral content like Instagram Stories, posting one every 24 hours and then grouping them into a highlight for users who join later. Another widely used resource is to create a Twitter thread and update it periodically.
9. Multiple Images Are Worth More Than One
Another tip to maximize the possibilities of the space is to tell a story through multiple images. For example, you can create an album on Facebook or combine 9 different images to form a grid on your Instagram feed.
10. Incorporate Storytelling into Your Ads
Do you think that social ads only serve to launch promotional content? Error!
Recently, the Refinery29 website did a storytelling experiment through Facebook Ads. Rather than treating each ad as a separate element, it showed users three different creatives that made up a sequence or story: a brand presentation, an article, and a call to action. When compared to a control group, ads with storytelling elements were shown to drive more conversions.
