What are some tips to create emotional connection with your viewers through video?

In my experience, creating a viewer/customer persona allows you to see your audience more clearly and will help guide the ideation process.

This step is often skipped or glazed over in marketing departments: We think we know our audience, our clients, our optimal customers. But confirmation bias is a persistent and often invisible problem: I can't count how many disconnects in marketing materials I've seen (and created!) that could have been avoided by simply finding one person in the intended audience and listening to their thoughts on the subject. Whenever starting a new content piece, the first thing you need to do is assume you don't know anything. Then go find out what you need to know.

I often find it helpful to ask yourself a series of thought provoking questions when coming up with a theme. Some of the questions are for the client you’re working with. Others are for the creator to make sure your vision is in alignment with all the stakeholders.

→ Start with a Hook: Capture your audience’s attention right from the beginning to spark curiosity. → Introduce Characters: Present the main characters involved, helping viewers form a connection. → Set the Scene: Establish the setting and context of your story to provide clarity. → Present the Conflict: Introduce the main conflict or challenge that drives the story forward. → Build Rising Action: Gradually increase tension and stakes, keeping viewers engaged. → Reach the Climax: Create a turning point that resolves the conflict or achieves the goal. → Provide Resolution: Conclude the story, tying up loose ends and delivering the core message. → End with Impact: Leave a lasting impression, encouraging viewers to reflect or take action.

A great way to get close to storytelling elements is to pick one or two of your favourite films /tv shows and grab the screenplay. While the written script doesn’t always translate to the final product, you can get a strong sense in how the storytelling structure works.

Storytelling is the base language of human cognition. There's a reason that every popular text reads as a series of stories rather than an instruction manual. There's a reason we learn skills better when we understand how to apply them in a real life context. Storytelling isn't just a way to think about things, it is the fundamental way every one of us thinks about everything.

The three act structure or heroes journey are broader tools to understand story structure, but there are three integral ingredients that make something a story and not just a list of facts or ideas: The first is conflict. Life is a neverending series of problems to solve, conflicts that make our individual situations less than optimal. The second is expectation or deliberation. This is where your story interacts with the audience. If (after presenting the conflict) your audience isn't integrating their own perspective and thinking of different resolutions to the conflict(s) presented, then something is wrong with how the story explained the problems: The conflict is missing nuance, context, or just implausible. Then finally: Resolution.

The secret to a good video is authenticity. Pretend like you are FaceTiming your best friend. All they want to see is the most real version of you. Don’t read from a script and keep a smile on your face. Speak from the heart and the rest will take care of itself! Good luck!

Being authentic and vulnerable isn't just a cliche: it's a more efficient and effective way to convey anything. Think about the steps you have to take to convince someone of even the smallest inauthenticity: First you have to find the minimum possible lie that aligns with enough of the truth to be convincing; Then you have to deliver that lie as though it's the truth; Now any time a new piece of the truth comes to light that goes against the lie, you have to develop your lie with additional inauthenticities. You've essentially sentenced yourself to a battle against reality itself. What does it say about humanity that we often prefer to fight reality itself than face the potential consequences of being authentic and/or vulnerable?