How to Use Video Storytelling to Inspire Your Audience
By Stanley Meytin
Break down barriers that separate you from your audience with video marketing
Video storytelling is a powerful tool that businesses can use to transform their audience from onlookers to clients, customers, and champions of the brand. Every business owner knows the value of a great referral, but valuable referrals often elude business owners. Sometimes, it’s a lack of follow through that costs a business owner a good lead, and sometimes the follow-through happens, but the connection is lost: your brand doesn’t live up to the hype of what someone else is saying about you. Ouch. A strategic way to ensure that your message is being conveyed appropriately and that your potential customers understand what you are all about is to get in front of them with video. Share your story with video storytelling and ensure that people get the goods from the horse’s mouth. Need some help getting started? Here’s how you can use video storytelling to inspire your audience to take action.
Video Storytelling Allows You to be Authentic
Everyone is talking about being authentic these days, but what usually happens is that people are so preoccupied with putting on a show that they fail to come across as authentic. Blogs and written content have their place, but they lack the immediate nature of video: video is right now, come-as-you-are real, and you can’t usually hide from what’s happening. Video allows you to show up as yourself, be yourself, and show the world what you have to offer. While might feel rehearsed and awkward at first will come to feel more natural and you’ll settle into the routine of recording and sharing videos as part your storytelling marketing efforts.
Emotion and Vulnerability are Not a Bad Thing in Video Storytelling
Aren’t you glad we live in a world where you can show your emotions without ridicule? Remember what it was like when everyone was playing the tough guy in business? These days, even the most successful business owners are sharing stories of their emotions and being vulnerable in front of the video camera lens and people are eating it up. That’s because all we really want is to know we are not alone, and when those we look up to or try to emulate, especially in business, are emotional and putting themselves in the way of critique, we feel like we can do it, too. It’s really an amazing time to be alive and share your story with the world.
Raw and Real Stories Leave Lasting Impacts
What’s interesting about video storytelling is what happens naturally when you are trying to tell a story: another story often emerges. We are so consumed with trying to get the messages right that we don’t let the natural order of conversation take place and we often miss these golden opportunities to connect with our audiences. When you are in the middle of a story, and another story comes to mind, don’t squash it down. Share it with the world. You cannot know how that story might inspire a customer or potential customer, and you cannot know the lasting impact your story may have on someone, even years from now. Don’t hold back.
Video Storytelling Puts You Front and Center
There’s nothing quite as intimate as watching a video of someone’s story on your phone or laptop, television or even on the big screen at the movie theatre. Stories are how we connect with one another. We love stories because we see ourselves in other people’s stories. For business owners, knowing that you are not the only one struggling or that you are not the only one worried about making payroll next week is a strong message to get. We are more connected than ever, yet we are lonelier than ever, separated by screens. Video storytelling helps to break down those barriers and puts us back in front of the people who mean the most to us: our customers. When your audience sees you, they are reminded of the work you do and they feel connected to you. The more they see you, the more inspired they’ll be to connect with you and work with you.
Ask Your Audience to Take Action
The classic “call to action” is when you put an offer in front of your audience, usually a chance to buy a product or sign up for a service. But with video marketing, you can offer more than just a chance to work with you, you can offer a chance to learn from you, and when customers feel like they are getting a lot of value from a company, they’ll come back again and again. You can always take the direct approach and ask for the sale, or you can use video storytelling and ask your audience to take a different kind of action: share the video. Tag a friend. Respond to it. Comment on it. Engage with it. Ask them to get involved. Ask them to take action that leaves a lasting impression. Ask your audience to become part of your story and you’ll build influential relationships with your audience like you’ve never seen before.
For more information about video storytelling, check out our Youtube channel and read about our storytelling services. We take pride in being the vehicle through which companies can share their stories. Let’s talk about how you can use video storytelling to inspire your audience to take action.
Reading Time: 4 minutes
By Stanley Meytin
Break down barriers that separate you from your audience with video marketing
Video storytelling is a powerful tool that businesses can use to transform their audience from onlookers to clients, customers, and champions of the brand. Every business owner knows the value of a great referral, but valuable referrals often elude business owners. Sometimes, it’s a lack of follow through that costs a business owner a good lead, and sometimes the follow-through happens, but the connection is lost: your brand doesn’t live up to the hype of what someone else is saying about you. Ouch. A strategic way to ensure that your message is being conveyed appropriately and that your potential customers understand what you are all about is to get in front of them with video. Share your story with video storytelling and ensure that people get the goods from the horse’s mouth. Need some help getting started? Here’s how you can use video storytelling to inspire your audience to take action.
Video Storytelling Allows You to be Authentic
Everyone is talking about being authentic these days, but what usually happens is that people are so preoccupied with putting on a show that they fail to come across as authentic. Blogs and written content have their place, but they lack the immediate nature of video: video is right now, come-as-you-are real, and you can’t usually hide from what’s happening. Video allows you to show up as yourself, be yourself, and show the world what you have to offer. While might feel rehearsed and awkward at first will come to feel more natural and you’ll settle into the routine of recording and sharing videos as part your storytelling marketing efforts.
Emotion and Vulnerability are Not a Bad Thing in Video Storytelling
Aren’t you glad we live in a world where you can show your emotions without ridicule? Remember what it was like when everyone was playing the tough guy in business? These days, even the most successful business owners are sharing stories of their emotions and being vulnerable in front of the video camera lens and people are eating it up. That’s because all we really want is to know we are not alone, and when those we look up to or try to emulate, especially in business, are emotional and putting themselves in the way of critique, we feel like we can do it, too. It’s really an amazing time to be alive and share your story with the world.
Raw and Real Stories Leave Lasting Impacts
What’s interesting about video storytelling is what happens naturally when you are trying to tell a story: another story often emerges. We are so consumed with trying to get the messages right that we don’t let the natural order of conversation take place and we often miss these golden opportunities to connect with our audiences. When you are in the middle of a story, and another story comes to mind, don’t squash it down. Share it with the world. You cannot know how that story might inspire a customer or potential customer, and you cannot know the lasting impact your story may have on someone, even years from now. Don’t hold back.
Video Storytelling Puts You Front and Center
There’s nothing quite as intimate as watching a video of someone’s story on your phone or laptop, television or even on the big screen at the movie theatre. Stories are how we connect with one another. We love stories because we see ourselves in other people’s stories. For business owners, knowing that you are not the only one struggling or that you are not the only one worried about making payroll next week is a strong message to get. We are more connected than ever, yet we are lonelier than ever, separated by screens. Video storytelling helps to break down those barriers and puts us back in front of the people who mean the most to us: our customers. When your audience sees you, they are reminded of the work you do and they feel connected to you. The more they see you, the more inspired they’ll be to connect with you and work with you.
Ask Your Audience to Take Action
The classic “call to action” is when you put an offer in front of your audience, usually a chance to buy a product or sign up for a service. But with video marketing, you can offer more than just a chance to work with you, you can offer a chance to learn from you, and when customers feel like they are getting a lot of value from a company, they’ll come back again and again. You can always take the direct approach and ask for the sale, or you can use video storytelling and ask your audience to take a different kind of action: share the video. Tag a friend. Respond to it. Comment on it. Engage with it. Ask them to get involved. Ask them to take action that leaves a lasting impression. Ask your audience to become part of your story and you’ll build influential relationships with your audience like you’ve never seen before.
For more information about video storytelling, check out our Youtube channel and read about our storytelling services. We take pride in being the vehicle through which companies can share their stories. Let’s talk about how you can use video storytelling to inspire your audience to take action.
What story would you like to share?
Whether you want to launch an idea, spark a movement or simply get people talking about what you do, you have one shot
at delivering your message in a way that matters. Let’s make sure you do it right.
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