Storytelling on Social Media

This week I attended a webinar called The Public Relationships of Stories: Context, Connection and Alternative Storytelling Techniques. It was a panel discussion with PR experts: Scott Monty (@scottmonty), who did crisis communications for Ford Motor Company; Richard Binhammer (@RBinhammer), one of the first adopters of social media for business, previously at DELL; and Doug Simon (@DSSimonDoug), CEO of an award-winning media firm. I participated in the conversation following the hashtag #HelloPR16.

What I learned: 

Social media is just that – social. Social media is changing the way we do PR, marketing and events. We can no longer be in “broadcast mode,” but instead have to consider that these social media campaigns need to speak to real humans. We need to “bridge the gap” between our desired messaging and what our audience wants to hear.

How do we do that?

We remember and embrace the fact that we are human—and we follow similar social norms when thinking about engagement on social media. We listen and try to understand the people and conversations that are happening before jumping into a conversation with our two cents. Who are the influencers? What’s are the sub-topics in the conversations?

We don’t talk about how great we are or how great our products are, but instead we think about how to add value to the conversation and appeal to human emotion in a relevant way. Can we make people laugh? Can we showcase our heroes (i.e. our employees or brand advocates, the folks who have been impacted by our work and products, etc.)? Is there a resource we can provide?

We analyze where these conversations are happening. We should meet people with our social media campaigns wherever they already are. Should we be on Facebook? Do we want to try a new social media platform like Snap Chat or Periscope?

We need to stay on top of the ever-changing trends, but be thoughtful about those trends. New research shows that video is now the preferred medium on social media and 64% of consumers are more likely to buy a product if they’ve seen a video about it. But, it’s important we consider how our audiences are watching these videos. Are folks on busy trains or on the soccer field with kids? Perhaps we need to think about including video captioning.

We need to pay attention to the analytics and the data science. We need to measure our success. By understanding these numbers, we can become more nimble about adjusting our content and approaches in real-time to reflect engagement trends and better speak to our audience. Is the content resonating? If not, what can we do to improve it? How can we learn from the success or failure to improve future content creation and social media campaign development?

 I pose a lot of questions because there’s no one right answer, just like there’s no one right way to do basic human interactions. Social media campaigns that are done right take time and thoughtfulness to plan and execute successfully.

I thought it appropriate to end with a summary tweet: 

You can watch the webcast for free here.