How To Build Up Your Brand's Storyline On Social Media

There are hundreds of tactics being used by businesses across the world to promote their brands.

Companies are convinced to invest millions of dollars in advertising campaigns to make people familiar with the brand. Thousands of people tend to purchase brands they know and trust. It usually happens due to the immense number of ads being shown on social media platforms. In contrast, in some cases, it's just customer loyalty.

Brand storytelling has become a new trend in the last couple of years. There are even several movies being made about a brand's journey. Considering the rising competition, companies are convinced that it is difficult to survive and grow without proper brand recognition.

A brand is not a name of a company that people know. Sometimes people relate the distinctive qualities of a product with its brand.

For example, as Apple products are considered high-quality products, whenever someone thinks of the brand "Apple," the next thing that comes to mind is quality. When a brand has such a strong influence over customers' minds, it is easier to let the market believe that what it offers is top-notch.

Image Source: Apple

It takes years for companies to build a strong connection with their customers by developing a community where they can directly interact with the people.

Importance Of Brand Story

It is essential to understand what the brand story is and how it is not just about your website or how the company was founded. Your brand's storyline portrays who you are and what you stand for. It defines the stage of every interaction customers have with the brand, in-store and online. The brand story must define the purpose of an organization to both the customers and the staff.

Brand storytelling has now become an integral part of modern marketing. In particular, PR and brand development firms put a lot of emphasis on brand stories. People have now moved past the stereotype of their buying behavior. The price and functionality are no longer important to a certain group of people. Customers now look beyond price tags and good deals.

Consumers now want something different, unique, and fascinating. They want to connect with the back story and ethos that relates to their sense of self.

Many marketing experts believe that a brand story is about creating a powerful emotional connection between your company, your customer, employees, and the general public.

Businesses that focus on identifying their target market and starting a brand story that engages consumers to exert their efforts in the right direction.

The Role Of A Brand's Storyline In The Success Of A Business

Companies do not feel hesitant to allocate vast amounts of funds when it comes to customer acquisition strategy. Companies have become more customer-centric and prefer to shape their business activity and process according to customer satisfaction touchpoints.

By building up a brand's storyline, companies manage to deliver a strong message that creates customer goodwill and attracts more customers towards the brand.

Great brand stories enable small retailers to attract new customers without allocating considerable funds in the marketing budget.

A compelling brand story increases sales and allows companies to scale the culture that fosters the brand experience.

Effective branding has now become a critical success factor in such a competitive environment.

If a business executes the branding strategy efficiently and effectively, the chances of success escalate.

If a business's storyline is not appealing to the customers and general public, the chances of success are pretty low. Brand development is an ongoing process.

It never stops. Companies add value to their products and services to enhance the brand image. A brand's journey can become an intense business strength if it is portrayed as a brand storyline.

How To build Your Brand Story

Here are the necessary steps you'll have to take to build your brand story.

Determine why your brand exists?

The first thing a business should do while building a brand story is raising the question, "why does the brand exist in the first place? It is vital for everyone working with the brand to know the purpose behind what they do.

Questions mentioned below could be helpful to figure this out:

• Why do we exist?
• What is our mission?
• What motivated me to start my business?
• How do we contribute to the world?

Think of your brand journey and focus on the purpose of your brand beyond products. While looking forward to the first step to building a brand story, start with recalling your passion for getting into the business in the first place. It is not necessary to have a groundbreaking storyline. Instead, it should be authentic, fascinating, inspiring, and encouraging.

Understand your product

The product or service of the brand should relate to the brand storyline. If the product is not relatable to the storyline, your brand might achieve a rise in fan base, but there would not be much effect on the sales.

Lack of self-awareness is considered one of the most common mistakes brands make when building a storyline.

It would not be wise to sell Kia the same way you sell Mercedes. They both are cars but with different performance, quality, price point, and durability.

To discover how your product fits into your brand storyline, you must ask yourself the following questions:

• What is the quality and price point of my product?
• What makes my product different from competitor's products?
• Does my product act as a problem solver, or does it just make consumers feel good in a certain way?

Understand your audience

Without understanding the targeted audience, it is impossible to build a storyline that is effective enough to attract the customer's attention. Suppose the pain points and passion of the targeted audience are not targeted in a brand story effectively.

In that case, the brand might fail to create a significant influence. It would be best to have a firm grip of your customer's preferences, likes, dislikes, tastes, lifestyle, and quality of life.

It is essential to give a direction to your brand story in a way that is easily relatable to the targeted audience. Your brand story should be able to sneak into your customers' lives and then push them to have positive feelings towards the brand.

There are a set of questions that you should ask yourself while understanding your audience.

• Who is my current customer?
• Who is my ideal customer?
• What is at stake if the consumer refuses to buy my product?
• Do customers have many alternative options or not?

There are two different approaches. Some businesses focus on ideal customers, whereas other companies try to appeal to all customers. It is not enough to understand and relate to your ideal customers. It would be best to build meaningful connections between the brand and the audience to make the audience buy your product.

Implementing the story

Creating the brand storyline is one thing, but implementing it across all areas of your business is a whole different process. Every minor or significant interaction and impression counts.

Every impression and interaction would bring your brand story to life. In such a competitive environment, A brand has few moments to communicate and make sales.

If the brand fails to communicate its message clearly and cleanly in one sentence or glance over a logo, it has not achieved the desired outcome from its efforts. Social media has become the most important platform for businesses to communicate with their customers. The customer would scroll up your storyline or brand logo to not explain what it is over a glimpse.

Be Consistent

Businesses need to communicate brand stories consistently as if the story or message is inconsistent. It becomes less impactful and diluted. The effort to display the brand story must be consistent in all areas and across all channels. Your brand's areas should be consistent in communication, including social media marketing, logo, and website.

The significance of social media is just undeniable when it comes to communicating brand stories. Social media has become an essential tool for businesses to know how customers react to their activities and promotional efforts. Through social media platforms, companies manage to visualize their brand story to catch the customer's eye within no time.

Have an authentic brand story

Most of the customers are smart enough to understand what is real and what's fake. Hence it is imperative that your brand story authentically represents your brand, you, and your products.

Most customers easily read poorly crafted sales or advertising copy in seconds, and it is not a favorable outcome for a brand.

A lack of authenticity is usually a result of a lack of understanding of customers. The focus should be on how practical, honest, understandable, and relatable the brand storyline is.

Customers are always reactive to something new and unique. Efforts to make a brand story more fascinating would result in more customer interaction with the brand.

Document your brand story

As consistency and authenticity are such vital characteristics of a brand story, documenting it for reference for employees and customers will help a business become more successful.

Establishing a brand story and essential guidelines helps a business to keep the employees on the same page. It reduces the chances of brand stories being mistold or misinterpreted.

While documenting your brand storyline, the essential thing that matters is the logo. Without a good logo representing the brand's identity, the chances are high that the brand would not have a significant impact.

The logo of a brand is the critical element that differentiates its online presence from its competitors. Those businesses who made the mistake of avoiding the importance of logos end up losing their brand identity.

Many startups with tight budgets at the initial stage of brand development feel hesitant to build a brand logo due to budget constraints.

Mojomox is the best option for such startups. It's a free online logo maker tool for startup businesses on a tight budget. There are some other components as well that a business must consider while documenting a brand story.

• Topography and visual style guidelines
• Brand voice and tone
• Slogan
• Brand values
• Mission and vision

The Role Of Social Media In Building A Brand Storyline Online

Brand Storytelling is an art. It gives definition and meaning to any piece of information and makes it engaging and exciting. Social media influence has been around for years now, and businesses have realized the significance of digital platforms to promote their brands.

It's not only about promoting when it comes to using social media to tell your brand story.

Social media is considered an effective tool to sell brand stories that build brand loyalty, engage customers, and generate sales. Several successful companies include their brand story in social media marketing strategies.

The effectiveness of social media to create an online presence of a brand depends upon how well a brand story is incorporated in the social media marketing strategy.

While considering building a solid online presence of your brand, you need to work in the right direction from the beginning. Here is how you can go about it.

Decide on your goal

One of the first things to do before you begin to tell your brand's story is to determine the company's marketing goal. This knowledge will enable you to select the right social media platform and appropriate structure for your stories.

Suppose the primary marketing goal is to increase sales. In that case, your brand story should emphasize telling customers how the product would be helpful for them.

If the goal is to build emotional connection, your story should revolve around charitable causes that your company supports. In simple words, when a business is clear about the marketing strategy, it becomes easier to provide the right kind of narrative direction.

Learn how to tell a story

The purpose of the brand storyline is to target the emotional touchpoints of the audience to create a sense of bonding between the brand and customers. While planning to execute a well-structured brand storyline, there are five essential elements that you must consider.

Characters: it would be best to have at least two characters.
Content: This refers to what, when, who, and where.
Conflict: The juiciest part of the story.
Resolution: The epiphany, realization, and takeaway.
Motivation: The actual reason behind the actions of the characters.

When it comes to the structure of your story, the "why" should be pointing out to the call-to-action. The customers should be convinced to seek out more information or visit your store and make a purchase.

If your brand story does not excite the audience to the extent they take action. You need to work on your story again and make it more convincing.

Use different channels

Using multiple social media platforms will open up various doors for your brand to reach an untapped audience who might be unaware of your brand's existence. Each social media platform has its crux, do not feel hesitant to explore them.

For instance, Facebook timelines are considered perfect for sharing status updates, videos, and images that tell a story over different periods. Businesses can use the 'Milestone' feature to share the brand's special moments (such as its founding date) with their customers.

Twitter is considered ideal for making announcements and sharing breaking news. It captures the audience's attention, even if the life of the news or announcement is for a short period.

Many startups prefer to use photo-sharing websites like Instagram and Pinterest to create visual stories. Similarly, Youtube could also be used to share a set of videos. There are numerous ways to tell your stories. You can use videos, images, infographics, written words.

If you don't want to go through the hassle of logging in again & again to different social platforms. You can use a social media management tool such as Statusbrew.

You can publish content to multiple social networks with a single click & even schedule content for months in advance. Statusbrew also delivers all your engagements (comments, messages, reviews, etc.) across social in a Unified Inbox.

Let customers do the talking too

Customer interaction is an essential part of a brand's storyline, which allows brands to connect with their audience more effectively.

One of the strategic ways of making your customers relate to your brand story is by providing them an opportunity to share their comments/opinions on them. It would also be better if you even facilitate them with videos, images, and status updates.

Most social media marketing experts recommend brands to have a section for customer testimonials on their social media page.

It would enable brands to create an emotional connection with their followers and gain their trust over time. When customers engage in social media activities and comment on brands' storylines and other online content, it spreads awareness about your brand over the internet.

Make your stories relevant

One of the most considered critical success factors of a brand story is how well it defines its purpose and core values.

Your customers should be able to relate to your brand when they go through your brand storyline. An engaging brand's storyline always includes emotional attributes to attract the attention of a targeted audience.

Secondly, nowadays, social media has just so much more to show. No one is interested in knowing what transpired in the past.

That is why it is important to keep your social media sites updated with unique and fresh information regularly. Your brand stories must include something that relates to an ongoing trend or fashion.

While staying relevant, it is also crucial for a brand storyline to evolve and add something new. Portray the challenges being faced by the business in the journey of succession on social media platforms.

Make your customers know about the efforts behind building the brand. The content on social media is becoming increasingly competitive with every passing day, and digital content quality has to be improved to preserve online presence.

Conclusion

The journey of building a unique and fascinating brand storyline needs resources and creative efforts. Brand storyline revolve around creativity and relatability. Exploring ideas to make the brand relate to the audience escalates the online presence of brands. A well-scripted and well-structured brand storyline guarantee the brand's success.

Tags

• Social Media Strategy
• Social Networks