INTRODUCTION
Social media is all about telling stories. Technology continues to make it easier, faster and more appealing to tell, share and even re-share our stories. It has also become about telling our stories in both words and pictures. The bluebird sings the social media theme song, at right, ‘Let Me Tell You a Story’.
A bluebird singing the social media song, ‘Let Me Tell You A Story’ from an image @ 123rf.com
VERBAL STORIES
Up until about a year ago, the story telling method was primarily verbal. Thanks to the meteoric rise in popularity of Pinterest, Instagram and other visual tools, it is clear that people want the option of using pictures, not just words, to tell and view things.
Look how dramatically facebook’s landscape has changed to include massive visual real estate. See the facebook timelines for business cover page at the end of this story.
VISUAL STORIES
The verbally based social media tools have known this for sometime. Google purchased YouTube. Yahoo purchased flickr. Facebook acquired Instagram and no one has been able to buy Pinterest.
It stands heads above most other social media, has done so in record time and is believed to be the first visual application to accomplish this. In addition, there is ground breaking news that the White House will start using Pinterest on December 17, 2012.
SOCIAL MEDIA APPS
Both verbal and visual apps have unique characteristics and value. Amongst the most popular are: • facebook • twitter • LinkedIn • WordPress • Google • Pinterest • YouTube • Instagram
Sharing is a click away.
STORY TELLING
Users have their preferences and loyalties for story telling and sharing. There are formulas for sharing stories that vary with users. As one becomes more proficient in the use of social media, these formulas develop into personal systems.
There is no one system that is the answer to sharing for everyone. But certain apps and combinations of them work well. In time, we each discover what fits our style. WordPress makes this very easy with their sharing button bar shown at left.
STORY SHARING
For example, let’s say a story is written in Word. It then can become a blog post in WordPress with still images, video and even audio. Once the story is written, it needs to be shared. Certain venues have proven to be most successful at this. In fact, in order to make sharing a breeze, sharing buttons are installed right on blog post pages.
Why is sharing so important? Sharing attracts attention, engages an audience, allows one to stay connected manually and automatically, fosters the development of trusted relationships and ultimately can increase business or establish a personal, professional presence.
CONCLUSION
One may not be looking to provide a service or even a product in the traditional sense of business. Providing and sharing information is the essence of social media. Just think about how much we know, how easily we can learn and share things compared to a generation ago. It is all due to social media allowing us to tell our stories.
Do you have a story that you would like to share, one that social media has enhanced or caused to go viral? Would you like to share or comment about this blog post? Your comments, suggestions and feed back are all part of the story. Please share with us in the comments area. Thank you from the author.
facebook’s new timelines for business has given tremendous opportunities for visual real estate as shown in the example here. ©http://www.MarketingBytes.biz and http://www.facebook.com/PageCoverMastery
SOURCES
Amy Porterfield’s FB Influence 2.0 Webinar
Bringing Your Marketing To Life Through Video by Dr. Marc and Charlie
Obama White House joins Pinterest
How right you are, Alison. Social media is all about sharing stories, whether our own or those of the people we have connected to. In fact, statistics have shown that “stories” that include pictures and video are twice as likely to be shared than just the “written word”.
In addition, Facebook ranks pictures and videos as more important as they decide what content is shown to our fans and friends (part of the EdgeRank system).
Although I am not a huge user of Instagram, I love the pictures shared by my friends and fans, and love spreading their joy and sorrow.
Thanks for a great story!
Craig
Thanks Craig for the great comment. You know how much I love the ‘visual’ as an artist. The combination of words and pictures is ideal for telling a story. Now that social media has embraced the visual, I find it the ideal medium.
We have finally reached a fusion of 20th and 21st century expression which is resulting in a synergistic relationship of the best of both. I call it social media marketing graphic design. I love it and it has become my life’s passion, as a designer and as a story teller, a visual journalist.
By the way, I have yet to become a user of Instagram, myself. It is so easy to ‘pin’ images on to Pinterest that one does not need any kind of photo app at all.