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How to Build Better Engagement for Your Business Stories predate television, the internet and social media, but they’re a big part of the modern marketing landscape. Social media is—or should be—a big part of your marketing strategy, no matter what line of business you’re in. Social media storytelling can increase reach and brand awareness and help you gain new followers. However, there is a great deal of noise out there. If you don’t attract attention, your message is going to be lost in a sea of other competing messages. When we’re attempting to connect and engage with our followers, customers and potential customers, it’s essential to remember that we’re not talking at people or simply posting products or services. Think of this as a chance to narrate your brand, to start a conversation about who you are and what you offer. Here’s 3 tips to help bring storytelling into your social media marketing strategy: Tip #1: Be Human People are going to connect with people first, not brands. Share what’s happening in your world with your followers, what you’re learning and what’s exciting you. Reinforce your brand’s message, your mission and what you stand for. Audiences are savvy, and they can tell when a brand isn’t being authentic in their posts. Recently, we’ve been engaging our eVision audience with questions, and based on the response we’re getting, it’s a fun and genuine way to learn more about our followers while promoting our business. That said, only share things that you want the whole world to know! Once you put something out there, it’s out there for everyone to see—and snapshot and share—so make sure it’s well-thought out and appropriate. Tip #2: Create Value Your creative has to have intent, which isn’t necessarily to make leads or sales. Think of ways to inform, entertain or surprise your audience. Provide people with unique and interesting content, like blog posts, articles, infographics, videos or eBooks on platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram. Offering resources is one of the top ways to attract attention and followers. Inviting your community to be part of your brand is an ideal way to get them engaged with your resources. For example, if you’re an accountant trying to increase your online presence and engagement, you could ask your followers to share their top reasons for hiring someone else to do their taxes. Ask them to hashtag their responses with #taxhelp or #relaxingnottaxing or something else clever and short. If you don’t have many fans, you’ll need to gain more followers by sharing relevant content from your industry, interacting with people and finding relevant users to follow. Here’s an example of a brand who did this well: Lululemon with their #justmymat campaign. It began with a woman doing yoga in different settings in an Instagram brand video. As a result, thousands of followers uploaded photos and videos of themselves practicing yoga all over the world while using the campaign hashtag. Tip #3: Show, Don’t Tell Telling your brand story doesn’t have to mean typing out a whole bunch of copy. Images and videos can be a great way to capture the essence of your branding. Some platforms centre around images (Pinterest and Instagram, for example). Even the ones that don’t have made changes to make social media storytelling easier, with more opportunities for photos, videos and albums. If you’re not sure where to get images, do some research on design apps and sites that let you use your own images or templates and backgrounds to create engaging posts for the various social platforms. There are so many ways you can tell a story that will best reflect your brand, business and you! You don’t need to tackle the world of Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter on your own.
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