They are called Stories for a reason


Now that you have some awesome stories ideas, we will dive into how you can actually use Stories to tell a story! To put it into more practical terms, this is the format I've used on the most successful Stories for myself and my clients:

Before we get into structuring your Story, though, you'll want to ask yourself what the purpose of your Story is. This will make building out the “plot” easier. You'll also want to think about what problem you are solving for your audience. This is what I call the three P's of Marketing:

  • People: Who you are making the Story for (who you're trying to help)
  • Problem: What problem does your audience have?
  • Purpose: How will your product or service solve that problem?

Once you know who you're serving and how you're serving them, we can get into structuring the plot of your Story. 

 

Every good story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. In book and movie speak, this could look like an inciting incident, rising action leading to a climax, and a resolution after the climax, but this is how I've adapted that three-act structure for marketing on social media:

  • Attention Grabber: This is typically the first slide of a Story. The idea is to hook your audience right away so that they want to continue watching. This is often the introduction to the problem your audience is facing.
  • Body to lend context: These slides lend narrative to the attention-grabbing slide and often list steps to solve the problem that the attention-grabbing slide is agitating.
  • Call-to-Action: Now, this doesn't necessarily need to be a direct call to a sale; this could be as simple as inserting a slider sticker or a quiz sticker. The point is to let your audience acknowledge that they've completed the story loop you opened with your attention-grabbing slide.


Here is an example for a wine brand: This Story is intended to reach non-wine club members. The problem it is going to solve is that having to go to the store to buy wine is inconvenient and having to choose between a ton of wine is frustrating. The purpose of the Story is to get more people to sign up for the wine club so that they can get delicious wine delivered to them on a regular schedule:

  • Slide 1: Wine Club Manager saying to camera, “Between trying to figure out what wine to choose and not knowing if it will be any good, buying wine from the store can be inconvenient and frustrating.”
  • Slide 2: Wine Club Manager: “But joining Awesome Winery's Wine Club means you never have to be bamboozled by a bad bottle again!”
  • Slide 3: Graphic: for $150/quarter, you will get 4 bottles of delicious wine delivered right to your door in March, May, October, and December.
  • Slide 4: Graphic: Members also get 2 complimentary tastings at Awesome Tasting Room six times per year and exclusive access to members only events and wine releases.
  • Slide 5: Wine Club Manager to camera: "DM us for more information or click the link [insert link button] to join!"


Your Action Item: Go through the three P's of Marketing to determine the plot for one of the story ideas you came up with last week. Then outline the structure of it.

 

Next week we will talk about how to take your stories from meh to aMEHzing (I am SO sorry for that terrible pun.)