St. Louis, MO – August 1, 2022 – Do you feel like brokering peace in the Middle East is an easier task than making sense of social media to promote your business?

You aren’t alone if you do.

And frankly there is a good reason you feel that way. The social platforms and algorithms that govern them keep changing all the time. You add the fact that new social platforms keep cropping up and it can be frustrating trying to make sense of all of it.

The great news is that you don’t have to figure it all out to grow your business online these days.

Unless you are the Kardashians, you don’t have to alter your game to accommodate the social media platform. To the contrary, only play their game if it helps your game.

Our main message to you in this blog post is to play your game. Focus on your business strategy. Don’t worry about TikTok’s game or Facebook’s game unless you know that is where you customers are and you MUST play it to succeed in business.

You don’t need to spend a lot of time guessing what works best on each platform as the evidence is overwhelming and universal these days. Video is king.

Video is driving results everywhere – on the internet and on social media. And not just any type of video. It is all about telling a story with video.

Your business should be investing in video storytelling. You can connect authentically with new customers using video storytelling if you are STORYSMART about it. And you can use social media to extend the reach of your video storytelling if you play your game.

Like any good marketing and communications, your storytelling should always be audience focused. It isn’t about you, it is about your target audience

What matters to your audience?

You want to tell stories that connect with your audience and are relevant to them.

The most important place for you to share those video stories is your website. You own it and it is the one place every customer will turn to in order to learn more about you. Your social strategy should always center on your website first.

You should have a website blog to share your stories. It is simple to build and use. If you build one and consistently post to it you will drive organic traffic to your website.

The fact that we are blogging is evidence of our belief in it

Once you’ve built your blog and have shared your story, you can use social media to amplify your reach and get your customers to engage with you. That is the real power of social media, the “social” aspect where your customer can engage with you and share your story with others.

The key element behind everything is identifying who you are trying to reach. Your target audience. Once you know that, you can use short shareable videos in the right format (ex. vertical aspect ratio videos verses horizontal videos) to get in front of that audience.

Is your audience on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Twitter, SnapChat, Pinterest etc?

The so-called experts will tell you that you MUST invest in native and original content. Nothing else will do. That isn’t true. Don’t get me wrong. It is ideal to do that if you have the resources, but it isn’t a MUST.

A great story formatted and shared correctly will perform well on virtually any platform. It is all about the story presented in a way that we can consume it.

Don’t fall prey to chasing the dopamine rush of playing the social media platform’s game at the expense of your game. What I mean by that is it is easy to want to get more likes, shares and other such elements from the platform that you lose sight of your business goals. Don’t go down that rabbit hole.

When I oversaw social media for the St. Louis Cardinals, we fought that desire to please the platform. It is like a magnet to compass, but it isn’t the true north. Our goal with engaging on social media was ultimately to build a deeper relationship with our fans and grow our business.

If the purpose of a particular social post was to sell a baseball ticket, then the measure of success was did we sell the baseball ticket? It wasn’t did we get more likes to a post.

The experts always wanted us to be more provocative with posts on social media – taunting other team’s fans and such – but we wouldn’t do that as it wasn’t us. We had multiple audiences that we were concerned about – not just fans. The players. The owners. The general public.

Anyone who stood in my shoes as the PR guy gets it. You want to stay on the straight and narrow with legal as much as winning the hearts and minds of Julie or Joe Sixpack.

Your brand has a personality and standards that reflect who you are. You don’t need to change that to fit in with Joneses on Twitter or Kardashians on Instagram.

Let’s be honest, twitter is ruled by rude people isn’t it? If you want to be rude or watch others being snarky, it is great place to spend time. And if that helps your business, then by all means spend time there, but if it isn’t then what is the point?

I spent a lot of time on Twitter back in my baseball days as it allowed me to stay pace with the media that covered us and it was a great place to get breaking news. I rarely look at twitter these days and am annoyed when I do as items more than a week old are at the top of my feed.

Anyway, my point is to focus on your strategy and be where it benefits you. Make sure what you do conforms with your strategy, not the platforms for the platforms sake.

You can build a deep and sustaining relationship with your customer using video storytelling if you are smart about it. That starts with having a strategic purpose behind your storytelling and being clear about who you are trying to reach. Every great story has a theme or message. You should be clear about what message you are conveying. Your story should resonate and connect at an emotional level with your audience, deepening your relationship with them. All stories about a relationship between the storyteller and audience. Finally, you want to take ownership of telling it yourself and using whatever channels you have available to reach that audience.

Start with sharing your video story on your website. That is a video story coupled with a written blog post of at least 350+ words will serve as pillar content you can keep coming back to over time.

You are 53 times more likely to get a front page search result via Google if you include a vide.

You can share the full video via social media and then share shorter, shareable stories to drive traffic back to your website.

Be sure to check the video embedded above to learn more. Feel free to message me at ron@getstorysmart.com if you have comments or questions. Also, please let me know if we can ever help you #getStorySMART with video storytelling.

About STORYSMART

You have a story to tell, but don't have the time or resources to do it yourself. Telling your story well with video can be hard. And let’s be brutally honest. No app will turn you into a great filmmaker. Few are capable of producing a do it yourself (DIY) video we actually want to watch, much less remember.

You need the right skills and equipment, not to mention time, money and talent to do your story justice on screen with video.

That is why STORYSMART developed our premium video storytelling as a service. We are here to help clients tell their story in the amazing way they deserve with a proprietary done-for-you service unlike any other.

STORYSMART provides a nationwide premium video storytelling service that empowers individuals, families, celebrities, small businesses and other organizations to have their stories told professionally while still retaining their intellectual property rights.

STORYSMART provides clients an experienced television reporter or journalist filmmaker to help them tell their story following our proprietary high-integrity brand journalism system. Our transparently priced premium services for businesses and families ensures that each client gets an authentic, high-quality story they own the intellectual property rights on forever.

About Ron Watermon

Ron Watermon is the founder and CEO of STORYSMART, a premium video and motion picture technology startup that empowers anyone to have their stories told professionally while ensuring they retain the intellectual property rights on their productions.