Breaking Through the Social Media Noise with Storytelling

Social media is filled with noise, which leads to endless, mindless scrolling.

One way to cut through that noise? Storytelling.

It’s more than telling stories. It’s a way to build connection and relatability with your audience on social media. People connect with people, so make them the star of your channels.

The analytics tied to your stories will speak for themselves, I promise.

The storytelling I’m most proud of comes from the work I do with Corewell Health Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I partner with the internal social media team to produce patient and team member stories geared to pull at the heartstrings of those reading them.

I’ve shared long-form stories, short-form stories, and social series… They're all powerful in their own ways. I do the easy part, the writing. The people do the hard, inspirational part.

One social series I’d like to highlight that breaks the noise is called Mighty Milestones. The goal is to highlight Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital’s tiniest patients who stay for a long period of time in hopes it’ll provide comfort, strength, and celebration to others - especially those who may be on a similar journey. 

The first step of the series was to partner with their NICU team to develop a process for story submissions once a patient hit their mightiest milestone yet - graduation.🎓

We set guidelines in place for appropriate submissions, and we created a document that families receive on graduation day that includes:

• Description

• Guidelines

• Instructions

• Questions

The second step was to partner with the internal design team to create an identifier to overlay on the photo submission (pictured below). This provides visual consistency so that the photo is recognizable to external audience members.

The third step was to begin the rollout and start identifying patients and families who'd be great candidates, and the rest is history.

When developing the captions, I wanted them to be consistent with one another - short and sweet (just like the patients 😊). Most of them include the patient’s:

• Name

• Gestation age and weight at birth

• Number of days in the NICU

Since 2023, 20 stories have been shared, and they’ve all exceeded the goal. Like I said above, the analytics speak for themselves. These are the average analytics per post/story:

• 33 comments

• 17,301 impressions

• 566 reactions

• 13 shares

The comments warm my heart and make me smile every time (below).

Mighty Milestones is a great example for breaking through the social media noise with storytelling. The series builds connection and relatability. This is how you break the noise.

If you'd like to incorporate storytelling into your social media strategy, Bloom Social would love to partner with you. Contact us today!