Everyone has a story

Our third session will cover how brands use storytelling and social media in their branding. How do they affect the way people think about the company and what are the benefits of doing so.







Posti is in big trouble. People are frustrated with the fading service and ever-increasing prices. Especially on the Internet people are getting pretty mean towards Posti. Trolls are having a field day with memes and Posti is fast becoming a laughing stock. I have been hired by Posti as an independent Brand advisor to help them with their failing social media presence. No easy task. I start by logging into Facebook to review Posti’s last ten posts.

The main problem session is:
How to communicate the brand through storytelling and social media?

With five learning objectives:
1) What is a brand story and what makes a good brand story?
2) What is storytelling and how does it affect people?
3) What is the role of community management in brand building and how to engage customers?
4) Analyse or design a brand story for a chosen company.
5) How could the chosen company build the brand in social media?

Without further ado lets stuck in!

1) What is a brand story and what makes a good brand story?
2) What is storytelling and how does it affect people?

A brand story is more than content and a narrative. The story goes beyond what’s written in the copy on a website, the text in a brochure or the presentation used to pitch to investors or customers. Your story isn’t just what you tell people it’s also what they believe about you based on the signals your brand sends. The story is a complete picture made up of facts, feelings and interpretations, which means that part of your story isn’t even told by you. (The Story of Telling)

But how does a company make a good brand story?
1. Know your audience
2. Positioning is everything
3. Find your brand hero
4. Be authentic
5. Design it to be shared
(Big Commerce)

In my personal opinion one of the best companies at brand story telling is NIKE. (I know surprise surprise) I'm gonna focus especially on one specific marketing and branding campaign Nike used with Rory McIlroy. They were able to tell the story of a young golf prodigy looking up to his idol Tiger Woods and his mission to become the best golfer in the world. During the campaign Nike never tried to sell the actual products, it was more about the path and the goal what you can achieve with Nike.

Nike Golf Storytelling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2e8sbpyj_g



3) What is the role of community management in brand building and how to engage customers?

1: Growth
The role of a community manager is pivotal in getting people not only to your community, but actively involved in your community, which is commonly referred to as “driving early adoption.” To do this, you’ll often see community managers:

• Searching relevant terms, topics, and/or keywords to find blogs to comment on, niche networks to participate in, or questions to answer.
• Using various social media platforms to have conversations with potential users.
• Creating blogger outreach campaigns.
• Creating brand advocates or “evangelists” from existing community members.
• Growing relevant followers and fans to your social media accounts (the key word here being relevant, anyone can jack up the followers numbers, but you need someone who will find your target audience and get them to listen).
• Participating in relevant Twitter chats and attending industry-specific networking events.

2: Engagement
Community managers humanize your brand by connecting with your customers. This is commonly referred to as “engagement,” and they can build this by:

• Creating, distributing, and/or sharing relevant content.
• Monitoring forum, replying to threads, and answering user questions.
• Facilitating introductions within the community.
• Making personal connections with users by speaking with them on a regular basis.
• Moderating blog and social media comments and respond accordingly.

3: Listening
Frequently referred to as “measuring,” your community manager will listen to user feedback and social media metrics to evaluate the community on a regular basis by:

• Speaking directly with users, whether that be via social media, email, on the phone, or in person.
• Asking users for feedback, either directly or by polling.
• Measuring the brand's social media analytics.
• Monitoring online presence of the community -- e.g., is your business what comes up when current or potential users are searching?

4: Improvement
With how rapidly companies and technologies change, evolution is crucial to any online community. Your community manager should be building on the “listening” phase with the following to ensure that your community doesn’t fall behind:

• Monitoring competition and industry trends to determine what they are doing better, how they are doing it, and how this information can improve your community.
• Testing new social media platforms as they arise and determine which are a good fit for the company and implementing accordingly.
• Working as the middleman between the users and the internal development team to improve user experience.

4) Analyse or design a brand story for a chosen company.

5) How could the chosen company build the brand in social media?

Go Pro

GoPro has been able to achieve a higher purpose and a lot wider audience in their storytelling. Since the start, GoPro's focus has been to capture life's best moments. Everything started on the extreme sport scene. In the beginning GoPro wanted to make capturing your moments easy during snowboarding, surfing, motorcycling or any other action sport. Through storytelling GoPro has made their brand into something that everyone can use in anything they want. You don't have to be a professional athlete to be able to capture your proudest moments whether it's just daily vlogging or filming you child's first steps.

"This is a big focus of our team. I have a large, world-class social and digital team that focuses on @GoPro, YouTube, Facebook, Vimeo, and Instagram. At GoPro, we talk about our “virtuous cycle.” We intentionally install this mindset. So when someone buys a GoPro we make it easy for them to edit and upload content to their favorite social media platform. The minute they do that, they get positive affirmation from the people they care about the most, which then inspires them to create more content. This then inspires people around them to buy a GoPro. This is a very simplistic yet effective way we grow GoPro. The easier we make this process for people, the more this virtuous process helps us grow the brand organically. In October 2015, we launched GoPro Awards to inspire our consumers, where we pay people to submit videos on a theme or genre."

SVP of Marketing, Bryan Johnston








Sources:

http://thestoryoftelling.com/brand-story-services/

https://www.bigcommerce.com/blog/marketing-tips-how-to-tell-a-brand-story-people-will-love/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/yec/2012/12/25/the-4-pillars-of-community-management/2/#67f0aade488a

http://www.cmo.com/interviews/articles/2016/9/13/the-cmocom-interview-bryan-johnston-svp-of-marketing-gopro.html#gs.N6=P83g