How to Tell Your Story on Social Media

By: Brad Cebulski, Bconnected LLC

We have finally reached a point in society where social media for businesses and organizations is commonplace; however, the question of, “What am I getting out of it?” still remains quite strong. I have been lucky enough to be in this industry for eleven years now, and while the applications, platforms, and pages have changed, the overall philosophy has not - to be “social” with your “media” you need to be authentic to your story.

But how?

To understand “how,” we must first understand “why.” People participate on social media platforms for the sake of connection. Despite whether or not you believe this is healthy for individuals, it is the basis of why they are here. If people are looking for a connection, do you think they care about perfection? Do you think they care about advertisements? Do you think they care about what YOU care about? These are all questions you should be asking yourself before thinking about “how” to capture your story in order to connect with people. For the most part, social media platforms are built to showcase content on pages that are not advertisements. We call this “organic content.” Now, there are plenty of advertising opportunities and advertisements that are wedged in between all of the noise, but it’s not how the platforms are fundamentally built (we will get to this more later). The platforms are fundamentally built around interactions - specifically reactions, comments, and sharing. Whether it is Facebook,

Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, or LinkedIn, the premise remains similar. Going back to the questions posed previously, there’s one thing I can answer for you: your fans, followers, customers, and friends care about who YOU are and what YOU do that makes you unique. So many of us want to craft the absolute perfect message to tell our target audience, but in reality, people just want to see what makes you special. This most likely includes activities and things you do everyday which you might think is boring because after all, it’s just “work.” To your followers, however, it’s new and different! They don’t see things from a day-to-day perspective the way you do. When we work with clients, we like to think about the story in terms of “buckets” of content. These buckets are what make up who you are as an organization. I would encourage you to think about what makes you unique and divide them up into buckets. These can be buckets for team culture, behind-the-scenes processes, Your fans, followers, different specialties, your customers, and friends care about products/services, events, or anything else that makes you unique! Now, break these who YOU are and buckets down into days on a what YOU do that makes you unique. content calendar and get to work. Pick up your phone, or camera, and start capturing things as they happen. One of the best pieces of advice I can give you is to start embracing photography and the journey to continually create better content with photo and video. It’s a never-ending pursuit and technology has made it incredibly easy.

But what about my return on investment?

Glad you asked! Photos, videos, and content around your story aren’t good enough to drive ROI from social media by themselves. This is where all of the paid advertising comes in play. It is my firm belief that the combination of paid advertising, mixed with authentic content that’s posted organically throughout the week, is what will drive your growth and objectives online. We could talk for hours about either of these, and if you focus on them both while also being your truly authentic self, you will likely be able to answer, “What am I getting out of it?”

To learn more, listen to BConnected’s podcast: