By the time the Wall Street Journal and Forbes both wrote about storytelling becoming the most in-demand skill in marketing (in December 2025, within days of each other), I’d already watched it play out across more than one campaign, with the numbers to back it up.
Posts and Stories that felt like they were talking to one specific person were outperforming posts that were talking at a general audience. Don’t get me wrong, this has always been a winning strategy on social media and in marketing; it’s the famous “if you try talking to everyone, you’ll end up talking to nobody” that you have probably heard multiple times. What was different here was the scale of the gap. The human-to-human connection combined with storytelling was way more effective, and the straight product content was working less well than usual (even when done properly).
I have a theory about why, and it’s not complicated: AI-generated content done badly is everywhere now, and it’s all generic and forgettable, and audiences have developed a finely tuned instinct for what’s been produced by a machine trying to sound human versus something written by a person who actually thought about what they were saying. Content fatigue is real, and the craving for human connection in a feed full of polished sameness is very much there. Whatever the exact cause, the fact is that, in the past few years, storytelling and people-centred content have been working better than they had in a while.
This post is about what storytelling in social media marketing actually means in practice (not the buzzword version) and about a specific campaign where it made a measurable difference.
What storytelling in social media marketing actually means
The word gets used so loosely in marketing that it’s important to be specific about what it actually involves, because storytelling doesn’t equal “tell your brand’s story” or “write with personality”.
The reality is that while your story should absolutely be part of your marketing, your customer isn’t specifically interested in hearing an essay about that. They’re interested in their own story, and specifically in whether you understand it well enough to reflect it back to them. They are interested in how your story helped you make a difference for them. The brands that get storytelling right are the ones that have studied their audience closely enough to know what their life actually looks like (what they’re stressed about, what they’re proud of, what they’re trying to do or feel or avoid) and create content that makes people think “oh wait, that’s me”.
You don’t sell olive oil. You sell a spoonful of antioxidants in every meal. You don’t sell a massage. You sell fifty minutes without anyone asking you anything. You don’t sell a flight to Lisbon. You sell pastéis de nata for breakfast, lunch, and dinner (every time I bring up this example, I want to book a flight to Lisbon!). The difference between those two ways of describing the same thing is the difference between telling someone what you sell and making them feel something. People have always bought feelings. And the product or service is just how the feeling gets delivered.
What makes this harder than it sounds is that it requires resisting the instinct to lead with the product or service and solely leaning into what I call the “sell, sell, sell” strategy (I get it, it’s difficult — you are trying to promote a business, and the ultimate goal is, of course, selling). Most brands, understandably, want to talk about what they make, how it’s made, why it’s good, and what makes them different. And repeat that as often as possible. None of that is wrong — it just isn’t enough on its own, because every other brand in the same space is saying almost the same things in almost the same words, and audiences have learned to scroll past it without really remembering any of it.
The other thing that makes it challenging is that it requires knowing your audience well enough to actually show them a version of their own life. That knowledge doesn’t come from a spreadsheet or a demographic breakdown. You really need to invest time and attention in getting to know that specific audience and ask the right questions. When a client works with me for the first time, that process starts on day one through onboarding, audience research, and building a clear picture of who you’re talking to and why. Over time, and across multiple seasons and campaigns, that understanding deepens, and every campaign is more informed and stronger than the last.
The campaign
The client was a small Irish food brand with an online shop. Every Q4, they launch a special Christmas product: it’s a seasonal offering that needs to be able to stand out at a time of year when every other food brand is suddenly more present than usual, everyone is running paid promotions, and audiences are simultaneously more receptive to buying and more overwhelmed by choice.
I had been managing their social media (strategy, content creation, copywriting, and day-to-day management) for a few years at this point, which meant I had been through the festive season with them and their audience before. I knew what had worked, what hadn’t, what the audience responded to, and what they scrolled past. And that accumulated knowledge (combined with current trends, user behaviour, and best practices on social media) mattered more than any single tactical decision.
The previous year’s Christmas campaign went well, and the goal for this one was to build on that using the same organic-only approach (no paid advertising), but with a sharper strategy.
The feed content stayed consistent with the brand’s established visual style. I created everything (photography, video, graphics, captions) and the client reviewed and approved it before anything went live, which is the standard workflow for feed content I use with my social media clients. That approval process exists to protect the brand and make sure everything is aligned before it’s published.
Stories were different. With a client I’d been working with long enough to have built real trust, Stories went out without an approval step. This reflects the kind of working relationship that develops over time, when a client trusts your understanding of their brand and their audience (but it’s also true that this is the approach most of my clients choose from day one). It also meant I could move quickly and take a creative risk without a sign-off cycle slowing things down, which turned out to matter.
The real change in this campaign happened on Stories. In previous campaigns, Stories had been used in a fairly conventional way (more product-focused, promotional, and sales-driven), while still keeping the audience at the centre of the strategy. This time I took a different approach entirely. Instead of pushing the product, the Stories focused on the experience of Christmas itself: the stress of hosting, the pressure of planning, scenarios they’d want to immediately forward to someone else and the moments people actually recognise from their own lives. Written storytelling (plainly laid out with sentences like “is this you?” and “does this sound familiar?”, but also included naturally in the content) with simple design, minimal imagery, and copy that felt human rather than salesy.
The idea was to make people feel seen before making them feel sold to.
The results
This is a relatively small account with a few content constraints I had to work around. Not exactly your black canvas where you can test out all the top-performing strategies and content formats. During November and part of December, the campaign delivered results I’m particularly proud of.
52,000 impressions on Instagram: consistent visibility across a competitive period, holding steady with regular monthly performance despite the noise of Q4.
+20% increase in Story impressions: a direct reflection of the storytelling shift. More people were watching Stories through to the end and engaging with them, which means the content was connecting.
419 clicks on the custom Christmas link, a 66% increase compared to the previous year. And the majority of those clicks came directly from Stories. This is the clearest indicator that the approach worked: more people engaged, more clicked through, and more bought.
251 clicks on the link in bio: consistent interest in both the Christmas product and the brand’s regular range throughout the campaign period.
The Christmas box sold out.
Could some of that be down to timing, a good season, or factors outside the content? Possibly — and that honesty is part of how I work. But the 66% jump in link clicks compared to the same campaign the previous year (I had to check it twice when I first saw it), and the clear correlation between the Stories shift and the engagement uptick, make a strong case that the strategy made the difference. The feed content hadn’t changed significantly, but Stories had. And the results followed.
What this campaign demonstrates
The results matter, but the more useful lesson to learn from this campaign is the underlying principle: audiences respond to content that makes them feel understood, and they tend to move past content that just describes a product, however good that product is.
This concept is probably as old as marketing itself, but it’s often forgotten. Here is coming back in full force because what’s changed is the context: we’re in a moment where AI is producing enormous volumes of surface-level content that allows you to hit post as many times as you want but connects with nobody. Against that backdrop, content that sounds like a person talking to a specific other person (i.e. your target audience) stands out more than it did when the competition was other humans writing in the same generic register. The Wall Street Journal and Forbes (and many others) both identified storytelling as one of the most sought-after and hardest-to-find marketing skills in December 2025. The campaign data above is a small but concrete example of why.
I recently shared a social media post on my page with a good example of how this thinking works in practice: everyone assumes there’s nothing new to say about sourdough, and that might be true if you’re thinking about it the way most brands think about it — as a product to describe and promote. But a bakery, a café, a health food shop, a nutritionist, and a food blogger all have completely different audiences with very different reasons to care about the same loaf of bread. The product doesn’t change, but the story changes every time, for every brand, and for every audience. That’s the whole job of good storytelling.
Working with someone who thinks this way
Social media strategy, management, photo and short-form video creation for food, drink, and wellness brands is the work I do every day. If your brand deserves this level of attention (or if you’re heading into a launch or seasonal campaign and want to approach it differently) and you haven’t found the right creative partner yet, I’d love to hear about what you’re working on — get in touch here.
You can also read about the link in bio CTR results from a wellness client I’ve been managing for nearly two years (a different metric, same principle) in this post.
I’m Chiara — a social media specialist, food photographer and stylist, short-form video creator, and recipe developer based in Ireland. I work with food, drink, and wellness brands across Ireland and internationally, and I’ve been running A Matter of Nourishment since 2017. My background includes an MSc in chemistry, a certification in nutrition, and a diploma in digital marketing: a combination that shapes everything from how I approach a shoot to how I think about content strategy.
A Matter of Nourishment 