To Be A Media Influencer, Your Social Needs To Be One Continuous Story Of Your Life

What do individuals who are great at social media like marketer Gary Vaynerchuk, YouTuber Yousef Erakat, and content creator Casey Neistat all have in common?

They’re all great storytellers.

When it comes to marketing yourself and being good at social, you have to learn to become a great storyteller. So here are the only 2 essential lessons you have to learn in order to become a better storyteller on social media:

1) Make your social media about your life first, and ideas second

Individuals like Gary Vaynerchuk, who is an entrepreneur and marketer, understand that if you want to become great at social media, then your social media has to become one giant continuous story of your life. It should consist of multiple journeys where each journey has a beginning, a middle, an end, and a plot to it.

This idea is what Gary’s entire social media has been based around.

If you follow Gary Vaynerchuk, then you probably know that he wants to someday buy the NFL team, The New York Jets. You may also know that he was born in the former Soviet Union. And everything in the middle has been his journey. It’s a journey that has consisted of being a “D” and “F” student, building his family liquor store business from a $3-million business to a $60-million business, and starting a marketing agency with his younger brother that he has grown from 0 employees to over 600 employees in 5 years. It’s been an interesting story to follow and it’s a journey that people want to be apart of. It’s engaging and it’s unique because it goes beyond just providing “value” to the audience.

Providing value on social media, whether you do that with inspirational quotes or simple ideas that help improve people’s lives is important, but learn to throw your story in there as well. If you don’t then you risk not connecting with people because people just aren’t that interested in only seeing you tweet/share an inspirational quote. People want to know what you’re up to. They want to know what you’ve done, what you’re doing, what you want to do, and how you’re overcoming your daily struggles to do it.

Without an attention grabbing narrative, people will lose interest. So make your life a story that you edit often and take your audience along for the journey.

2) Be vulnerable - Don’t worry about your story being perfect

People don’t always want to hear about your triumphs, they want to hear about your humanity. As people, we will easily get bored if we only hear about all the great things you’ve accomplished. The latter however, talking about your struggle, is what will make you sound human. These types of stories will enchant us. They’ll grab our attention and keep us coming back for more.

This is why YouTuber Yousef Erakat, also known as FouseyTube, has around 9 million subscribers on his YouTube channel. Yousef is not scared to be vulnerable.

Yousef openly talks about his depression, addiction, insecurities, and anxiety with his audience. But he also shows how he overcomes these challenges and still finds a way to succeed. Last year, Yousef won the Streamy Award for ‘Best Show of The Year’. This year, he won the Streamy for ‘Entertainer of The Year.’ He also filmed two movies, bought his parents a big house, and even did a world comedy tour. Yousef has used his YouTube channel to storytell the highs of his life, but more importantly, also the lows. His next journey is to become a motivational speaker and it’s a story and journey that is inspirational and relatable enough to attract an audience who cares.

This doesn’t mean that you have to voice your insecurities onto the internet as well, but what you should do, is talk about the things that you’re struggling with in your professional life and talk about how you overcame them. This could be about persisting for a year at something and not seeing any results at first or failing in business, but then being successful in the next one. Remember that flaws are what make stories interesting, and more relatable for your audience to listen to.

When storytelling your life, don't worry about polishing every little detail of your story. Instead, learn to just tell it. Sharing personal stories will make you feel vulnerable, but it's that vulnerability that will resonate with and connect you to other people.

Parting thoughts

Storytelling has always been an important part of human existence and is what enables successful individuals today like Gary and Yousef to communicate and connect with a large group of people. Whether people know it or not, everyone has a story to tell and a platform to tell it on, but a story is not just a personal anecdote used to illustrate a point, although it can be. A great story is a tale of your personal struggle as you strive to achieve whatever your goals may be. The world has enough anecdotes to listen to, but not enough great stories by individuals who are brave enough to tell them.

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Edited by LinkedIn Campus Editor Miki Ding