Storytelling has always been popular, particularly when it comes to marketing. However, stories have emerged as an amazing strategy to use in conjunction with social media marketing. If you want to attract more business with social media stories, incorporate more visuals, interact with your target market, and meet your business goals you’re about to learn how.

 

The Attraction of Social Stories

Are you having trouble figuring out why your audience is so intrigued by the more visual “social media story” sites and apps? Does it just seem like a bunch of images without much info, to you? Here is a brief rundown of what many audiences like about social media stories, in addition to valuable information.

 

• Whole stories can be consumed in seconds.

• Stories with hashtags are easy to find and access.

• Relevant stories make audiences feel more involved and important.

• Audiences like seeing the “real” you in “real life” situations.  It’s more personal.

• Stories address their impulse wants, as well as here-and-now needs.

• Visual stories excite, intrigue, and empower the viewer with choices.

• Stories can provide many, highly-visual forms of info within one story.

 

I know you’re excited and ready to get started. Let’s begin by going over the basics of traditional storytelling.

 

Telling Business Stories

While you may be familiar with telling your story using words, when it comes to social media “stories,” you may feel a little confused at first. It happens to most of us until we get that “lightbulb moment” when we realize the term “social media stories” doesn’t refer to traditional, written stories. These “stories” are based on visuals – images, stickers, drawings, videos, etc. Words still play an important part in social media stories; but, the focus is on the images and engagement.

 

You want your story to be unique and compelling to help you stand out from your competitors. The story and visuals should also be relevant to the story and appeal to your target audience on multiple levels. In short, viewers should be so interested and emotionally motivated that 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 how 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. This enables you to connect with your niche audience on a deeper level.

 

The key to fostering deeper connection hinges on knowing your audience very well. In particular, you want to show them that you “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, which are near and dear to your hearts. This helps them to see your business as an extension of you, the person.

 

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.