Learn How to Post on Instagram From a 74-Year-Old Woman
A retiree shows us how to use storytelling with her faded photos
Seems like no one is sad or has bad teeth on Instagram. Emerald destinations, restaurant delicacies, and fancy lifestyle — the heaven of colorful images.
And there’s this 74-year-old woman with her faded photos who amassed 7,000 followers in six months. No collaboration, ads, influencers, or content marketing.
How come?
Dear marketers, watch and learn how to post engaging content on Instagram with storytelling.
What Is Storytelling and Why Does It Work So Well?
You are telling a story so your audience receives your message. It can be varied, from “buy my product” to “my values are good, hear me out.”
A story is not the same as an anecdote. It must have three basic elements:
- characters (at least one) — that the audience will relate to
- a conflict — a challenge that your character faces and overcomes in the end (and gains some knowledge readers find useful)
- a resolution — some kind of closing, with a CTA
Storytelling is an essential part of every successful marketing campaign. Why?
Because people have been listening to stories for almost 30,000 years, since the first cave paintings. They are presented as a cause-and-effect, and that’s the way our brains work.
According to “The Science of Storytelling: What Listening to a Story Does to Our Brains”:
“When we are being told a story, though, things change dramatically, according to researchers in Spain. Not only are the language processing parts in our brain activated, but any other area in our brain that we would use when experiencing the events of the story are, too.”
When you listen to someone talk about a movement, your brain is acting as if you moved. If they describe a delicious meal, your sensory cortex will turn on. If you hear someone talk about an emotion, you will feel it, too. And the feelings we have at the same time connect us.
Marketers use stories to connect with their audience. They always have in mind the mantra “it’s about your customer.”
To make a story more effective, storytellers use simpler sentences and omit complicated words because the brain ignores them in the process of listening.
Good stories are entertaining, educational, and universal. And I know just the grandma who does it ingeniously.
Svetlana’s Instagram Profile Is Authentic
Her daughter Jelena opened her account and posted the first ten photos to show her how it works. Then Svetlana took over and started to write anecdotes from her life.
Now in the evening, the daughter helps her format and puts in emojis. But Ms. Davidovac is the author and chooses the photos. She dreams of publishing a book with a selection of her stories. Svetlana is such local fun that she ended up in the most popular daily newspaper in Serbia (southeast Europe).
When I asked for permission to write about her, she said:
“As you can see, I am not interested to be popular long in the tooth but to give folks something interesting and nice to read, if people want to read these little stories. I always joke — I’m not going to advertise compression stockings at 75, am I?”
On the platform of a dozen filters, where everybody is the editor of their own Cosmopolitan, Svetlana Davidovac creates an online memoir with her pale photos. There are creases, the reflection of a camera flash, some figures are indiscernible, but we don’t mind.
Because she is telling us stories and we believe her. She doesn’t present her life as the bucket list fulfilled. She is critical of her closest ones, talking about real-life ups and downs.
How Her Profile Looks
Among Instagram’s loud colors, her retro pictures are refreshing. They bring us humor and comfort. They evoke feelings and memories of the days gone by.
It’s a mash of people and eras:
- the life of her Jewish ancestors who became protagonists in the Nobel Prize book “The Bridge on the Drina”
- the adversity of World War II
- the life of once-rich people in Communist Yugoslavia
- her father’s philandering and her parents’ divorce
- the protests of 1968
- her husband’s gambling and high society
- the daughter she and her mother spoiled because Svetlana’s husband had died in a car crash
- the jet set and Establishment long gone
How not to love the past of 30–60 years ago?
On her Instagram posts, you can see personal dramas among great historical events of the 20th century. And what is the history you witnessed but a collection of your memories from that period?
Her sense of humor, her set of values, the cosmopolitan spirit, her taste, education, and memories of a rich girl detested by proletariat children.
As Svetlana takes us back to her childhood, we can see the little girl. She evokes good memories: the patriarchal norms, Friday family lunches, famous TV shows, celebrities, politicians, huge events, and scandals. All gone.
Svetlana’s tales have what all good stories have. They are:
- entertaining, such as the one about the dog she gave up “when I got bored of him” (it’s a joke)
- educational because she talks about historical figures she knew and the former way of life we are partly familiar with
- universal, because her “hysterical and stubborn” daughter is probably all of us, our mother’s children
- simple
- unforgettable
She sometimes asks us to take a look at her daughter’s texts (Jelena is a Serbian film critic), which works as a CTA.
How She Touches Our Hearts
She knows her audience well. They are mostly her daughter’s peers, 30- and 40-somethings.
Listening about her daughter’s growing up, we see our own childhood: 20 kids playing outside, the comfort of the 1980s home, you are loved and safe, and the whole world is waiting for you. It’s all gone, and we miss it, although life was far from perfect.
We follow her because she brings us comfort. She paints the dynamics of a family of influential people who suffered and enjoyed themselves, like all of us.
Svetlana evokes her beautiful memories full of interesting people, the rich family history, and the black sheep of the family in her humorous stories. She brings about the archetypes we all understand, and how not to love her for that? Svetlana’s posts prove she is the quiet queen of Insta.
If you’d like to read more about storytelling or social media, check these out:
