Whether you’re a small brand or mega-corporation, social media provides you with an outlet to sell an experience to your followers. Ultimately, how well you sell that experience determines how successful your brand will be. In many cases, people are looking for fun, emotional or otherwise intriguing stories and anecdotes from brands they follow. Rather than merely throwing product advertising at them, it’s important to craft an interesting experience that makes  them want to interact with you. How can you be a better storyteller on Facebook? We’ll give you some pointers below so that you can get the most out of your social media empire.

Avoid Constantly Selling

All too many times, brands on social media want to get something out of each post. There is nothing wrong with that, but we sometimes have to be a bit more abstract. Rather than generating a sale or two out of each post, maybe it’s a better idea to focus on generating rapport, respect and brand loyalty instead. If you’re wanting to be a brand that people look forward to seeing in their feeds, avoid the constant sales pitches. This only turns people off and results in you pinging noise at your audience. Instead, try suggestively selling by offering interactive, no-pressure content that features your products or a narrative that connects your products/services with a more charitable and broader concept.

Use Images

Ultimately, storytelling is about painting a picture. That of course means that using literal pictures to tell your story is one of the best ways to do so! Posts that use images and video on Facebook are shared two to three times as much as standard word-only posts, so keep this in mind when you are wanting to capture the attention spans of your readers. You can take a great idea, throw in some imagery, and suddenly have it in front of countless people under the right circumstances. By using photos to convey various emotions, events and sentiments, you more adeptly generate emotion within the reader and increase the chances that they’ll be compelled to act or share.

Live Posts

Sometimes, the best stories are told by actual people in real time. Rather than worrying about what you’re going to say or how to phrase it, try hashing out your story or experience in a Facebook Live post. This is one way to not only connect with people by placing an actual face in front of them, but also to give your content a more organic feel. In the end, people are willing to deal with more imperfections and dead space in a live feed or personal account than they are in a text-based post. If you’re having trouble connecting with your followers on Facebook and are seemingly pinging noise at them through your regular posts, then try doing a Live post instead.

In order to tell better stories on Facebook while creating memorable experiences, be sure to use images and multimedia, include live posts when possible and avoid the constant plugs for your brand. If you can follow these three rules, then you’ll be able to create a more dynamic and meaningful experience for those who call themselves your fans.