Storytelling & Social Media Marketing

By Peter von Stackelberg

Once upon a time...

Storytelling is becoming increasingly important in social media marketing ...and marketing as a whole.

In social media marketing, the center of gravity — the focus of the marketing activity — is located within the social networks themselves.

Content marketing is the art of communicating with your customers and prospects without selling.

Content marketing is all about storytelling.

So why the emphasis on storytelling?

The original social medium was face-to-face communication.

The beginning of the oral tradition of storytelling is lost in the mists of time…

Storytelling has evolved with each advance in communications and information technology.

Storytelling evolved with the invention of writing and took on new forms.

Augmented reality is beginning to emerge as a new form of communication.

Transmedia narratives and social media are reshaping how stories are told.

But there are questions...

many, many questions.

How do you tell a story 140 characters at a time?

How do you tell a story with two (or more) realities at once?

How do you get the audience to move from medium to medium?

How do you maintain the structure of a story across multiple media?

Where is computer and information technology taking us as storytellers?

Although storytelling evolves as new technologies emerge, the fundamental elements of story remain the same.

The basic elements

of a story are...

Setting...

Events...

Significant Object...

Character...

Why is storytelling so powerful?

Storytelling &

Social Media Marketing

(c) 2012 Peter von Stackelberg

In the past, stories were generally told using a single medium; in the future they will be “transmedia”.

• Editorial-based (or long-form) content. It must tell a relevant, valuable story. Must be informative, educational or entertaining.

- Toby Murdoch

Content Marketing Institute Blog

- Content Marketing Institute

• Marketing-backed. The content has underlying marketing and sales objectives that a corporation, association or institution is trying to accomplish.

• Behavior-driven. Seeks out to maintain or alter the recipient’s behavior.

• Multi-platform (print, digital, audio, video, events). It can be, does not have to be, integrated.

- Joe Pulizzi

Content Marketing Institute Blog

...and the evolution of information technology continues to change storytelling.

- Debbie Williams

Content Marketing Institute Blog

…but we know it is a tradition that has existed across cultures...

I came looking for the design principles of storytelling, but on the road I found something more: a set of principles for living…a complete instruction manual in the art of being human.

Christopher Vogel

The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers

Blogs, video sharing sites, microblogs, and other social media channels are being used for storytelling.

The development of the current generation of social media has prompted even further change in storytelling.

…and persists into the modern world.

With the introduction of microcomputers in the ’80s and Internet in the ‘90s, storytelling became more interactive.

Marketing & Communicating Through Social Media (BUAD 6303)

© 2011-2012 Peter von Stackelberg

Gilgamesh Tablet

One-way communication characterized film, radio, and television.

In first decades of the 20th century storytelling evolved again with the invention of motion picture technologies.

Modern Books

Illuminated Manuscript

The development of radio in the 1920s drove another shift in storytelling.

In the 1950s the introduction of television changed storytelling again.