How using personal stories helps you connect to your audience

Today we're in North Lanarkshire and we're going to look at how an independent cleaning business has used personal stories to connect better with their audience. Cheyennie's Clean Machine is an independent deep clean company servicing commercial and domestic customers. They began the business during the pandemic and successfully used social media to bring in new bookings for their services. Now, this post saw their engagement Soar by over 200%. This is simply because they celebrated their owner's birthday on Facebook. It might seem really simple, but remember, people buy from people and behind every independent business there's a team or some owners who all have lives and stories too. So on social media, when we celebrate our triumphs, the good, the bad and the ugly of the day to day, we find that other people, and indeed businesses, like to respond back, back, especially through comments. So on social media, we want people to comment because it drives the potential reach of the post up. And also, when people do comment, they're automatically alerted here to anyone else commenting on the post, which means you're always front of mind for them repeatedly throughout the day. So let's have a look at what he actually did. Now, first of all, it's really simple. They shared the happy, friendly face of the man behind the company, which made people instantly connect and identify with the human side of this business. Then they created a narrative around age being only a number and a motivational story that in spite of the owner only just turning 30, he is running a successful business during a really difficult time. This again makes people want to interact with the post, whether it's just to say happy birthday or indeed to congratulate him on his success. And then he's also thanked everyone that DM'd him, which you'll see here. Thank you for all the private messages. Now this shows that whilst many people are happy to comment publicly, a lot of people chosen to do it privately too, which shows his popularity. So I mean, how did they do this? They kept it really simple. By sharing the personal story behind the business, they allowed the audience to get to know them on a better and deeper level. This creates connection. If people buy from people, then engagement on this personal post alone shows that customers have built up much more of a connection with the owner and not just with Cheyney's Clean machine. So what can any business take from this? By showing your human side and celebrating your staff, celebrating any wins, any milestones, people will connect with you on a much deeper level, which helps you then understand your audience more and it helps you then create more content that will entice them to comment always as well make sure that you're responding back to comments. So even though there might be 148 comments here, I'd want to be responding back to every single person to let them know that that you appreciate them because it's hugely important and it also extends your reach on Facebook as well. So if I wanted to quickly see who's been commenting on my post across my social media accounts and indeed who's been mentioning me, I would just pop into my maybe dashboard and right at the top here you've got comments and you can click in here and respond directly back to each individual comment in one easy place, or you can go into the Mentions tab and you can have a look directly at who's been talking about you. If you've got any questions at all, please use the little blue button in the maybe platform as it connects you to all of us 24 7.