How to Use Visual Storytelling to Market Your Business and Make it Memorable
Have you heard marketers proclaim that content is king? While there is some truth to it, visual storytelling for business has also gained momentum, given the popularity of social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, SlideShare, and Vine.
Consider this tweet with just three words.
Sent on November 7, 2012, the tweet and photo received over 770,000 retweets.
It was the image and tweet that the Obama campaign sent out after the president was declared the winner. This tweet captured an authentic and emotive moment after a story that had the world watching and following with all its plots, twists, turns, and characters.
According to data from Buzzfeed, the following happen in the next 60 seconds –
208,300 photos are posted to Facebook
510,000 photos are liked on Instagram
278,000 tweets are sent
100 hours of video are being uploaded to YouTube.
In terms of engagement with visual media, consider this –
Posts with an album or photo drive up to 180% more engagement than those without. (Source)
Viewers spend 100% more time on web pages with videos. (Source)
Viewers are 85% more likely to purchase a product after watching a product video. (Source)
Given the volume of visual media being shared and their engagement rates, you’ve got a pretty compelling business case.
But there is so much noise in our world…
There is also a lot of conversation around people being overwhelmed with so much content.
Consider this –
According to Nielsen, over 27,000,000 pieces of content are shared each day.
Statistic Brain says that our average attention span has dropped from 12 seconds in 2000 to 8 seconds—one second less than that of a goldfish!
We check our phones 150 times per day and our email 30 times an hour, and the amount of information worldwide doubles every 18 months.
All this available information and data creates a battle for customer attention between brands, publishers, and each of us who creates content. But more importantly, it’s forcing businesses to think and act like publishers.
Why visuals stand out
That is why “Content Marketing” is one of the biggest buzzwords in marketing. It requires businesses to create content that their customers want.
Why?
People have developed filters to process information that is of interest or value to them. A key part of helping them get through the filters is visual content marketing or visual storytelling. This is not just using visual media but doing it in a way that tells a story and engages the viewer.
Studies have shown that blog posts with visuals drive up to 180% more engagement than those without, while posts with videos attract 3x more inbound links than plain text posts. Articles with images get 94% more views than those without. A study by 3M showed that 90% of the information sent to the brain is visual, and visuals are processed 60,000 times faster than text.
Psychologist Albert Mehrabian demonstrated that 93% of communication is nonverbal. Studies find that the human brain deciphers image elements simultaneously, while language is decoded in a linear, sequential manner taking more time to process. Our minds react differently to visual stimuli.
Relatively speaking, in terms of communication, textual ubiquity is brand new. Thanks to millions of years of evolution, we are genetically wired to respond differently to visuals than text. For example, humans have an innate fondness for images of wide, open landscapes, which evoke an instant sense of well-being and contentment. Psychologists hypothesize that this almost universal response stems from the years our ancestors spent on the savannas in Africa.(1)
People think using pictures. John Berger, media theorist, writes in his bookWays of Seeing (Penguin Books, 1972), “Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak.” Dr. Lynell Burmark, Ph.D. Associate at the Thornburg Center for Professional Development and writer of several books and papers on visual literacy, said, “…unless our words, concepts, ideas are hooked onto an image, they will go in one ear, sail through the brain, and go out the other ear. Words are processed by our short-term memory where we can only retain about 7 bits of information (plus or minus 2). This is why, by the way, that we have 7-digit phone numbers. Images, on the other hand, go directly into long-term memory where they are indelibly etched.” Therefore, it is not surprising that it is much easier to show a circle than describe it.
When it comes to quick, clear communication, visuals trump text almost every time. Presented with the following textual and visual information, would you pet this dog?
A business perspective of visual storytelling
Antonio Damasio, in his book Descartes Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain was one of the first to record that patients who suffered damage to the emotional regions of their brains had trouble making decisions. Neuroscientists have since confirmed this with the latest scanning technologies. Good visuals make people feel first and think second. Emotions drive decisions, which is why Madison Avenue was built on this premise.
While the rationale behind spending time and effort on using the right images is clear, you must be intentional about how you use them. This is where visual storytelling and the science of human behavior come in.
Images can play a massive role in visual storytelling. Take, for example, the site – DidYouKnowGaming.com The site contains shareable images of video game trivia like the one below.
This Copyblogger infographic has over 170,000 pins alone.
While sharing such visuals is great from a business point of view, what matters is the bottom line. In other words, can it drive more sales, leads, and the right kind of traffic?
Sephora, a well-known brand, released data stating that its Pinterest followers spend 15 times more on Sephora merchandise than its Facebook fans.
Sephora’s visual marketing on Pinterest
Red Bull is commonly used as a great content marketing example, but its success is largely due to the fact that much of its content is visual and the way it uses visuals. They create content that is in line with the brand and are visual storytelling masters.
Red Bull surfing content as seen on www.redbull.com
How to create great visual storytelling content
Creating great visual storytelling content boils down to really getting to know your audience and delivering relevant content. However, a few elements can help in the creation of such content that go beyond aesthetics.
1. Design
Visual storytelling requires considering color, resolution, and sizing of text and other components depending on whether it is to be featured on the web, as an ebook, on social media, or in a print edition. Image backgrounds and the kind of message they convey are all critical in creating an effective visual story.
2. Choose or create images with care and words sparingly
An image is like a billboard. So text should be inserted to gain attention and not to tell the whole story. Captions can be used to expand on the message if need be.
Another thing to remember is that authentic images need to be used, especially on social media platforms. Use original photography from customers, the office or factory floor, events, and employees. Avoid stock photography.
In cognitive science, reinforcing pictures with text is called dual coding. Our brain’s ability to retain information significantly increases when visual information is paired with verbal information. A Cambridge study showed an increase in learning by 89% when combining visuals with text. A Kissmeterics study showed that captions under website images are read 300% more than the body copy of the story with which those images appear.
The same is true for videos as well. Text or dialog is not necessary or should not be relied on too heavily to tell the story. The video below proves that you don’t need clip after clip of interviewees telling the story for you.
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As with images, consider how other elements, such as video and framing techniques, can enhance the story for the viewer. The video below is an example.
Another aspect of choosing images is that the visual needs to mirror the message that the text sends. You probably have been told to show, don’t tell. That is because our brains are designed to take notice of visual cues, and so the images need to carry the message we are trying to send.
The anti-smoking ad below, which shows a person smoking, is an example of what one would think would alert people to the dangers of smoking and encourage them to turn away. Professor Joesph Cappella’s research, however, found that if you show people smoking in anti-smoking ads, it has the unintended consequence of encouraging people to smoke and not deter them. So, in other words, the social cues from the images in the ad drive people in the opposite direction of the actual message of the ad.
3. Use the right tools
Using the right tools for your visuals is essential. Adobe Photoshop for images or Adobe Premier Elements for videos are standard editing tools, but they can be pricey. Adobe Photoshop Elements is a bit cheaper than Adobe Photoshop. Alternatively, Gimp is a free tool that can get most things done. Desktop and mobile apps like Over, Pic Collage, Picmonkey, and Pixlr are also great tools for creating visual storytelling images for Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and Tumblr.
4. Don’t forget the rules
Creating images or videos for visual storytelling is not just about messaging and looks but also about the platforms on which it will be displayed. Image sizes vary for different social media platforms, and Facebook used to have a rule allowing only 20% of your image to contain text. Using a grid tool might help in such instances.
Another aspect is attribution. If you don’t own the photo or image, you can use it with permission to borrow it with attribution. Dustin Stout has a great resource for finding free images, which you can find here.
That said, if you do create an image, you can attribute it to yourself by watermarking it, inserting your logo or URL, or even placing your copyright in the footer.
5. Test content
Testing is an important part of the visual storytelling process. The good news is that it is not expensive to conduct testing. For example, most email programs allow for free A/B testing.
In the presidential election campaign, splash pages with different photos were the subject of A/B tests. In the example below, splash pages for a contest called Dinner with Barack were tested. Just changing the photo used increased conversions by 19%.
A/B test done on a splash page by changing the photo
Get creative…
Now, it’s your turn to get creative and create your own visual stories.
Also, please share this with friends and colleagues who could benefit from visual storytelling and let me know how it’s working for you.
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