How to build your brand with visual storytelling

Table of Contents

  1. Summary
  2. Introduction
  3. Sharing your products and services
  4. Making a brand more accessible
  5. How to get started
  6. About David Deal

1. Summary

Visual stories speak the language of the digital age. According to Hitwise, people upload 300 million images a day on Facebook alone. Many leading brands, ranging from General Electric to Nordstrom, have embraced visual storytelling as a marketing technique in order make their products more visible and engaging to consumers who live on platforms such as Instagram, Pinterest, and Tumblr. In fact, two-thirds of the world’s top brands are on Instagram, so it’s essential that your brand understands the importance of visual storytelling in order to remain relevant.

This report provides marketing executives with the best practices for visual storytelling, as well as tips to get started with visual storytelling, such as defining a strategy and the metrics for measuring success. Some key findings in this report include:

  • In an age of information overload, visual storytelling is pervasive among consumers thanks to easy-to-use tools such as Instagram and Pinterest. Digital tools also have made it relatively easy and cost-effective for brands to embrace visual storytelling.
  • Brands like Billboard, GE, and Nordstrom are successfully using visual storytelling to showcase products and services and to make their brands more understandable and accessible.
  • You can embrace visual storytelling without needing to invest in costly resources. The key to getting started is to define a strategy tied to your brand with goals, a publishing approach, and distribution platforms.

With more than half of adult internet users posting photos online and brands increasingly doing the same, marketers have to cut through the clutter. Understanding how you use visuals is as important as knowing how to use the written word. Getting started with visual storytelling means having a clear strategy for connecting visuals back to your brand strategy and for measuring engagement, reach, visibility, and referrals.

Thumbnail image courtesy of Flickr user rjp

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