Tuesday, October 6, 2015

Importance of visual story telling for the purpose of brand building

Whether or not you are a budding entrepreneur, it is not hard to understand the importance of brand building in today’s world of highly competitive consumerism scenario. If you are en entrepreneur, you can relate to its significance even more. In these days of bid data and know it all consumers (due to over exposure of information on the Internet) making an impact is no more as novel as it used to be even a decade earlier. In order to make an impact and generate/ sustain consumer interest/ attention, one needs to contrive something impactful.
This is one reason why modern marketing techniques so whole heartedly swear by visual story telling or info graphics as it is more commonly known as, to do the talk. We anyway know, that audio visual (graphics included) makes more of an impact than written content alone.
The rise of social media has been a boon to online marketing: this in turn has been instrumental in a large extent to influence the visual story telling form of marketing.


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



-          Ekaterina Walter & Jessica Gioglio
-          Co-authors of The Power of Visual Storytelling


Reasons for rising popularity:
1.    In the age of bid data and information explosion, people do not have time to assimilate a lot of information and categorize/ classify them simultaneously. The window for pondering over a content has drastically narrowed over the course of the past few years. This is the reason why visual story telling has had a more profound impact!

              Visual content is:
           1. Crisp
           2. Precise
           3. Informative without bordering on
               exaggeration


2. The narrative is explained via images and pictures which the reader can relate to thus, helping arrive at the conclusion faster. It makes for a more attractive packaging which in turn attracts readership. Especially, in an age of social media boom, visual storytelling- online content marketing has proved to be vastly more effective when images or video are added along with well thought out content.

Take for example: 


This attached image makes it quite evident that the attached video and the static image is what draws readers on social media forums to get attached to this post which highlights the cute animated characters of Minions. The usage of the image of the minions here acts as the leverage to draw reader attention and then, uses it to share the news.
In comparison, the sharing of the news as simple written content would have failed to generate the instant attention that the sharing of the image of the Minions here does! If it is anything to go by, the number of likes and shares for the post here on Facebook quite helps establish the fact.

Social media shares new faster; and nothing goes around the social forums faster than craft fully woven content that marries aesthetics of branding/ marketing with intelligent and communicable content that the masses can relate. There is no place for the abstract or vagueness in any form.
Visual story telling guarantees that instant ripple reason online that could erstwhile only be dreamed of. And, it does help that you can go on to connect to the masses (teeming up to hundreds) in a fraction of a second or so.
3. It also goes without saying that visual content is a lot more click worthy and memorable.
For instance: you see an extremely funny image and an accompanying text; you are more likely to share it and remember it more than a plain body of text. Consider the above image here again. You are ten times more likely to remember it along with the accompanying message and maybe, refer to your friends than just a plain text highlighting the message!
4. Visual content is recyclable and can be also used across multiple forums and in various differing ways, which makes them even more versatile. At a given time, as an online marketer, your competition is the entire world. This is the reason would want to make an effect that is- spontaneous and impactful.
What better way than through means of audio visual that directly interacts and engages your audience and customer and helps you directly talk to them. Right. 

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