“Just tell a story.” It’s repeated so often that storytelling has almost lost its meaning. And yet it’s the most important thing you should be doing on social media.

But what is storytelling and how can you incorporate it into your social media plan?

What is the story of your organization?

This is where your storytelling should start. Some call it a vision, but I like story better. What is your organization about? Why is that important? What is your journey here? Have you conquered anything? What are you looking to conquer? What is your purpose? In other words, what is your organization’s hero journey?

Knowing exactly what the organization is, the kind of story it is telling and why it is important will make telling that story on social media so much easier. But really, we’ve only talked about your organization thus far, and that’s really not all that interesting to most people. I know that’s not what you want to hear, but most people are more interested in themselves and people like themselves. So…

Who can tell your story?

Your organization could tell its own story, but once again, that’s not all that interesting. People will tune out fast and move onto the next thing. But if other people tell your story, especially people who seem like them? Now that’s becoming interesting.

But it can’t be an outright telling of your story, so just any community member with an ability to talk will do. You have to have people with stories who demonstrate what your story is.

So let’s say you’re an organization whose goal is to increase awareness and diagnosis of a disease. If you talk at people about how you do that, it might be a little effective but you just won’t reach full effectiveness. If you, instead, have a community member who demonstrates how that awareness has affected their lives, then the effectiveness of your message bumps up a little.

Start off the process of becoming a storytelling organization by finding those stories that demonstrate your own. The good news is that if you’ve never looked for them before, you probably have loads of people just waiting for you to ask about their story.

How do you tell your story?

I see so many organizations who opt for the storytelling route and then just bomb it. The tactic gets thrown out because it wasn’t implemented correctly. Shoulders are shrugged as they say, “Storytelling just isn’t for us.” Oh it is. You just have to do it better.

What does that look like?

Don’t go big

Keep each story super small. Let’s take that example again of the organization that’s working to increase awareness and diagnosis of a disease. Instead of going in painstaking detail of every step in the diagnostic journey, just focus on one appointment. Give it lots of details and color to demonstrate why this was a groundbreaking appointment. Or maybe it was just a checkup and the groundbreaking part was just going to it. Whatever you choose to focus on, keep it small. People aren’t able to digest big pieces of information on social media, so it’s more likely to stick with them if you focus on one small part of the story. And that means you can keep coming back to that person for more bits of their story, which means loads of content.

Don’t brand it

Organizations feel the need to brand everything. And it makes my eyes roll when I read, “This was made possible by our organization.” Take your need to brand off the table for a second. If people see an image that looks like it belongs from one of their friends instead of a glossy stock photo with logos all over it, they are more likely to stop scrolling to see what it is. When you don’t add extra words to try to own the story, it is shorter and people are more likely to read it. If you just let the story breathe, people are more likely to connect with it. You can follow up later with a post about the tools you have for certain situations or whatever it is, but let the story just live by itself in its simplest form.

Do use their own words

There’s a big difference between a perfectly put together story and a story left in the words of the person telling it. The former is like a glossy stock photo and the latter is like a post from one of your friends. Guess which one will get more engagement. Yup, it’s for sure the one that is like a post from a friend. It is injected with raw emotion that your community will recognize and relate to. And the more relatable it is, the more likely fans are to interact with it. Am I saying leave it alone even if it has severe grammatical and structural problems? Absolutely not. You can clean it up to be more readable, but leave the voice alone so it can shine through to your community.

Look at every post as telling a part of your story

Not every post should be a storytelling post, but it should tell part of your story. That means taking twists and turns, while also backing up some of the narrative with those bits and pieces your audience need to know to continue on with the story, whether that story is theirs or yours. And this is of course where knowing your audience becomes even more important. That will inform the narrative you tell, both by recognizing those stories that are the most important and being able to find them.

How are you using stories in your marketing?