Visual storytelling as an effective communication strategy.
What exactly is visual storytelling and how can you/your company benefit from it? Which strategies should one consider when using visual storytelling?
A good story, a floor of tension, characters with which the audience can identify: these are essential marketing elements today in order to win customers over to your side in the long term. Storytelling activates large parts of our brain that are responsible for processing emotions and experiences.
Storytelling is ideal for preparing information in such an interesting way that it reaches the user and is embedded in their mind.
Why tell visual stories?
“A picture is worth a thousand words, a pro video is worth millions”. A picture has a higher added value than a written text. Complicated facts are often explained more simply with a picture or a representation and usually leave a stronger impression on the viewer than a long text. In times of today's overstimulation by the media, the importance of images and their narrative power increases. Marketing based on text-laden messages and rational communication has little effect.
This is generally where we go into quoting statistics that prove examples of how professional video is a far superior method of getting your companies mission across, generating leads, explaining p[policies to new employees, etc.
But where here to talk about the benefits of visual storytelling
What exactly is going on with images and text? And why does visual storytelling offer companies completely new opportunities to retain customers in the long term?
Visual information is processed faster
Have you ever heard of the Picture Superiority Effect? Even before the times of written language, people communicated with each other through images and symbols. The human brain is, therefore, better trained to decipher images rather than text. Research has shown that the human brain can process images 60,000 times faster than words. But why is this relevant to you? Well, our goal is always to retain customers, right?
A text also consists of many symbols that must first be decoded by the brain. This is a lot of work for our brain and it affects our attention immensely. Due to the high flow of information in the media, our current absorption capacity has been drastically reduced. Therefore, it is important to create content for your consumers that provides the most relevant information in an exciting way. As well as in the shortest possible time. Not easy! Yet, with meaningful content that illustrates your message through story-telling, that's exactly what is possible!
Stand out from the competition
Let's take the Facebook news feed as an example: It is updated every second, followed by newer and newer content. The typical Facebook user might take a few minutes to scroll through the feed. And that was it. If you haven't been able to arouse their curiosity during this period, you’ve lost. So, you need to develop content that gets the audience's full attention. Nowadays it is often just a look that decides whether something appears interesting or not. The first impressions are mostly visual in nature. It is, therefore, necessary to stand out from the crowd and reach and inspire people with exciting stories.
More shares and reach
Do you use Facebook, LinkedIn, or similar platforms privately? Then you have probably already given a “thumbs up” a few times or shared a post every now and then. How often was it plain text? And how often was it a picture or a video? Commitment does not come from facts and figures, but from emotions! Studies show that images on social networks have a much higher interaction rate than content without images. Here are a few facts:
According to Hubspot, pictures are shared 150% more often on Twitter than plain text
Articles with pictures are shared twice as often as those without
Facebook posts get 2.3 times more engagement with visual content
Through visual storytelling, you can reach larger masses of your audience and thus increase your brand awareness.
So, is it enough to simply upload a lot of stock images on your channels every day? No way! Stock Pictures or pictures that only decorate text are not a good strategy for your visual storytelling, because these are ... well ... no storytelling!
Wait so what’s a storytelling picture look like!?
Visual storytelling also takes on very different forms: photos, infographics, video, etc. Of course, the design should match your content to your corporate design, your brand image, and your target audience. It is important to anchor a message that is associated with the brand. Which of course is much more effective and all-around better to do via video. (What's the story here?)
Our conclusion
You can achieve a lot with visual storytelling! More engagement, emotions, better information flow, more attention ... and ultimately more customers. Building an interactive community without narrative imagery is becoming exceedingly difficult today.
In order to be able to assert yourself successfully with your target audience today, you should therefore master the language of visual storytelling!
Storytelling is a very effective tool - but telling stories with pictures is only going to be so effective. As images “stand out” images are everywhere. Meaning yes, the positive effect is there. Yet fun quick video will dominate your “standout image”. Think about the power of TikTok. If a cat video can trump that image you paid a graphic designer a good amount for, imaging the impact of that professional video your competition just hired us to do, is going to have. Better yet, don’t imagine that. Let them see the impact your customized video has. Jump on the horn with us today, and let’s get your customized HD visual story out there today.