The Power of Visual Storytelling

Did you know that the human brain processes visuals 60,000 times faster than text? Or that web posts with visuals drive up to 180% more engagement than those without? Or that viewers spend 100% more time on web pages with videos?

Attention is the new commodity. Visual storytelling is the new currency."

So says Ekaterina Walter and Jessica Gioglio, co-authors of the new book The Power of Visual Storytelling: How to Use Visuals, Videos, and Social Media to Market Your Brand.

Ekaterina and Jessica are well-known innovators in the marketing industry, helping transform brands such as Intel and Dunkin Donuts into social businesses. Ekaterina is also a friend. Often, Ekaterina and I have discussed industry trends and radical ways that marketing is changing. Consumer expectations are shifting towards transparency, real-time communication, and more personalized touch-points. We can no longer have 3-month creative development cycles, we can no longer afford ignoring unhappy customers, and we can no longer control our brand. Instead, we need to be agile, responsive, and we need to invite our customers to shape our brand with us.

Ekaterina recently expanded on why she wrote her latest book, telling me:

In the age of infobesity and increasing digital noise, visual storytelling has emerged as a strategy for not only standing out, but also for nurturing and growing vibrant and engaged communities. The ability to craft visuals that inspire emotion and action is helping companies to be noticed and is amplifying their stories through those communities.”

To master visual storytelling, you need a powerful toolkit at your disposal. In this book, the authors share strategy, resources, tips, and tools to set you up for success in not only building a case for a powerful content strategy, but also in crafting your company’s visual story. The beauty of the book is that it not only offers a bird’s eye view of the topic (builds the case for visual social media, as well as has the whole chapter on how to build your visual strategy), but also dives deeper into the how (suggests tips and case studies for every type of visual media, as well as tips and tools for every visual social network such as Pinterest, Slideshare, Vine, and many more).

With the adult attention span shrinking every year (now between 3-8 seconds!), it is super important to be able to grab attention of your community with the content that stands out. And because images are so much easier to process, it is in human nature to pay more attention to the visual elements than to text. So developing your visual story and nurturing your communities through visual strategies/tactics is something every business owner and marketer should master.

A great free tool to get the ball rolling with storytelling for your brand is to check out storytellit. Storytellit is a way for professionals and small business owners to have more fun telling their stories online and easily add photos to your content. (Check out my recent article, Don't Sell It, Storytell It to learn more.)

Now it's YOUR turn to tell us about your experience with visual storytelling. What company has a story that sticks with you? What images are associated with your memory of this story? How often do you use images in your social media posts? How do you find and create compelling images to share online?

Please share your thoughts in the Comments sections below!

Ekaterina Walter is a cofounder and CMO at BRANDERATI. A recognized business and marketing thought leader, she is a sought-after international speaker and contributor to Forbes and Fast Company. Jessica Gioglio is a Social Media Strategist and recognized thought leader who has been a valuable contributor to the social media and communications teams at Dunkin' Donuts, TripAdvisor, State Street and Comcast.

Dave Kerpen is the founder and CEO of Likeable Local. He is also the co-founder and Chairman of Likeable Media, and the New York Times-bestselling author of Likeable Social Media and Likeable Business, and the new collection, Likeable Leadership. To read more from Dave on LinkedIn, please click the FOLLOW button above or below.

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