How To Use Social Media to Tell Your Story
“Stories are just data with a soul.” -Brené Brown
If you follow me on Instagram, you know that this past week was a flurry of activity for me. On Wednesday night, I helped professionals with their bios alongside fellow writer Jess Hagemann for a Creatives Meet Business event dedicated to polishing our profiles: headshots, personal style ideas from Greer Image Consulting, personal brand advice from PitchATX, social media tips from The Content Plug, plus food and drinks in an incredible venue. It all added up to a value-packed evening of connecting with awesome people and getting them to the next level in their careers!
The following morning, I presented at Social Media Week Austin, the local iteration of an international annual event. My talk was titled ‘Who Are You? Using Business Principles to Tell Your Story’ and in my session, I led attendees in a step-by-step approach to constructing a personal narrative on social media. We discussed tone, why-based messaging, and vulnerability (Brené Brown’s research factored heavily in my presentation, naturally, as did Elaine Benes) as keys to successful storytelling on social media.
I guided the audience through the four steps of storytelling on social media:
Assess: know your audience; know your inputs (data points, facts, and key takeaways)
Educate: respect your reader; add value; integrate data into a narrative
Collaborate: our stories don’t happen in a vacuum, so we share our stories and get feedback
Iterate: get peer and audience feedback, then make adjustments to your message
This isn’t a ‘one and done’ process, but a continuous cycle to apply to the messages and stories we share both on and offline. When we regularly evaluate and measure the impact our message has on its intended audience (the LinkedIn SSI score is my current favorite social media analytical tool), we can make incremental improvements to the story we’re telling and ensure we’re sharing a unified message across all channels and formats, from longform blog posts to status updates to microcopy on our website.
Modulating tone across social media channels is crucial (and also the easiest thing to adjust): what we share (and how we share it) on Facebook may differ greatly from how we use Instagram or LinkedIn. The graphic above is an illustration of how I personally use social media: Facebook has always been a personal venue and LinkedIn is strictly professional, whereas my Instagram is a blend of both. Establishing how you use various social media platforms will help you write and tell your story with a unified message in a venue-appropriate tone (enter: LinkedIn is not Facebook).
Of all the information I presented in my Social Media Week talk, the most important has to do with the Brené Brown quote preceding this post: stories are just data with a soul, and remembering this is the key to getting our message to land with our audience. Stories are memorable when they employ emotion: when we as the reader or listener are able to empathize and find ourselves in the narrative being shared, we are much more inclined to recall the data points embedded within the story. Knowing how to mix feelings with data in a compelling way is the magic formula for effective storytelling — and the secret to social media.
(Want to see my whole Social Media Week presentation? Reach out and I’ll send you my slide deck! And the photo on this post is by Ashlee Newman Photography at the Polish Your Profile event: check her out if you need event photography in the Austin area.)