5 ways video content can tell your story

By Visual Culture Blog, Case Studies No Comments on 5 ways video content can tell your story

Are you one of the many business owners out there struggling to identify a way to communicate your vision to your staff or audience? It’s OK, you’re not alone.
It can be extremely difficult to capture the attention of a group of people, especially when you might want to sell them a training procedure or a product that may not scream ‘entertaining.’

Storytelling has consistently been a critical aspect of e-marketing, especially now that video has approximately 70% more engagement levels online through social media marketing.

What you have to remind yourself is that people think differently than you expect them to. We as business owners often overthink what our audiences essentially want from us. We’re constantly placing a million different things into one tiny package because we believe it’s going to attract everybody in some way or form – but that’s a huge error, and one that most big corporations fall victim to.

So, when thinking about your audience’s reactions, ask yourself… how would I react to that? Would I watch this? E.g. would you want to watch a clip titled “Safety Procedures” or a clip about Carl, a steel worker who fell over a toolbox, fractured his leg and now suffers some health and financial consequences from that fall?

It’s vital to keep things interesting, and storytelling can do this in a very easy, straightforward way. What you have to remember is that you don’t want to be a corporation dictating information. You want to be ‘human’, which is ultimately what is going to keep you on the same engagement levels.

Try these options next time you strategise with your marketing team:

1. Fly on The Wall
Think documentaries.This is an ‘action as it happens’ production, where the camera crew will follow you and film your interactions with people within a certain environment.
One of our corporate clients recently hired us to meetings between franchisees around Australia and then travel through Pakistan and India to visit their extended families . This showed where they came from, the human aspect to the business and the family orientated behaviours of their business. Even as an internal staff communications video, this incredible documentary was extremely engaging as it provoked emotion from the audience, reminding them of their own family values, which caused a chain reaction of familiarity between the employer and employee. The story all comes together in the edit suite, taking all the raw footage and identifying the best moments to edit into an engaging story – no script, just real life.

2. Dramatised
Dramatised videos are scripted and in most cases have hired actors to play characters to show the story unfolding. This can work with the example above of Carl, our broken-legged friend, who fell over on a work-site due to the wrong placement of a toolbox. This dramatization angle can show scenarios like this to team members in a way that resonates with them, to ensure vital information is seen, heard and actioned.

3. Interview
This is a great way to tell a story, especially if you’re teaching people something about your business and what you do. This often works for charity organisations as it can show people who have benefited from the work of the business. This type of video can encourage trust between the viewer and the organisation.
We recently have filmed with The Stroke Foundation and incredible stroke-survivors who shared their stories and offered tips on how to go about goal setting in recovery.
As this is a ‘real-life’ story, it automatically makes the audience want to listen.


4. Pass-the-baton
You may not have heard of this before, but the pass-the-baton theory can incorporate many different styles into one video, creating a story with many moving parts, all blending into one.
Epworth Health Group represent one client of ours that employ this style as their go-to when coming up with e-marketing solutions, as there are many different aspects of their business that are involved.

5. Social
Social media is a fast moving hurricane of excitement, and videos are taking over as the primary source of engagement. To tell a story on social media you have to be pretty savvy as the attention span of an average ‘scroller’ is that of 10 seconds at most upon first glance. This is where the use of captions and professionally edited footage can be an enormous asset.

These are just five ways to use storytelling to enhance your video engagement in your business. 

To find out more, or to chat to us/brainstorm with us about an upcoming project, click here

 

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