AUDIENCE: SOCIAL MEDIA—IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU
In a world of perfectly filtered selfies and instant gratification on every post, it’s easy to think that social media is about you.
Newsflash: Your brand is not the hero. Your customer is.
Let’s revisit the basics of the StoryBrand process to remind us why. The SB7 Framework relies on two principal characters: the hero and the guide. The guide’s role is to lead the hero on a transformational journey to solve his or her problem using a clear plan. When brands learn the StoryBrand process, they usually do a double take when they hear who the hero of the story really is.
On social media, the same is true. Your company’s account is not the hero. Your follower is. (After all, your social media followers are your existing or potential customers.)
This doesn’t mean that your brand can’t talk about itself. What it does mean is that it is important to make your story about your audience and to always seek ways to increase empathy and connection along the way, rather than constantly post about your own awesomeness. (Hello cocktail party dude everyone hates.)
Brands who understand this are the ones who are wildly successful on social media. Even when they are sharing selfies.
THE MAGIC EQUATION ON SOCIAL MEDIA
I may hate math, but I love social media. That’s why I know this equation like the back of my hand.
Here’s how it works:
Empathy is historically defined as “the projection of one’s own personality into the personality of another in order to understand him better.”1 And a key way to create empathy is to tell a story that draws in your audience and builds a bond. As P. J. Manney says, “Storytelling is both the seductive siren and the safe haven that encourages the connection.”2 Brené Brown adds, “Empathy is at the heart of connection.”3
For your brand to get followers to feel connected with you on social media, you need to generate empathy. And this leads to the engagement (and the engagement ladder) that you seek.
Studies show that empathy has dropped significantly in the last generation, and many theorize that it is directly related to the passive use of social media and the tendency to isolate online while you “compare and despair” over someone else’s perfectly curated social media feed.4
One such study can be found in the Journal of Evolution and Technology, where P. J. Manney explains: “As the world grows smaller and more connected, the role of empathy grows larger and more important than ever. . . . However, as our technological connectedness has increased, there does not appear to be a proportionate increase in global empathy. Instead, we are living in a time of relatively decreasing empathy, compared to our connectedness to the greater world.”5
While the researchers are right, they are leaving out one important factor: engagement. It turns out that much of this disconnection comes from the passive use of social media, not the engaged use of it.6 Studies show that when people engage actively with social media platforms such as Facebook, they feel an increase in empathy and social ties. One study showed that when it comes to Facebook, “The more an individual engages in conversation with others online, the higher their scores of empathic concern.”7 And that leads to more engagement.
Many of us have had this experience when you open up Instagram or Twitter and see a post that leaves you dissatisfied with your own life or envious of someone else’s. Wasn’t the idea of social media to bring people together? If social media is supposed to be about connection, how do we keep it from pulling us apart?
Ultimately, people open social media aiming to find engagement. If they get it, they come back for more.
THREE WAYS TO GENERATE THE EMPATHY YOUR AUDIENCE WANTS
Let’s look at three ways that you effectively create empathy: tell a great story, help someone, and ask a question.
TELL A GREAT STORY
The first step in making your story about your follower is to figure out who that is. Once you do, find out how to speak to them. Remember that when creating your StoryBrand BrandScript we called this defining your character and figuring out what they want on an internal, external, and philosophical level. This is a high-stakes endeavor. “When we fail to define something our customer wants, we fail to open a story gap. When we don’t open a story gap in our customers’ mind, they have no motivation to engage us.”8
Let’s look at an example.
Hard Exercise Works is a high-intensity fitness center based in Florida with dozens of locations throughout the US. They told me they were concerned that their marketing message was directed more toward athletes and not toward the real people who worked out in their gym—the moms, dads, firefighters, dog walkers, and babysitters who make up the bulk of their membership. We used the StoryBrand process to create a BrandScript to guide them in rebranding.
Here’s what we came up with:
The Character: An everyday client. (Not an athlete!)
The External Problem: A client wants to get in shape.
The Internal Problem: A client doesn’t know where to start and doesn’t believe in her own ability to stick to a plan and do the hard work to make the change.
The Philosophical Problem: Changing your life shouldn’t be so hard.
The Tag Line: “We help you do the hard work to get the body you want.”
I then began to dig into their existing online material to find great video testimonials. I immediately saw a problem. Much of their existing video content focused on stories about intense challenges that their accomplished members had taken. These were exactly the type of thing that could scare off someone who’s just getting up the nerve to walk in the door.
And then I found a video they had recorded of women in their gym reacting to a New York Times article stating that, scientifically speaking, women could not do a pull-up.9 A series of real women who were gym members could and did, narrating the whole way. It was exactly the way for this company to speak to their audience going forward.
DON’T POST AND GHOST
Remember that making your story about your audience is an on-going, real-time process. Don’t post and ghost.
Public speakers are familiar with the phrase “read the room,” which indicates that understanding the responses of your participants to the story you are telling is critical. This is all about real-time feedback. On social media, you get that through engagement. If you put up a powerful post and then don’t check your Facebook page for a week, you won’t be very effective. It’s important to learn what resonates and over time narrow in even more on exactly what your followers respond to.
HELP SOMEONE
Another key way to create empathy on social media is to help someone.
You don’t have to do a fund-raiser for a great cause or stage an elaborate activism campaign. Helping someone can simply be solving a problem.
There are a variety of ways of doing this, and sometimes the easiest way is to simply answer a question someone else has. When I was thinking of changing my daughter to a new school, I asked my followers how far they thought it was reasonable to commute.10,11
@claire
What is the acceptable commute time for a child’s school? (seriously. answer!)
@jennaworthen
Replying to @claire
I think you can spend 30 quality minutes in the car together before you hate yourself.
@tsh
Replying to @claire
We drive 40 min one way for our special needs kiddo’s school. But it’s also only 3 days a week.
@tsh
Replying to @claire
I get it. I’ll say that after 2.5 years of doing the drive, we’re used to it. It’s my time with the kids (we often do a big audiobook), then on the solo drive back I catch up on my podcasts. Kinda nice, really.
@nishweiseth
I think it depends! I’ve got a special-needs kiddo, so I’d probably go further than most for better services.
At the end of the day, I got good answers that helped inform my decision and also bonded me with my followers—some of whom are readers of my books.
BE WILDLY USEFUL
Another easy way to help your audience is to pass on important resources. You see many brands doing this in times of crisis. You don’t have to be a weather channel to alert your followers about the emergency numbers for an upcoming storm in your local area. Show that you care and want to provide support in any way you can.
SERVE THE LOW-HANGING FRUIT
On the side of customer service, there are many opportunities to use social media to directly reach out and solve a problem someone has with your business. Brands often have a stream of incoming questions or concerns about their product or service. One of the easiest ways to help on social media is to address this low-hanging fruit.
Importantly, making sure your social media presence is really about your audience also involves proactively going out and looking for people talking about you.
One day, Danielle Brigida, acting deputy director of digital strategy at the US Department of the Interior, who was then managing social media for the National Wildlife Federation, found a customer tweeting about not being able to subscribe online to the organization’s magazine. Now keep in mind they weren’t tweeting at the organization directly; they were just tweeting about it.
@NWF
Dear National Wildlife Federation, I would happily renew my kids magazine subscriptions if your site worked.
Brigida immediately stepped in, solved the problem, and moved one more happy customer up the engagement ladder.
National Wildlife Federation magazine resubscribe success! :) Great magazines for kids. http://ow.ly/1tema
ASK QUESTIONS
You can also build empathy and connection on social media by asking a question. This works equally well for accounts with lots of followers and ones that are just starting out.
People love providing their opinion and feeling that their voice has been heard. Giving them the chance to do this by lobbying a question into the social media ether is a great step.
Leila Janah is a social entrepreneur and the founder of both Samasource—a nonprofit organization that gives work to those who need it most—and LXMI, a sustainable for-profit beauty brand. On social media she always emphasizes her commitment to sustainability. Since her work requires her to travel more than two hundred thousand miles a year, she recently took to her Instagram feed to ask her followers about what they do to offset their carbon footprint.12
She got dozens of well-thought-out responses from her followers, who encouraged her to try different strategies or research relevant tools and organizations while also providing a valuable, on-brand resource to those followers. Leila kept the conversation going in the comments section to continue the engagement, something that her followers will remember the next time she asks a question.
Asking questions on a regular basis can be a great way to create ongoing engagement. For more than five years, Scott Williams, a pastor in Oklahoma City, used to have a popular meme on Twitter on Sundays. It was simple and effective. All he did was ask people where they were going to church.13
@scottwilliams
Where will you be attending church today? Name, Location, Pastor, Twitter Handle. . . use #ChurchRollCall hashtag
The responses always came flooding in, and he would respond in turn to those who answered.
This also works well when speaking directly to someone on a 1:1 level to deepen the engagement. Southwest Airlines does this in their customer service tweets. To the delight and chagrin of many, this low-cost North American carrier eschews assigned seats. Instead, you are assigned a boarding number in the order of when you check in. Then, you race to snag your seat when you get on the plane. When someone is lucky enough to have the very first boarding number—A01—they often turn to social media to express their pleasure.
Southwest Airlines regularly reads their tweet stream for folks in just such an unusual state of airline-related bliss. Not only do they respond but they ask a further question to continue the conversation and create another positive moment.14
@fox_trot35
When you randomly get picked for the A-team aka boarding spot for @SouthwestAir 
@southwestair
Replying to @fox_trot35
With your pick of seats ahead of you, where are you going to sit? Back row, middle? Bulkhead, window? So many choices. Enjoy the ride, Caroline! -Adam
@vumander
Look who hit the @SouthwestAir check in lottery
@southwestair
Replying to @vumander
It’s like seeing a unicorn. We’re getting a little emotional over here. So, where are you going to sit? -Adam
Question-asking is so effective on social media that there are entire platforms built just for this purpose. (In chapter 11, we’ll dive into how brands can effectively use these.)
Following the divisive 2016 presidential election, the marketing team at Florida’s Natural orange juice teamed up with Funny or Die to take question-asking to the next level. They created their own debate on Facebook Live. “Pulp, No Pulp, or Some Pulp” featured three candidates (Pulp, No Pulp, and Some Pulp) campaigning for the hearts of America. They did three live debates total, generating more than half a million views.15
Asking questions from your personal accounts to remind others about your brand is also useful.
Jess Gaertner of the Modern Mamas Podcast took to her personal Instagram account to ask her followers a question that also helped remind them about the podcast she records under a different name:16
You can also create goodwill by asking questions that might seem like they don’t directly benefit your brand. For more than seven years, the Balanced Bites podcast has brought weekly listeners valuable information on health and nutrition. But they don’t make it only about them. The @balancedbitespodcast recently asked their followers what other podcasts folks listen to, giving us all some valuable information.17
Finally, remember that creating engagement with empathy and connection does not mean you have to always be on message. As mentioned earlier, at times it is okay to go off-script from your BrandScript (we’ll talk more about this later). When I asked my followers how far they’d commute to take their kid to school, I did so not because I’m in the chauffeur business but because I’m in the connection business.
The SHARE Model for Social Media Success for Every Brand
AUDIENCE
Your social media marketing should be about your audience, not your brand.
Remember:
• Your brand is not your hero; your customer is.
• Your customer (or potential customer) is your follower. Reframe your social media account to make it about them.
• Cultivating empathy on social media matters to building a relationship with your customers and reaching long-term success. Remember this equation: Empathy + Connection = Social Media Engagement.
• Generate empathy (and engagement) by telling a great story, helping someone, and asking questions.
• Don’t post and ghost. Great social media marketing requires real-time connection and engagement with your audience.
If you learn better by video, access a free five-video minicourse at SocialMediaMadeSimple.com.