The Tony award-winning musical “Hamilton” used inventive storytelling to disrupt the Broadway scene. Creator Lin-Manual Miranda modernized of the story of America’s first secretary of treasury with hip-hop music — garnering him applause in many different circles.

While this storytelling style lent itself to organic spreadability, the musical’s social-media strategy brought Broadway to fans in a new way. The musical has quickly built a highly engaged social-media community of more than 1 million fans.

Mike Karns, CEO of Marathon Live and the social-media manager of “Hamilton,” shared with us some lessons brand managers can take away from the play’s social-media success.

The story of tonight

One key lesson: Tell a brand’s story within the context of today.

“It’s our goal to uphold the early brand of the show, which is ‘The Story of America Then Told by America Now.’ We felt that it was our responsibility to carry that through to social media,” Karns said. “We’ve made it a goal to share not only include interesting stuff from the history, but also tie us into the larger conversation that happening out in the world.”

He explained that those who are part of the show seek to strike a balance between honoring history while bringing the story into today’s culture, as they did with this meme:

Here comes the general! #HamiltonBway #RiseUp pic.twitter.com/HCCbJHhQYk

— Hamilton (@HamiltonMusical) August 9, 2015

Talk less, smile more

In the musical, one of the characters encourages Hamilton to “Talk less, smile more.” Social-media marketers should also heed this advice. Brands need to understand that it’s not always about them; celebrating the community that supports them is paramount.

As Karns put it, sharing fan content is a way to show gratitude:

“It’s so easy to get lost talking about yourself on social media, so we actively try to put that conversation outside of ourselves. The best example of this would be the Tony Awards. We wanted to celebrate the people that helped us get to where we are, so we designed a collage of nine images that we’ve rolled out over the course of the Tony Awards that all featured fan art.”

Who tells your story?

The musical ends with the song, “Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story?” While this question provokes reflection on legacy, brand managers should also ask it of themselves. It’s hard to relinquish control, but brands who empower their fans to tell their story see more success.

Karns recounted the first preview performance, when an eager crowd gathered to see Miranda’s new musical. Miranda wanted to find a way to engage with those fans. That birthed the #Ham4Ham preshow performances that spread so quickly on social media.

“You’ll notice that most of the #Ham4Ham videos were not created or posted by us, and that was a very conscious choice. We wanted get people to evangelize on our behalf. It was a different perspective each time, and it was really successful.”

The room where it happens

Most important, Karns said that they aimed to give fans unprecedented access so that they felt as if they were in the room where it happened. The brand did this through cast takeovers of Snapchat, frequent Facebook Live Q&As, and album leaks through NPR first and eventually Spotify.

This past month, Hamilton streamed Creator Miranda’s final curtain call.

“We knew that there would only 1,300 people that get to see Lin’s last performance live, but there are so many more people who wanted to be in the room where it happened, so to speak, and we wanted to provide that to people,” said Karns.

About 30,000 people viewed the Facebook video live, and now it has 1.4 million views. In addition, Lin-Manual Miranda trended on Facebook for 2½ days.

This innovative strategy shows an understanding of the musical’s loyal base of fans, who were connected with Miranda’s rise to fame. It gave fervent followers a way to say goodbye digitally.