STORYTELLING WITH VIDEO
Storytelling with video is a powerful way of getting your message to your customers. A good story will be memorable, inform your audience about your brand and create an emotional connection with them.
Why video is a powerful tool when telling your stories
They help you to tell your brand’s story. They help you create a message that your target audience relates with. And they help you to stand out from your competitors.
How to make a great video?
It is easier than ever to create great promotional videos but to tell great stories can require a lot more thought and effort. Below are some tips on how to plan and create great storytelling videos.
What is your message?
Before you start thinking about who and what you want in the video it is important to clarify what the key message should be. There may be one or several messages but what do you want your audience to take away from the video?
Who is your audience?
As with any marketing campaign you need to consider who your desired audience is. Using our ‘digital persona template’ will help you and your team to concentrate on producing a great video for your desired audience.
How you want your audience to feel?
You know what message you want to communicate and who you want to communicate it to. Now, think about how you want your audience to feel whilst watching your video. Is your intention to entertain, make your audience feel happy or to evoke emotion.
How your audience feels when they watch your video will impact what they do after watching it. A happy/funny video is more likely to be shared whereas an emotional one is more likely to make someone volunteer their time or make a donation.
What action do you want your audience to take at the end?
Think about your call-to-action? What action do you want your audience to take at the end of your video? Do you want them to share, comment, donate, sign-up, subscribe? Whichever it is, ensure that it is easy and obvious for your audience to take the action.
Brainstorm ideas…
Sit down with your team and get thinking about any and all ideas that you have.
Plan (use a storyboard)
Take your ideas from the brainstorming session and start to put them into a story. Using a storyboard can help you to plan out the story in a way that creates clarity.
You can break it down into a beginning, middle and end and establish a key issue/conflict that your organisation is aiming to fix. The storyboard will help you to know exactly what clips you need to record and how you want to record them.
Record your clips
Ensure you have all the equipment you need for the recording day. Use your storyboard to ensure that you get everything. And try to record more than you think you will need. The more you have to work with the easier the editing will be.
Take time to edit/use music
You’ve got everything you need now to start editing and creating your video. Follow your storyboard, use music to evoke the emotion you want and take you time to create a draft.
Watch once to get your initial feedback and take note of how you felt (the feeling will change after the 10th time of watching). Ask your team and others to look at it too for their feedback.
Once you have your notes you can start to make additional edits until you are happy with your final version. Do a final check for any typos if you use words and then you are ready to go!
Plan how you will get your video out
Making a great video was just the start. Now you need your desired audience to see it. How you launch your video is as important as the video itself.
A prominent place on your website is important and also your social media channels. You can use our Free social media content calendar to help decide what channels you will use and when you will be posting it.
Example of using video to tell a story of a charity
The Chazuka Project were looking to tell the story about the school they have established in Malawi. They were very keen on creating a positive and happy story that shows the benefits that the project is having on the lives of the children and the wider community. Have a look and see what you think about our work by following the link below:
What are your thoughts on this example? Have you used video to help tell your companies story? Let me know your thoughts in the comments and please share any links to any examples you like.
Want to see more examples of how you can tell great stories using video? Follow our Instagram page for more examples of our work.
Written by Danny Layzell, March 2020
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