What 2 Billion Social Media Users Mean for Brand Storytelling

Social media allows us to connect with 1000s of people with the click of a mouse. Experts predict by 2020 there will be 2.95 billion social media users, that is approximately half of the human population. Certainly, social media and the digital age is reawakening our innate human sense that we are all connected.

One hundred million years ago early-man would venture into the wilderness to explore, hunt for food and return to the village to share their adventures with those who stayed behind. At night, sitting around the fire, they would share their tales through dance (often imitating animals) drawings in the dirt and the first attempts at language.

The deeply ingrained instinct to listen and retell stories which allow us to share and thrive.

What links today’s social user with early man’s tales around the fire is 'story.' We have a deeply ingrained instinct to listen and retell stories which allow us to share and thrive. In his revelatory work, Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari makes the case that Homo Sapiens evolved to dominance while Neanderthals and other groups of early man faded away for two reasons: one Homo Sapiens learned to control fire and two, they learned to communicate and created communities to raise their young, feed and protect themselves. Story was certainly an important element in both of these developments.

Numerous surveys show that a large part of the time we spend on the Internet is with social networking. In 2010, according to a Nielsen study, Americans spent 36% of their time online communicating and networking on social media, blogs, email and texting. It is easy to understand that ‘social’ is fulfilling a deep-seated need to communicate, network and create a community that has slipped away since the early days of sitting around a fire sharing stories.

Brand storytellers are challenged to harness that time spent online to create awareness, shape perception and drive results for their brand. However, we are also challenged to find non-traditional advertising and marketing ways to do so. Why? Because the culture of communicating via social is built on authenticity and trust. The very same attributes you may want to be associated with your brand. Running TV commercials, click bait and other forms of traditional online marketing can erode authenticity and trust. 

Story is a very human endeavor. In creating stories that engage with social media users we must look at the elements of story that allow it to engage on a human level.

Story Elements

• Make sure you have a beginning, middle and an end (Act 1, Act 2, Act 3)
• Tell an engaging story to the audience: character and action working together
• Speak truthfully
• Infused personalities into the story
• Create characters the audience roots for 
• Never give it all way
• The end should relate back to the beginning
• Passion and Trust – story requires this, as does a brand
• Conflict

There are many ways to use story online to promote your brand in an engaging way. Here is one example.