Smart Story telling is essential to your social media strategy, to enable your business to gain traction on Social Media platforms. A recent study by Social Bakers confirms that some brands do post often but receive diminishing returns, whereas others brands don’t post as often but post high performing content.
The report broke story tellers into 4 distinct groups. The shy story tellers tend to have a high level of interactions but don’t push enough content. The sorry story tellers have both a low level of published content and a low level of interactions. We then come to the story tellers we all hate, the spammy story tellers who promise us the sun, moon and stars but produce lots of low level spammy content. The final group is the one we all aim for, the smart story teller. This business brand will produce super content that readers want to read and share, and lots of it.
So how do you know what content to publish? Ask your real life audience what they’d like to know, what they are interested in, how your business can add value to them. Asking your customers outright will give you super insights into the areas they are interested in.
The top story teller on social right now is Mercedes Benz. They are posting on Facebook, on average, every 8 hours. Their posts are a lesson in marketing as they are selling the benefits of the product to their core audience. Their post on the new E-class, of the 15th of July, talks about their journey in developing an accident free and autonomous driving experience. They refer to “driver safety, comfort and stress relief”. This video post alone has over 45,000 views.
Content Type:
Most of their posts are videos referring to the consumer craze for more knowledge, speedily delivered. Pictures speak a thousand words. They know their audience, a key basic requirement of successful marketing strategies. They post about The Open Golf championship at St. Andrews, displaying an exclusive countdown video.
The power of the Hashtag:
They use hashtags such as #TruckerTuesday to broaden their audience. This is a smart move by Mercedes as the Actros Truck is powered by a Mercedes Benz engine. The hashtag exposes the brand to a whole new demographic. They make statements like “you just wouldn’t understand” and post photos of landscapes taken from a truck, branded “the view from the office”.
Post Language:
They talk about “drivers with a vision” and “tight delivery deadlines” and “level headedness”. This story telling distinguishes the brand and creates a brand experience. Although both the E- class and Actros are Mercedes products, the language used is completely different for each market segment.
The lesson on why telling stories is important in Social Media Strategy has been taught well by Mercedes Benz. Check out their Facebook page brand experience for yourself.
