Yes! The power of storytelling is alive and kicking and living on Facebook. It's compelling. Dramatic. Emotional. Thought-provoking. Sometimes exciting and sometimes sweet. Always, always a sneaky glimpse in to a world we don't yet know about but that really makes us want to find out more.
Funnily enough, I am not talking about the (often interminably boring) status updates of random acquaintances. Or the Corporate Bore posts that so many brands resort to. Check out the Facebook group "Humans of New York" and then you will know how powerful words and stories can be. It's become my guilty pleasure and with over 16 million page likes, it looks like I am not the only one who thinks that way. Brandon Stanton is a photojournalist who started taking pictures of people in, you guessed it, New York City.
But it is the accompanying caption text that grabs your attention every time it pops up in your news feed. Somehow he manages to winkle out some little nugget of copy gold that just compels the reader to want to read more. We've read about lost loves, thwarted careers, dangerous relationships.
But we have also been part of refugee rescues, reunions and real romance. One kid even got invited to the White House with his teacher whilst another interviewed the head of Nasa after telling Brandon he wanted to ask Nasa if they were sending any more rockets in to space. So what does this content teach us for our own content and copywriting? OK, here's what I take from it...
- Let your characters - your brand and products - speak for themselves
- Your audience will always respond better to writing they connect with, especially on social media
- Pictures draw you in, words keep you coming back
- Don't be afraid to have a strategy and stick to it. The best brands do this so well. Have a look for Innocent Smoothies email or the Hubspot blogs see how that works in the real world of both B2C and B2B copywriting
- Keep it simple. Use words your audience actually respond to, not the words that you think sound important
If you have been asked to start copywriting and want to learn simple ways to make words work harder for you, then sign up to the next Copywriting for Digital course.
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