Attract More Business with Social Media Stories
Storytelling in marketing is always popular. Stories are an amazing strategy to use in conjunction with social media marketing. Storytelling incorporates more visuals and interacts with your target market. Attract more business and meet your business goals by combining stories and social media marketing.
The Attraction of Social Stories
Do you know why your audience is intrigued with the more visual “social media story” sites and apps? Does it just seem like a bunch of images without much info to you? In addition to valuable information, many audiences like social media stories because:
audiences are more invested in relevant stories.
audiences feel a personal connection when watching the “real” you in “real-life”.
I know you’re excited and ready to get started. Let’s begin by going over the basics of traditional storytelling.
Telling Business Stories
Customarily, story use words, so it’s understandable if you feel a little confused at first when it comes to social media stories. It happens to most of us, until the “lightbulb moment” when we realize the phrase “social media story” doesn’t refer to a traditional, written story. Social media stories are based on visuals – images, stickers, drawings, videos, etc. Words still play an important part, but social media stories focus on images and engagement.
Your story must be unique and compelling to stand out from your competitors. The story and visuals must also be relevant to your business and appeal to your target audience on multiple levels. Viewers should be so interested and emotionally motivated they immediately take the action you suggest.
Begin by telling an interesting, emotion-packed story of how your company was founded. Be sure to mention your values and goals fit into the business. The more you have in common with your target market, the easier it will be to attract their attention, earn their respect, and gain their trust enabling you to connect with your niche audience on a deeper level.
The key to fostering a deeper connection hinges on knowing your audience. You want to show your audience that you are “one of them.” Show the audience what you have in common with them, how you understand their values, identify with their emotional motivations, and support similar causes. These connections helps your audience see your business as an extension of you, the person.
You will also want to share the background story of how or why you created a product or service, the problem or problems it solves, and how your audience will benefit.
Products and services also have stories. In general, you want to tell the background story of how and why you created a product or service. You also want to share info about the problems it solves, as well as how it benefits your audience.
Your storytelling doesn’t stop there. You can tell stories about anything that is on topic and is relevant to your audience. However, you also want to use social media stories to help you meet your business goals, which likely include brand building, revenue generation, and/or list building.
Try to incorporate as many of these elements and strategies as possible in your social media stories. Now, let’s go over why and how you can accomplish all of this with visually appealing social media stories, aimed directly at your target market.
Meet Goals and Benefit with Social Media Stories
Social media stories benefit every type of business, regardless of the niche or the age-range of the target market, because images and videos have such a wide appeal across the board.
Social media stories benefit your business in multiple ways. The top-3 social media benefits, reported by marketers in the 2018 Social Media Marketing Industry Report by Social Media Examiner, are heightened exposure, increased traffic, and generated leads. In addition, the report verifies that Facebook and Instagram are firmly leading the social media pack with these 5K + marketers.
Your storytelling doesn’t stop there. You can tell stories about anything that is on topic and relevant to your audience. However, you also want to use social media stories to help you meet your business goals, which likely includes brand building, revenue generation, and/or list building.
Try to incorporate as many of these elements and strategies as possible in your social media stories. Now, let’s go over why and how you can accomplish all of this with visually appealing social media stories, aimed directly at your target market.
Brand Building Stories
If one of your business goals is to increase brand awareness via social media stories, here are a few things to keep in mind as you create your brand building stories:
Use your brand/business color scheme and logo to make your social pages and content instantly identifiable. Be sure to include a small brand watermark on your images, when appropriate, such as on memes and quote images.
Create stories that highlight the defining qualities of your business, such as emotional motivation, values, causes, etc. Show your audience that what matters to you also matters to them. Build your reputation as their respect for you and your business grows. Creating multiple stories, each with at least three images, helps to remind your audience of the deeper connection you share. Highlight the best of the best to keep them visible.
Show followers the fun, light-hearted side of you, your business, your team, and with their permission, your customers. Give viewers a laugh and an opportunity to see themselves within the images and stories. This personal connection allows them to see you as an imperfect and real person. Candid morning photos of “before & after coffee” or similar insider glimpses are bound to endear you to your audience. If possible, add a poll to encourage topic-related engagement. This helps build trust and transparency, which ultimately leads to enjoyment, engagement, and sales.
Revenue Generating Stories
Stories that use visuals and words capture the viewer’s attention, which is important when your goal is generating revenue. However, unless the story contains highly compelling elements with call-to-action links, your efforts won’t be very effective. Here are a few ideas and tips to consider as you create your story:
Use direct links and tags in your product/service story where possible. Create a special hashtag that includes the item’s topic category. This will help you attract more attention from potential buyers.
Hold wacky theme contests, related to a product’s topic, before you add the sale story. Challenge different groups such as affiliates, team members, and customers to accomplish a specific task such as, draw a picture of themselves showing why the viewer really needs to win. Use a topic hashtag to build anticipation for the next contest and sale item.
Showcase each product or service with its own story. Use a product-demo teaser to create interest and list the top three benefits of the item. Link the demo to the sales page, where you have a longer video as well as a transcript.
Keep viewers on their toes by creating an exclusive upsell offer or bundle deal. You can include a poll, contest, or another type of engaging activity to encourage sharing and more interaction. Adding a special offer at this point, rather than within the shopping cart, adds an element of surprise and urgency.
Engagement and List Building Stories
As you design and create stories that prompt viewers to sign up for your mailing list, keep these tips and ideas in mind:
In your story, be sure to use images directly related to the opt-in offer’s “problem”. Embed links leading to the solution or info on the opt-in offer page, where your audience can learn more and, of course, opt-in to get access. Make the offer image stand out visually, but don’t make it so busy that your CTA gets lost.
Use your social media following to build your mailing list. Engaging and interacting with followers in fun and informative ways builds your initial relationship. The more your audience enjoys interacting with you, your stories, and your activities, the more they will want to hear from you. Give your audience what they want and need but always leave them wanting more from you.
Since social media stories have a heavy visual focus, choose your words to add clarity, details, and purpose to your stories. The images and videos should be self-explanatory but, when in doubt, use a well-positioned label or headline.
Incorporate polls into your list building stories. For example, create a poll asking which of two topics your audience wants to know more about. Depending on what they choose, you can send them to a related opt-in where they will learn more.
As mentioned earlier, fans of “stories” like visuals, including emoji. Use emoji to draw the viewers in and allow them to see your thoughts, mood or emotion, and tone. This also helps clarify the meaning behind comments or information.
Bring more attention to a slow-moving list magnet opt-in by doing a live Q & A broadcast on the topic with references and links to the free resource.
Regardless of which social-media story platform you use, it’s important that you familiarize yourself with all the tools. Each tool provides a way to make your stories attractive to your target audience. However, you must understand your audience since you’ll need to know which tools will impact with your audience. Test and track the results of each story to discover what works best for everyone involved.