Unlock the full potential of your content team’s storytelling abilities
Why this matters
When customers really know a brand, it’s like a person of its own. A brand can feel like a friend, a trusty co-worker or a celebrity they purchase items from. In order to know how to sell to people it’s important to be authentic with them and provide them with real content that they want to consume.
How to Ignite the connection between your brand stories and true customer engagement
Authenticity is important for customer loyalty
No one likes a brand that’s pretending to be something they’re not. With the fast moving pace of social media it’s more important than ever to stay true to your values and your audience. Telling stories is a great way to create memorable content, but in order for that content to work it needs to resonate with what your audience expects from you and what they want to consume.
Set up the workspace
Decide on a place to collaborate. You need a virtual meeting call and a virtual whiteboard, like Miro.
Create three different categories for the brainstorming session. You’ll need to come up with and write down different things accordingly:
Talk together about your brand's identity - it’s important to refresh!
Talk about your audience - who are they, what do they like?
What social media platforms are you and your audience both using?
Now that you have this information it’s time to move on to the next step.
Platform
Take some time to discuss the platforms you communicate with your audience on. Answer the following questions:
Which types of video formats can you post?
What time constraints exist for the content?
What means of interaction/communication are available?
For example, let’s say we’re talking about Instagram.
Some of the formats available are reels, story posts and feed posts. The time constraint for a reel is 15 - 30 seconds, a story appears for 15 seconds and a video posted in the feed can be up to 60 seconds. Interactions can be reacting with a smiley to a story, commenting on a post or bookmarking it for later.
Psst! Our Ideation Cards: Storytelling deck helps you elevate your stories to the next level.
How to use the cards in 3 simple steps!
Step 1
Define the challenge, brief or project you want to solve. We advise summarising it into a question.
Step 2
Pick one card from the deck. Read it out loud and take some seconds to think about the question.
Step 3
Think of ways of solving the brief with the suggestion on the card. Generate as many ideas per card as you can.
About the cards
The Storytelling Deck will help you generate ideas according to three different categories:
Style
The way you tell your story
Structure
The way your story evolves
Format
The platform you’ll use to tell your story
Brand identity and audience
Think of your brand's identity and your audience’s as people interacting with each other on the social media platform. If your brand feels genuine, people will want to interact with it.
Use the knowledge of your audience to think about if:
The audience uses the social media platform you do
Which media format they respond best to
Which type of interaction your audience prefer
It might sound harsh, but it’s quite simple - you don’t “have to” be on all social media platforms. Content planning and strategy takes a lot of time. Don’t put a lot of effort into a platform that is not generating revenue.
In kind, another part of user engagement that is often forgotten - take some time to interact with your audience. And skip the sales-pitch! Like content from your audience and leave comments that’s true to your brand’s personality and tone of voice!
Create memories
We all have stories to tell - and we all like to hear a good story. So make use of the knowledge you have. Be smart. Storytelling will make your company memorable, stand out and create an immersive experience for your audience.
When you’ve done all of this work you’ll know how to frame the story to work towards your audience and are on the way to increased customer engagement!