Embrace storytelling for your social media channels with a defined strategy
Marketing has moved on, the traditional sales funnel on the verge of extinction. Instead, consumers are using social media to engage with your customer services team, to research products and services and to share opinions about you with other consumers.
It’s the customer’s journey now.
To engage successfully with wired customers in this new world of consumer-empowerment and social media,more and more marketers are turning to ‘storytelling’ to capture their attention.
It’s a technique the team at Oracle has embraced. Oracle has just launched its ‘Percussion’ campaign.
New era, old era
Storytelling is nothing new – TV ads have been using stories for decades to engage with customers and snare their imaginations. And using storytelling to increase consumer engagement via your company’s social media channels is based on a tradition that has evolved over hundreds of thousands of years.
Storytelling vs. scepticism
But there is a problem – how to create a social media storytelling strategy in the first place. Insights into marketing storytelling can seem nebulous and pretentious, phrased in ways that threaten to leave the C-Suite shaking its head as yet another self-proclaimed marketing ‘visionary’ tries to sell the Emperor another empty wardrobe.
It’s imperative that you create a clearly-identified process that you can use not only to win over the C-Suite, but everybody in the company – because you’re going to need their input to tell stories about the people, situations and dramas behind your company’s products.
Stage 1
“Listen, listen, listen”
Listen to what your existing customers and employees are already discussing in the online space. What themes are predominant about your company? What issues are being talked about? This initial listening phase is essential for creating a road map for the kind of content you will be producing for your initial storytelling engagement strategy.
“Content can create leads if your storytelling captures the customers’ imaginations.”
Stage 2
“Forming the Right Mindset”
Form a team that will be responsible for creating your stories and content strategy. Think community managers, social media analysts, journalists and the right tools bought in from social media software vendors – they are all essential to creating content that is story-, not marketing-driven.
“These editorial teams can brainstorm initial ideas and angles for content, based on research into customer and employee stories and themes.”
Stage 3
“Generating Your Stories”
The people who know the most about your company are your employees – so your storytelling should come from inside your company, not a third party supplier. From employees at the coal face to directors in the board room, everyone has a tale to tell about their job and the company they work for; a story which they would love to share if given the opportunity and the platform on which to tell it, and one that reflects what the company and its ethos and products are really all about.
It’s these kinds of personal stories that will engage customers. Offer the storyteller guidance on how to get their thoughts down and what channels are available to them:
- Perhaps it’s a great photo that could be posted to Flickr.
- A quote that inspires them that can be shared on Twitter.
- A blog entry they could write about their daily work life or an aspect of their job that resonates with them on a personal level and could prove to be of genuine interest to customers.
