7 Ways To Use Inclusive Storytelling To Optimize Social Media Strategy
"That sinking feeling”-
Think of a classic scenario in the life of social media manager . After numerous so-called amateurish attempts, finally you conceptualize one campaign with your max dose of creativity, that catches the fancy of your boss and instantly gets hailed as the elusive next big idea. The campaign, is declared the holy grail of outreach, branding and promotion. But the dazzling 'Big Idea' after
the initial release euphoria, soon gets afflicted by identity crisis in big, bad world of social media with online traction tapering off within days. Like
the clueless captain of ill-fated Titanic, you try to revive the dashboard of the
sinking media craft but to your
utter horror, you find yourself floating among the wrecks of similarly glorified past digital campaigns without any sign of visible impact.Within days, from star social media manager you become the scapegoat for low ROI and illusive customer base.
This happens as the much alluded power points and “Idea boards" presented with much fanfare in corporate meetings are based on fundamentally flawed content strategy. Breaking
the secret code of true social media engagement is
far fetched goal for most in digital fraternity, with only 5% of
total content able to achieve the unicorn status being truly 'viral'.
Let's understand how 'storytelling' narrative can help you to leverage your social media content and reinforce your brand communication .
Now the “Connect” thing is outcome of our evolutionary psychology to survive by communicating with each other. It begins from dawn of civilization whether it’s early cave men telling hunting stories around the fire pit or the crowded old bazaars filled with chaotic cacophony of numerous vendors pitching their eclectic mix of wares. They are all trying to communicate with their communities.
During his college days the small village tea shops, used to paste 2-3 pages from popular newspaper on the boards just next to their shop. Newspaper being rare commodity in remote village, people used to gather outside the shops to read the newspaper, resulting in sale of tea. Later the tea shop boards became so popular that if their was any important village event like puja, fairs or arrival of village theater - it will be mentioned on these tea seller boards. Even someone visiting village after gap of years, would come to know of all recent highlights, by just glancing at these storyboards.
Today the social media is the same storyboard for the big global village and the e-commerce players, who are selling almost everything, including 'tea' online & are again the content publishers. The more 'stories' you have about your product, services or ideas, more people will read about them and more people will drive down your marketing funnel. 
3. Tell #The Brand Story
All advertising and marketing promotions are after all just good content. That's why great brands have engaging narratives which appeals to wide audience by packaging their marketing message in a story.
Customers are more likely to recommend a brand with which they feel emotional connect. People are 22 times more likely remember the story rather then stats & figures that your content mentioned.A good story telling format should focus on;
- creating a narrative of a positive outcome through change.
- The content should give a new perspective on existing order
- Relate the brand values with ideas reflected by the story
- Mapping the content as per the business goal, brand image and contemporary social landscape.
4 # Create Inclusive content
Social media content should reflect the collective social intelligence of that organisation in terms refined and curated voices of customers and employees. People love to share stories that's about people like them.
Most often than not companies have a page on social media, having thousands views but almost zero engagement. That's thousand opportunities lost. It means even thousand people saw your page they didn't find anything worthy to share. I am not being unfair to marketers, being one myself, but a rigid templatized content development process, depending exclusively on social media managers is not going to work.
Give your customers and your employees opportunity to contribute their stories because they are key actors of your brand story.
“User generated and employees generated content not only add human and emotive angle to your content but also have greater reach. The organic reach of personal social pages in comparison to corporate page is 500% higher and receives on average eight time more engagement. Social media marketing is all about user engagement. The more inclusive the content, the more likely it is to be shared.
5 # Acknowledge consumer diversity
Develop social media platform of your company like opening a window to outer world, from which people from diverse backgrounds can get perspective of your brand's real values and corporate culture.
Just like in the real world, our brand stories should reflect the real people who are interacting with our businesses on day to day basis. Today’s consumers want to see people they relate to represented in the marketing and advertising campaigns of their favorite brands. Inclusivity increases the accessibility of your products by overcoming social bias to
gender,age, disability,sexual orientation and ethnicity. This cannot be achieved without authentic representation of customers and the people who work in the organization.
As a marketing professional I have seen a certain company advocating equal benefits for transgender customer as key highlight of their brand campaign, had managers who were actually biased against LGBQT community , leading to dicothmoy between expected branding goal and actual marketing outcome. To really achieve such goal you need diversity as part of creative
process of content curation.
Using stock images in advertisment campaign or stereotyping a community or ethnic group without research into its real social context not only discredits your creative output but can also be disastrous in certain situations. Until the idea of diversity is not truly ingrained in your corporate culture it's wouldn't translate into your brand story. It not about just being right. It’s about being real.
6# Stay awake to social realities and be ethical
Brand story should be rooted in current reality and should promote a meaningful dialogue around those issues.
Time and again we have seen explosive impact of social media on mass perception, from politics (Arab spring) to gender (Me Too) or in retail (Big Billion sale). This kind of mass transformational impact on social behavior or influencing people to people contact can only be achieved when your campaign is alive and awake to social realities around them. Recently during #Black Life Matter movement in US , while some big companies in myopic haste to appropriate the cause (Pepsi Kendell campaign') made a complete fool of themselves getting tons of online backlash ,on other hand there were few brands who took a calibrated response after studying the consumers socio-political mindset and were appreciated. The brand need not to become symbol for any political idea or social cause as an opportunistic marketing ploy but as part of social ecosystem need to have a relevant appeal.
Time and again we have seen explosive impact of social media on mass perception, from politics (Arab spring) to gender (Me Too) or in retail (Big Billion sale). This kind of mass transformational impact on social behavior or influencing people to people contact can only be achieved when your campaign is alive and awake to social realities around them. Recently during #Black Life Matter movement in US , while some big companies in myopic haste to appropriate the cause (Pepsi Kendell campaign') made a complete fool of themselves getting tons of online backlash ,on other hand there were few brands who took a calibrated response after studying the consumers socio-political mindset and were appreciated. The brand need not to become symbol for any political idea or social cause as an opportunistic marketing ploy but as part of social ecosystem need to have a relevant appeal.
So what's the point?
While I would very much like to conclude this here, but I would need to respond to much deserved smirk from social media critics and some genuine sarcasm from my veterans colleagues saying 'any content with right concoction of creative vibes and some sparkling storytelling may get you overnight viral fame but does it have real business relevance ?"
So it brings us to most important point, that needs to be mentioned before closing this discussion - keeping your narrative relevant to business goals by use of analytics & standard SOP.
7# Stay true to your analytics
For any true blue marketing professional having clear campaign goal and other milestones is the first rule of social media playbook. What you want to achieve? Is the campaign relevant to your goal? To find answers to these questions standard social media toolkit needs to be in place.
- Campaign objective (reach,views or conversations)
- Campaign budget ( ROI)
- Key campaign idea
- Campaign frequency
- Suitable platforms
- Key social deliverables
- Key milestones
- Key metrics and benchmark
- Timeline and review
Let me reiterate that these basic checklist and analytics is to digital marketer what peddle & compass is to a sailor.
The social media landscape is ever changing with new platforms & features emerging every year. This will surely require you to constantly monitor your social media analytics . But as long as you keep evolving correct social narrative relevant to your business goals you will be able to successfully retain and network with your community.
To sum it up ,lets borrow the famous quote of Kami Huya CEO Zoetica -“The first rule of social media is that everything changes all the time. What won’t change is the community’s desire to network.”
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