The importance of telling stories – and how you make people feel on their feeds
(Photo: Radiocentre)
I wasn’t expecting to hear about Matt Forde’s NHS-supported erections at Tuning In, a commercial radio industry event a couple of days ago.
(There was a reason – it was due to his cancer and subsequent stoma affecting his fertility.)
But the comedian and broadcaster, who had worked at the Labour Party HQ during the Blair and Brown years, also made some important observations about communications – which can apply to both government and organisations.
I’ve expanded upon his points to show how you can apply these key approaches to engaging your target audiences.
‘The art of storytelling in politics is crucial’
Stories are at the heart of effective comms and engaging and shareable social content.
I was recently in touch with my local Rotary Club after they were fundraising outside my supermarket – and I remembered this video we did at the Department for International Development featuring a delightful couple, David and Sue, who were Rotary members:
We could have just done a post saying, “we need to end polio now”.
But what made this post more impactful was that it told you a story – a love story, in fact – of a couple who met in a hospital as babies while being treated for polio in 1948 and had been married for 44 years (and hopefully now it’s 52!), but also weaving in the message of why it’s important that British taxpayers’ money was used to treat those with the condition in developing countries.
Your audience is far more likely to remember the message or be inspired to take action if it is told within a great story.
‘Making the emotional case’
We are often guilty on just focusing on the rational reasoning behind an announcement, or a story, but the emotional one is far more powerful, particularly on social media.
Broadcaster and commentator Trevor Phillips write recently in his Times column about his growing support for feelings over figures:
“I am not one for the fashion these days of treating politics as a branch of psychology. But in recent weeks I have made the case in these columns for what might be called “vibes”, the politics of emotion and empathy, which are all too often at odds with the arguments of accountancy”
That’s why a strong case study that resonates with your audience emotionally can be so powerful – far more so than a CEO or a minister (but don’t always tug on the heart strings, as people can tire of that!)
At the Department for Education, we often used incredible powerful personal stories to land our messages.
We spoke to Holocaust survivor Lily Ebert, who was then 98 and was teaching children the importance of tolerance on social media, to show our support for Holocaust Memorial Day.
(The tweet from the time can be viewed here, but I have included the TikTok I posted on my account as it was easier to download.)
But you don’t have to create the content yourself – you can leverage moments on TV, online and on social media.
We spotted that British Bake Off star Nadiya Hussain had talked about the influence her home economics teacher had on her career from her Life Stories episode on ITV1 – a perfect and seemless opportunity to promote our teacher recruitment campaign:
Yes, there might be a strong case for why you’re doing something, but focus less of facts and figures and more on how your content makes people *feel*, and how that would inspire them to watch longer, like or comment on your post- but even more importantly, encourage them to share it in a DM or WhatsApp.
The boss of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, explained the importance of making your content as shareable as possible:
Being positive or optimistic, where possible
Matt Forde joked about who he’d prefer to hear from about his life expectancy chances from cancer or his issues with erectile dysfunction: Dr Starmer with the cold, hard facts (so to speak) or the boasting, boldness and upbeat nature of Dr Trump.
There is of course, a danger that being too positive and not delivering can backfire if you can’t deliver as promised. And as we’ve seen over the past few days, responding with the facts on the safety of taking paracetamol when you’re pregnant and pushing back on the US President’s claims about it causing autism can be very important.
But making people feel that Things Can Only Get Better (to use an old election campaign phrase) can be very effective, especially as people scroll through the doom and gloom of news or their social feeds.
The biggest factor behind news avoidance is that ‘the news is too depressing’, according to Ofcom’s latest News Consumption report.
This video from the Energy Secretary Ed Miliband is authentic (in a very Ed Mili way!), engaging and optimistic about how the benefits of focusing on clean energy:
Establishing a theme or a narrative
This follows on from ‘telling a story’ – too often we invest great time, resources and effort into creating social content about an announcement without thinking about how it relates to a wider message, an ongoing campaign or your strategic comms priorities.
The argument Matt made was that the current government hasn’t explained clearly what they are doing, or what their vision is, and how their policies fit into it.
Social and digital teams need to focus on how their social storytelling fits into the broader comms strategy – and be emboldened to speak up if the stats are showing the sporadic, scattergun approach is not working.
Your narrative or themes may change depending on what matters to your audience on a specific platform, though often the importance of storytelling and focusing on hearts over minds remain, even on drier issues like economics.
If you’re told to jump on a trend, think whether it fits into your ongoing narrative, or set of priorities, and how you do you so in an authentic and credible manner.
The NHS could swiftly (sorry) and successfully tap into the meme of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce to promote their app on Instagram – but this doesn’t mean the Department of Health and Social Care could do the same on Twitter.
There are also risks in taking content in terms of copyright and potential backlash, but in this instance the risks were low.
Despite Matt’s NHS erection jokes, the points he made weren’t all balls – and were far more memorable delivered in a humorous, engaging way.
If you found that interesting, you may want to read this:
Tim Davie on the importance of trust in the BBC and the corporation reflecting society
