Visual storytelling uses social media to present a narrative paradigm of an event, experience, or brand image. This form of electronic storytelling uses images, videos and pictures to create narrative content. As social media consumers grow in number, content developers have devised visual storytelling as a way to capture audience interest and push content out to social media in a captivating way. Just about anything, from a news story, an advertising campaign or branding image can be pushed out through visual storytelling. See Amy Emery's blog entry here detailing how news agencies used visual storytelling to describe the impact of Hurricane Irma last week. The combination of images and video was able to convey the impact of destruction in a more meaningful way than just words or a single photo. Business use of Visual StorytellingIn Robbie Richards 5/22/17 article "An Actionable Guide to Visual Storytelling," he points out that pictures present more than 8,400% more information than just words, visuals are processed 60,000 more quickly than text, and people remember 6.5x more text based data when paired with images. Visual storytelling has been used for years by different businesses for advertising purposes. In 1977, Kodak created a commercial campaign using visual storytelling to invoke the powerful meaning of memories. More recently, visual storytelling has been used by campaigns by Under Armor using Misty Copeland, and also Nike using Tiger Woods. Disney created its "Good Life" campaign using viral video storytelling paired with music. All of these examples illustrate the use of visual storytelling to push out a compelling message consistent with brand image. In other instances, visual storytelling can also make a seemingly boring and mundane product more interesting and appealing. Sherry Gray of Search Engine Journal described 7 Examples of Great Storytelling for Boring Brands. Honestly, I am surprised to not see the Squatty Potty among them. Platforms for Visual StorytellingWhile visual storytelling has been around for years in television advertising, the introduction of social media has made storytelling much less expensive and more accessible, because essentially, anyone and everyone can be an editor and a publisher. The only thing that is needed is an appropriate platform. One of the best platforms for visual storytelling is SnapChat. Snapchat "stories" are strings of images and videos created by users that are available for viewing for 24 hours before deletion. In addition to Snapchat, Visual Storytelling can be done on Instagram, Tumblr, Facebook and YouTube. Because of the time deadlines, Keith A. Quesenberry in his blog post said that Snapchat engagement rates of 80%. whereas Facebook engagement rates are considered good if they are at 1%. Visual Storytelling can also be done in different ways. Ad described in Art Version's website, Visual Storytelling can be built around a platform of text, visual imagery, animation, sound or video. The method, mode, platform and publication can all be modified to most effectively push out the desired content to the target audience. Who is the audience for Visual Storytelling?Visual storytelling is about capturing the attention of a target audience. In order to be effective, the storyteller must first identify the audience intended to consume the content. For a solo individual producer, it may be a circle of friends. For a community, it could be a neighborhood, school, or local nonprofit. For a business, it could be an area or a region of existing or potential customers. Or, the business could produce the content targeting an audience of employees, executives and stakeholders, such as a community or market. For an advertising business, it may be current customers or consumers, or the market as a whole around the world. The selection of audience is only limited by the imagination of the publisher. Visual Storytelling and Influencers/CrowdfundingCrowdfunding is the practice of creating a fundraising effort and publishing the effort through social media to collect small contributions towards a larger project. As indicated above, images and videos are more powerful than just words for conveying content. A crowdfunding campaign, for example, using Visual Storytelling can be much more successful than using text alone. Public relations firm RohanPotdar created this article of 5 Ways to and Effective Crowdfunding Campaign for Nonprofits. Central to that article were numerous examples of how nonprofits have used visual storytelling to appeal to the emotions of potential donors. Here are five examples of how nonprofits have effectively used visual storytelling to create wildly successful campaigns. ConclusionIn conclusion, visual storytelling can be a powerful tool to convey content in a meaningful way. Videos, pictures used to tell a story in a way that amplifies meaning and appeals to a broader audience than using just words alone. The explosion of social media has brought the power of visual storytelling to smartphones everywhere, as a result we are seeing more storytelling content than ever before. Businesses are using it to influence customers, individuals are using it to share experiences with friends, and influence others, and crowdfunders are using it to expand campaigns. After reviewing this blog post, how will you use visual storytelling to reach a communication objective in your life?
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