Social media is ever-changing. New social media platforms, like Amazon Spark or Fastory, are always emerging. Even established platforms, like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, are routinely redesigned.
Staying on top of the erratic, ever-changing online environment is demanding. Successfully promoting your brand story online is even more of a challenge.
Social media garners an incredible amount of user traffic—it can’t be ignored. If you want to communicate your brand story online, social media storytelling skills are a must.
So, without further ado, here are our five tips to promote your brand story on social media.
1. Use your analytics
One very simple way to stay in control of your story online is to use your analytics. Analytics can monitor your follower growth, site traffic and the user engagement and reach of your posts.
Most established social media platforms offer analytics services for free. Each platform has different metrics to monitor. For instance, Facebook can tell you when your audience is usually online, and Twitter can show you who your followers are following.
These analytics tell you what times of day your posts receive the most attention, and what other stories your audience is interested in. If you want to maximise engagement with your brand story, this kind of information is essential.
2. Tailor to each platform’s strengths
Every social media platform has its own strengths and weaknesses.
Tweets have a 280-character limit, so twitter is best suited to short, snappy posts. On the other hand, Facebook posts have a 5000-character limit, so this site can host longer posts.
One simple mistake is to post the same untailored message across every platform. Posts to Facebook won’t necessarily suit LinkedIn’s professional tone, or fit within Instagram’s character 2200-character limit.
The best strategy is to tailor each post to each individual social platform. This way your story fits each site tonally and visually, and doesn’t stand out for the wrong reasons.
3. Embrace visual and video content
So far this article has focused on text-based content. However, it’s important not to overlook visual content. Online articles with images get 94% more total views, and press releases that include a photo or video content receive 45% more views.
The same is true for social media. Images and videos are more likely to stand out when scrolling through newsfeeds, and most social platforms are designed to foreground visual content.
By 2020, 80% of the total global internet traffic will be accredited to video content. For certain platforms, like Instagram and Pinterest, visual content is already essential. If you want your brand story to gain traction online, visual and video content are the way forward.
4. Experiment with new features
On May 19th, 2016, 37-year old mother Candace Payne live-streamed herself unboxing a Star Wars Chewbacca mask. Her video quickly became viral, achieving over 54 million hits in a single day. The following day, Forbes reported the Chewbacca mask had sold out nationwide.
Candace live-streamed her video using Facebook Live—a service only launched the month before.
Now, not every new feature is going to create the next Candace Payne, but experimenting with new features is still essential if you want to stay in the loop.
Experimentation places your brand story on the cutting edge. It shows your followers that you’re actively engaged with new developments in social media.
5. Engage with your audience
On a final note, remember that social media is social—it’s crucial you engage with your audience.
You shouldn’t move on from a post right after it goes live. If you move on to the next thing, your followers will too, and your posts will get less engagement overall.
One goal of telling your brand story is to connect with your followers. Taking your story to the comments breaks another boundary between you and your audience, which allows this sort of connection to develop much more easily.
