June 20, 2023
Has this ever happened to you?
You spend hours crafting the perfect post.
You look at it and think, “Wow, beautiful. This will get tons of engagement.”
You post it and wait enthusiastically for the likes to come in.
24 hours later…
Two likes: One by your mum and another one by a coworker.
“WTF!”
It hurts, right 😂?
The first few posts that I put out there, nada. Crickets. It was very painful.
But don’t worry… In today’s article on Storytelling on Social Media, you’ll learn the 4 steps to craft viral stories.
On social media, it is absolutely crucial to spike curiosity early on. You have a millisecond to stand out in a sea of people creating content.
According to Andrew J Keller, Creative Director at Facebook, the average person scrolls through 300 feet (91 meter) of mobile content every day. That’s a lot of scrolling. While we scroll through a lot of content, we stop for very little. Our brain is like, “boring, boring, boring”. Until something makes us stop.
What makes us stop?
An enticing first sentence. Something unexpected, something that goes against popular belief (e.g., controversial opinion), or something that drops the reader immediately into the action.
Examples:
Go into your actual story. You don’t need an overly complicated story structure. A simple 3-step story structure will do the job:
Curious to know more about story structures? Feel free to check out my article on 6 Steps To Craft A Powerful Story.
Once you’ve shared your story, let the reader know what they can learn from your experience. What lesson do you want them to take away?
I’m a big fan of just having one take-away for every story. You can use the simple phrase “What I learned from that experience is …” to frame your lessons learned. The emphasis here is to focus on one take-away. Give your readers ten take-aways and they won’t remember a single one, but give them one take-away, and they’ll remember it.
The most common call-to-action on social media is to invite your readers to participate in the conversation (Call-to-Conversation). Why does it matter? The moment someone likes or comments on your post, your post will be shown to the network of that person (at least in Linkedin).
In addition, the algorithm recognizes that your post is “hot stuff”, pushing it to more people.
So, how can you ask your network to engage? By asking them about their experience.
Examples:
For that to work, you want to make sure to ask questions that the reader can respond to easily. Don’t make it too deep (“What’s the secret to a fulfilled life?”) or too vague (e.g. “What about you?”). Use simple questions so people don’t have to think too hard about an answer.
For most posts, I’d recommend asking them to leave a comment. But, occasionally, you can also include a more direct call-to-action, for instance, asking them to check out your website, book a demo or send you a message.
That’s it. I hope these tips gave you a great picture of how to craft powerful stories for social media.
So go ahead, give it a try and start crafting a story. If you’re new to posting on social media, this may feel very awkward at first. But once you’ve given it some practice, you’ll get comfortable with it very quickly.
My first stories on social media took me hours to create. Now, it takes me about 10 minutes to write a short story and soon it will take you very little time as well.
Once you’ve published your story, post the link to the comments below. I would love to read and engage with it!
Happy storytelling!
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