Thursday, June 20, 2019

Supercharging social media with storytelling techniques: Raising the Stakes

Raising the stakes is a classic technique for raising interest in a story. If you make things important for the characters, make it a life or death situation or, more realistically, make what will happen have an impact on people lives, then more people will be interested in your writing.

But can we use this technique in social media?

Yes, we can. We are not all involved in saving lives or ground breaking research, but you can find ways to raise the stakes in everyday situations too. Here are some examples:

1. If you're a cake company you can post/Tweet about an anonymous client who bought a cake for a birthday celebration with a new boyfriend.

2. If you sell wine you can post/Tweet about the anonymous client who bought 20 bottles, which you recommended, for the engagement party of his only daughter.

3. If you're a bank, you can post/Tweet about an anonymous and unidentifiable client who was helped expand by a loan to cover an order for a new client, which was negotiated in 48hrs.

4. If you're an artist you can post/Tweet about how you try to capture beauty or reality in each painting you create.

5. If you're a shoe designer you can post/Tweet about how your shoes make your customers feel confident and gorgeous.

In each case the stakes are about more important things than the world is about to end, they are about our family, our business, our urge to create, and the importance of feeling confident.