Last year I went down to Miami to an annual summit of global chief marketing officers. Working with these CMOs and aspiring CMOs, I was impressed. They all believed in the value of social media long-term, engaged relationships with customers to produce a rich value chain: real-time marketing and insight, higher-quality, yet lower-cost customer service and support, and long-term revenue growth. Ten, even five years ago, such a group of CMOs would not have looked at the world this way – despite the fact that social media marketing has been a tool for commerce since the days of the medieval marketplace.

Storytelling has been marketing’s go-to buzzword for a couple years running. A well-told story that draws on the interests of its audience has the power to connect customers emotionally to a brand and make it unforgettable.

But when it comes to social media, few marketers get storytelling right. Traditional advertising follows a broadcasting model, and that’s how most brands today are telling stories in social—they develop an idea, package it up in a ready-made campaign, push the story out through social channels, and hope people like it.