It’s All About the Stories
“Marketing is no longer about the stuff that you make, but about the stories you tell.”
–Seth Godin
Since my group has begun working with St. Lillian Academy, I have been surprised
by the fact that everyone has a story to tell. Whether it is my group members with
family members that have dealt with learning disabilities, the students that attend
St. Lillian, or the families that support their children with learning disabilities, they
all have unique experiences that affect the way they view life.
This leads me to my topic of this blog post; Social Media and Technology.
Social Media has become an avenue for people to get their ideas and stories heard.
For example, in the span of a day, I have at least 75 friends who update their
statuses on Facebook. Whether the information is reliable, important or interesting,
they are able to display to the world things they are passionate about.
Leading back to the idea of stories versus stuff, social media has become an
important way of life for people nowadays, especially the younger generation. Social
media will be imperative for St. Lillian because each student, family, teacher and
therapist has a story to tell that could eventually gain more followers on each social
media platform, as well as new students to the school.
In my marketing class, which is very similar to PR, we learned that one advertising
appeals is the emotional appeal. According to Chron, human brains run on idle 95
percent of the time, so people are more susceptible to emotional appeals because
“their brains are in an idle, subliminal state most of the time.” This type of appeal
has been seen throughout history in regards to advertisement, the biggest being
during WWII, which can be seen at Neat Designs.
WWII Advertisement using the emotional and fear
appeal to get people to invest in War Bonds.
I grew up right outside of Washington, DC, and every year my mom would take my
friend and me to a Christmas party in the city. This was unlike any other Christmas
party we would go to, because it was for members of a home for people with autism
and their family members. We would get there and help prepare the food early in
the day, then when that was done we would change into our party dresses and go
set up the cafeteria with Christmas Decorations.
Once the members started to arrive we would assist them with creating and
decorating Christmas ornaments that we then hung on the big Christmas tree in the
middle of the room. This Christmas tree was obviously not as big, but I always
thought it rivaled the tree in Rockefeller Center in New York City just because of the
amazing diversity of each ornament, and the love and patience used to create them.
This memory had an emotional effect on my life, which makes working with an
organization like St. Lillian Academy so much more special. I believe that with the
assistance of social media and technology to tell their stories, St. Lillian can connect
with people on a deeper level.
Throughout this semester, we have used Facebook and Twitter primarily to
promote our nonprofit. This includes #factfriday tweets that reference medical
journals like National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and
information about St. Lillian Academy. Each social media platform uses pictures to
reiterate what they talk about in their posts, which really helps the emotional appeal
of advertising.
St. Lillian Academy students at the 2014 Links for St. Lillian
As Jeffrey Rohrs states, “Be relevant by doing interesting things that people want to
share, like, and comment on.” This is what we hope to do with St. Lillian Academy’s
social media presence. By sharing with their network personal stories and
interesting facts regarding their organization, we hope to create a fan base that will
later help them down the road with enrollment and fundraising.