“A story doesn’t have to be simple, it doesn’t have to be one-dimensional but … you need to find the clearest, most engaging way of telling it.”
~ Salman Rushdie, Nobel Prize-Winning Novelist
Storytelling is crucial to marketing your business. It always has been and always will be critical. Stories set the stage for businesses to become more appealing to their audience. Once an audience thinks a business is appealing or interesting, they then want to engage and spark more business centric or industry related conversations with your business. The way in which you get your business’ message to the masses is where the real fun happens.
Twitter is a great social media tool to use to innovatively tell a story. In this post, I’ll highlight four actionable ways to use Twitter to weave a captivating story.
1.Trending Hashtags
When searching on Twitter the trending hashtags at that particular moment pop up. There is an option to see about five to twenty different trending hashtags/ topics. If you can find one relevant to your business and use it to share business or brand related thoughts it can serve as an excellent way to start a conversation with thousands to millons of others buzzing about the same subject.
Below are trending hashtags that were active the evening of Wednesday, March 8, 2017 on #InternationalWomensDay. There are tons of hashtags shown below that are unrelated to one another however thousands to millions of individuals and businesses are all using these hashtags to hold virtual conversations or share thoughts related to the same topic at once.
Time and time again, Rosetta stone, a language learning and immersion company has comically used trending hashtags to propel their company’s agenda. Back in 2015, when the infamous and hilarious rap beef transpired between rapper Meek Mill and Drake, #MeekMill and #Drake were trending topics on Twitter.
After Meek Mill dropped a long awaited yet convoluted diss track to Drake’s numerous diss tracks, Rosetta chimed in with this hilarious tweet:
Above is an example of how Rosetta Stone successfully played on the rap drama and got in on the action by using the trending hashtag #MeekMill while still staying true to their brand and the service they offer the world.
2. Share Multiple Pictures
Research shows that Tweets with photos get 313% more engagement. You can add up to four photos/ images to a tweet. By adding photos/ images to a tweet you can exceed the 140 character limitation by adding more text to the images or showing a progression of a story without using text.
Below is an image from the 2017 Super Bowl LI that was posted by the New York Times twitter account. They’ve masterfully used images to highlight some of the exciting moments of the Super Bowl without having to use even 100 characters.
To take it a step further they then provide a link to an article on the website to really unfold the entire story. This tweet serves as a small yet captivating storytelling methodology.
3. Create Your Own Hashtag
Create your own hashtag to really curate your business’ story. Your business’ hashtag may not go viral but it can be used to drive home a social media strategy, further explain a consumer product or help reveal a new business initiative.
Target created the hashtag #TargetLittles to identify the children of Target adult shoppers. Thousands of Target shoppers now use the hashtag to give kudos on how their children love Target products or enjoyed an experience at Target.
4. Tweetstorm
Don’t let Twitter’s pesky 140 character limitation confine your ability to convey your story or message. A tweetstorm is a series of tweets that pick up where the last one left off and often look like a mini-essay if all complied together.
To string your tweets together, reply to your previous tweet and viola!
There are tons of ways to creatively tell a story. Give these four options a try and if you are up to it, try combining some of the options to really get innovative.
digitaldashpr.com 