What a Story

Humans are highly visual creatures. Our brains are powerful organs as they can identify visuals watched for only 13 milliseconds. Our life is wired with stories - we have been using storytelling since ages to interact, to simplify a complex concept and to memorize things. It moulds our thinking process and shapes our way of life. With each passing day, as marketing in the digital ecosystem is becoming more challenging, marketers and advertisers are on an undying quest for novelty. Owing to the shifting usage patterns, abundance of information, competition and limited attention span, it has become necessary to make visual storytelling part of the social media marketing strategy. This will aid in attracting audiences and cultivating a deeper connection with captivating content. According to Cisco, by the year 2023, there will be a total of 5.3 billion Internet users. Meaning more opportunities in online marketing to cash in on. Visual storytelling content is a robust technique to connect with audiences on a human level. The ability of the human mind to tell a story through images or videos has captivated the business world for the past decades and now it can do the same for your social media marketing efforts. What does visual storytelling content do for social media engagement?The human brain is an outstanding creation, allowing it to quickly and easily create stories and images that can be stored in the short term memory and later used to remember things. This is why storytelling content works so well in social networking sites. In fact, stories evoke multiple emotions in viewers - they feel motivated, happy, intrigued and driven when they relate to your content.Storytelling visual components such as video, infographic, multimedia and images make your audience feel good, informed and attached to a brand - the more they see, the more they remember. As per a trusted source, global internet traffic from videos will make up 82% of all internet traffic by 2021. For this reason, you want to give your audience a taste of video storytelling content. For example, if you are promoting your blog on Facebook with a funny video of yours and the video is engaging, then it will get you a lot of likes and shares. It boosts retention and engagement like no other visual communication methods. Share stories of your origin, behind the scenes, the company’s aspirations and visions with the audience. Create well-designed instructional infographics, data visualizations, facts & stats and education to improve your outreach. You can give it a title, a description, a few graphics and text and then use a link back to your website or blog. The idea is to get your audience visualized with your content. 72% of B2B marketers are relying on educational content to get more conversion.Don’t be too technical because when people get too involved with your technical information, they tend to forget the rest of the piece. Keep it simple and easy to understand. This will not only ensure that you reach your target audience but will also make your content easy to share and distribute online.Product development journey through 3D graphic is an excellent way to get your message across in a very visual manner. By using graphics, you can tell a story quickly and effectively. A graphic draws attention immediately, and many social media users are turned off by text in a tweet or a status update.Give utmost importance to user-generated content. Make your audience the cynosure for your brand, they bring more authenticity and credibility to the brand as the new-age users love real-life stories. Over to youWhen you observe how visual storytelling content helps to enhance social media engagement, you will find that it can be an effective method to employ for any business. However, you need to ensure that you create visual content that is relevant to your product and that it has a natural appeal.