How to TELL YOUR STORY ON social media

You may be familiar with Simon Sinek’s Ted Talk, “How Great Leaders Inspire Action?”  If not, pause, watch it and come back to this post. 

In his Ted Talk, Sinek speaks to the importance of identifying not just who you are as a company or what your business does, but why you do what you do. Inspiring action in your business is about finding your “why” and using that to communicate with your audience, your customers and ultimately drive sales.

​Find Your Why

Your “why” is the reason you get out of bed in the morning. The reason you do what you do and love what you do. That passion and spark you have for your work are so much more effective if shared with others and social media is a great way to convey and communicate that message. 

​Identify Your Audience

Who is your ideal customer? Where are they? What are they looking for? What’s the best way to reach them? How can your business benefit them? One way to go about identifying your audience is with a tool called social listening. Social listening helps you discover brand sentiment and allows you to track what people are saying about your business online. Once you have a complete understanding of who your audience is, you will be better able to tailor your content to their wants and needs. ​

Strategically Select Your Social Media Channels

Finding the proper channels to tell your story is also pivotal for success and there is no one size fits all solution. One common misconception that businesses have is that you need to have a presence on every social media channel in order to be credible. False. If you don’t have a substantial visual library, Instagram doesn’t make sense for you. Concentrating on a couple of channels where you know you have an audience is much more effective than trying to juggle five different channels where no one is listening to you. ​

Create a Robust Content Strategy

If you are not seeing a return on your social media investment, more often than not, it’s not because you have a bad product or bad service offering. It’s because you’re not telling the story of who you are as a business in a way that relates to your customers. All too often we see brands promote products by saying, “We’re the best! Buy our product!” But why are you the best? 

Developing a content/social media strategy for your business will allow you to draw a clear roadmap as to how you are going to tell your story, effectively reach your audience, and promote your business.

It may be tempting to talk about all of the amazing things that your company provides, but take a step back and really strategize. Hone in on a few service offerings within your business rather than throwing everything at your audience at once. Well crafted content signals to your audience that your services are valuable and ensure that your message is clear.

Provide a Thoughtful & Unique Narrative

Customers are so used to the same old, “We’re the best, buy our product” language. Differentiating your business in a way that is easy for your customers to understand will make them more inclined to give you a shot. You also want to build a narrative around your brand that does more than simply drive traffic to your website. 

Leveraging industry buzzwords and keywords in your social media content is a great way to position yourself in a way that is easy for your customers to find you when researching online. Creating an identifiable and creative hashtag for your business is also an effective way to cultivate brand recognition and make it easy for your audience to remember and search for you on social media. Accompanying these buzzwords and hashtags with picture and video is an easy way to draw more eyes to the content you are distributing.

Humanize Your Organization

Promoting your services is important for creating revenue for the business, but there is more of your story to tell beyond your products and offerings. Creating posts that highlight employees within your organization, birthdays, anniversaries, and sharing client testimonials help your audience see the real people behind the walls of your business. The history and people behind your company have made it what it is today, so don’t be afraid to celebrate that on social. 

As Simon says, “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it,” so tell them why!