The human brain best relates to information when it’s presented in a story-like format. This is particularly because stories appeal to emotions, are easy to engage with, and are highly memorable. They motivate and inspire audiences towards a common course. They are a fun way of bringing people together and igniting productive conversations that would otherwise be hard to bring forth, particularly newbie conversations. In a nutshell, stories have been right in the heart of all human communications since ancient times.
Why are we talking about storytelling in this time and age? Well, we are living in the social media era and as the “social” in the name suggests, this media is premised on people socializing and having fun. People share fun stories about their lives on Facebook, through Instagram photos, Snapchat, Twitter, among other social media channels.
From a business standpoint, these fun-loving and highly social audiences found on different social media platforms form the modern customer-base. No business can thrive in the modern business climate without engaging with prospective customers on social media. Which is a better way to engage with them than indulging their storytelling instincts?
Using Storytelling to Strengthen Your Brand Online
How is your brand perceived by people online? Is it reputable enough to attract new customers at a high rate? One way of building your brand online- and convincing people to trust it for that matter- is sharing your story with them. You will connect with your target audience better if you break the monotony of publishing new content every time and instead investing your time in explaining yourself and your business in greater detail. Tell people what you stand for, what you intend to fix in their lives, and how better you will do it as compared to your competitors. Let your target audience understand and own your entrepreneurial journey by involving them at every step of the way through well-crafted stories.
The Art of Telling a Good Story
All stories are engaging, yes, but they all do not have the same engagement levels. A well-crafted story is more likely to build your online brand faster than a fumble, monotonous story. Traditionally, online marketers used to post detailed blog posts on different social platforms explaining themselves to their readers. The posts were bulky and not as effective as the marketers would have wanted, particularly because the human concentration span falls under 8 seconds. People don’t have the patience to read through a whole page unless they have prior knowledge of its content. That’s the realization that hatched imagery and video stories.
If you have been tuned in to the revolutions taking place on Facebook, Instagram, and Google, you must have noticed that they all have optimized video and imagery storytelling. They have introduced a fun, easy, and more engaging way of relaying information to the end consumer through stories that load fast, are short, and which are easy to click through. The million dollar question now is: How can you craft and present a good, highly-engaging story?
How to Engage Your Audience With Powerful Stories
If you wish to tell a good story online, here are a few tips for you:
Connect with Google users on mobile devices both intellectually and emotionally through AMP stories.
This new format is allowing you to sell your vision to the highly-knowledgeable Google users, most of whose browsing devices are mobile. The good thing is that you don’t have to struggle with the story creation process as there are many reputable companies such as Ztorie, who can offer you legitimate tools to use in creating your AMP stories. These tools will generate highly-engaging stories for your website and will help you climb up Google’s SEO rankings.
Humanize your Instagram stories.
As much as you would want to present your business as a strong, no-nonsense online brand, you cannot run away from the fact that your prospective customers are human and so are you and your staff. Make your stories as human as possible, but don’t be too casual to the point of diluting your reputation. You can, for example, show your enthusiasm, hope, passion, and dedication to your success. You will need to show your audience that just like they strive to succeed in life, you too strive to grow your business. That’s how they will buy into your vision and help you achieve it.
Utilize visuals across all of your platforms.
As we have already seen, many online users are running away from static, plain-text stories and instead settling for the visual-rich content. Use AMP stories on Google, video stories on Facebook and Instagram, and imagery when it fits. Don’t forget to make the visuals short, engaging, and precise.
