At Pubcon 2016 in Las Vegas, I had the opportunity to speak with Debra Jasper, CEO and Founder of Mindset Digital, about the power of visual storytelling in marketing.
A critical challenge is everyone is dealing with an overflow of information, it’s becoming more difficult getting people to tune in with what you have to say.
Telling your story more visually is a compelling way to get people’s attention in an age of dwindling attention spans. Learn more in the video below.
Here are some key takeaways from the video:
- In addition to realizing how content is changing, marketers also need to take into consideration how the audience is changing. We’re becoming a visually sophisticated audience, and thus expect more from the content we consume.
- Consider how visual storytelling can be used to convey anything more visually. It’s not limited to just blog articles. It can be used for social media profiles, professional presentations, internal reports, and more.
- Seeing always wins. Today, 70% of information is consumer through our eyes, and audience attention spans are only 8 seconds. Human brains are wired for narrative, so unpack your content into visuals to keep your audience in tune with your content
- A lot of our stories are still told in old school ways, especially when you look at PowerPoint presentations and social media profiles. Most of you reading this probably have a LinkedIn account, but is it optimized for visual storytelling? On a platform like LinkedIn you can create video bios of yourself, create highlight reels of speeches you’ve given before, and things like that.
- There’s still value in text, because you can’t just present a visual and leave it at that. There has to be some narrative to tell the story, which can be achieved through text.
- However, even text has to be designed for a visual audience these days. You need to break up create content in short, organized, and skimmable ways (SOS). That means short paragraphs, bulleted lists, intelligent use of headings. Text that’s formatted to be skimmed helps the reader extract the information they need quickly and conveniently.
Please visit SEJ’s YouTube page for more video interviews. For more information about visual storytelling, please see the following resources:
- How to Effectively Use Visual Storytelling [INFOGRAPHIC]
- 7 Examples of Great Storytelling For Boring Brands
- 7 Tools You Need for Visual Storytelling
Screenshot taken Oct 2016
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Content
