Digital storytelling is the new buzzword being used to describe a brand’s digital narrative. The word is sometimes used to refer to film-making. However, the newer definition of the word has come to include the marketing aspect as well. Digital storytelling on social media is being used by most brands today to tell their stories which resonate with the audience. Brand storytelling shows the human side of your business to your audience.
Successful Digital Storytelling on Social Media
Being on social media doesn’t mean much unless your content is king. And if you are starting out your content journey, you may want to start by telling your brand story. You can get creative and tell a chapter of your story with each new campaign or product launch. If storytelling is the marketing strategy you are planning to adopt, be consistent. Focused campaigns with a definite and cohesive theme tend to be more effective.
So how do you get to planning such a campaign and implementing it? Traditionally one would simply go out sharing their brand’s motive. But today, social listening and data analytics helps you through the process. This is the reason why I called this article the future of social media storytelling.
Social Listening for Digital Storytelling
What is more important than storytelling is effective storytelling. And your story will only be effective if you find an audience that can relate to your content. Also, to be consistent with your content, you will have to study your audience. What are they thinking? How do they feel about you? What do they want to know?
This is where social listening steps in. Social listening helps you collate and analyze billions of conversations happening online. You can draw up a clear picture of your current brand health and plan your campaign in accordance. Let’s see how the data helps you tell your story!
Know Your Audience
The more you know about your target audience the better stories you will be able to create. Also, this helps you research better. You would know what your audience wants to know. Your future campaigns will be better informed and thus seem more relevant to your followers. This in turn can increase public engagement on your posts and stories.
Social listening gathers minute details like the general sentiment around your brand, demographic details, top keywords your followers are looking for et cetera.
Involve your Advocates/Employees
The best way to gain traction for your posts is to make your customer a hero. Who doesn’t love a little attention? So, find out your biggest fans, feature them in your story. Make them the hero. This tactic is one of the most successful ones out there. Once you feature this person, the customer feels so valued they share your post with their followers. They tell their friends and family about you. This increases your visibility.
Social listening helps you find your supporters. Look for commentators who have mentioned you on a positive note. Check their influence score. If it’s high, you have found your advocate.
Employees are your best advocates too. A happy employee will appreciate your brand and would be willing to share your name with their followers. This also shows your customers that you take care of your customers and employees – helping to improve your brand image.
Measure and Learn
Social listening insights also help you learn from your past campaigns. You could set the tool to track individual campaigns. The analysis will help you understand the buzz. Learn from the feedback you receive and build on it. This too can be a part of your brand story. Dominos can be an inspiration here. They did a social listening survey to find out about the key complaints and addressed them. This helped them return with a new narrative: one of how they successfully listened to their customers and took action.
In the end, it is your audience who consumes your story and reacts to it. Your audience’s sentiment matters, hence it is a metric worth focussing on. Drill down to find out the pain points your customers are facing. Address these in your narrative and your story would naturally gain traction. Lastly, what’s the objective of your story? You either want to improve engagement or maybe develop a relationship. So, add a call-to-action, this will guide your audience members towards the next step.