What Snapchat Told Me About Storytelling

I was asked to review someone’s Facebook business page recently. It was set up correctly and they were posting regular content, but there was something missing.

That something was storytelling. I’ve talked about storytelling before on the blog. In fact, I devoted a whole month to it once, demonstrating how businesses were using storytelling to succeed at Facebook, Twitter and to create better websites. But it wasn’t until I started using Snapchat that I really began to embrace it fully.

Watch to find out what Snapchat taught me about storytelling

My need to stay interesting means that for Snapchat I’m creating, what I hope are better stories. Sometimes they are stories of my day, other times I’m sharing tutorials, sometimes I’m chasing my cats around the house with a cucumber.

Telling a story using 10-second snippets of video or photos with the addition of a small amount of text or sketching has really brought my creative side out.

Here are a few things I’ve learned

1. People really are interested in what you do in your day if you tell the story right
2. The story of the build up to something is as interesting as the actual thing. So if you are preparing for a photo shoot, learning a new skill, or brainstorming, all of this makes good viewing.
3. People want to know about the real you. Now this is a scary concept and one I’ve talked about before. We don’t have to let it all hang out but we do need to let a bit of ourselves in. I’ve had comments from my Snapchat followers telling me that thing they like about my account is that it’s very ‘me’.

Getting to know people on Snapchat does feel more personal, more friendly and as long as they are putting themselves across right more trustworthy.

So how can we apply this lesson to our business?

• Make sure all our social media posts are written in a conversational tone of voice. Write your posts as if you are telling a story to a friend or customer
• Show people what’s going on behind the scenes. Show them your office, the people you work with.
  Share snippets of knowledge or your take on industry news
• Consider live streaming, making a video or recording podcasts. These tools make our customers feel closer to us as they begin to know what we look like and sound like.
• Always aim to be entertaining, think creatively about how you can get your point across. Maybe a series of visuals will tell it far better than the written word.