Social Media Storytelling With Video

Although Twitter has scrapped the notion of increasing their 140-word limit, the company has added increased video lengths in its place. This can be attributed to dramatic spikes in video ad revenue across all the major social media platforms over the past few years. Thanks to video-streaming technology that continues to improve as time goes on, social media storytelling is engaging users over the internet at an accelerating rate. Nearly every industry is taking note of this. Marketers in particular are embracing video storytelling as the new way to communicate with customers in a digital landscape that is inundated with content.

Time and Perception

So, why video? And why social media storytelling? Scientists have long speculated as to why we as humans gravitate toward the ancient narrative tradition. While the written word and the painted image activate very specific centers of the human nervous system, storytelling engages our minds (and sometimes bodies) on many different levels. If a story depicts a certain sensory experience, that experience will often be reflected within its audience. Stories illuminate the cause and effect nature of reality, which attracts people on an instinctual level.

The tradition of storytelling has existed consistently among different cultures throughout all of human existence. There is a commonality with narratives that reminds us of the one constant that permeates all of existence: change. In fiction, it is a universal truth that the central character changes over time. And since we all must cope with time and change ourselves, we automatically relate with this.

Video is a temporal medium, which means that it unfolds over time. It encompasses both sound and image, and unlike literature video has a distinct ability to be consumed in a very passive manner. But that doesn’t necessarily make video a totally mindless alternative to literature. Quite the contrary, in fact, as the moving image owes its entire evolution to its storytelling ability. And as a storytelling medium, video’s commercial potential is virtually limitless.

The Buyer’s Journey

There is a concept known as the ‘Hero’s Journey’ that is generally applied to the craft of fiction-writing. It can be applied to marketing as well. It involves a protagonist entering an unknown world of trouble wherein they undergo change and growth. Overcoming challenges in order to finally come home, what they need in order to conquer the adversarial forces of the unknown, they become master of their own reality.

In marketing, the buyer also undergoes a journey in which they are changed, or ‘converted.’ And every buyer, like every hero, is confronted with problems, or ‘pain points.’ It is the marketer’s goal to address those problems and illustrate how they may be overcome. The product or service is the boon that will give the customer the solutions they need in order to overcome their problem. And video storytelling is the means by which the buyer is informed of this solution, as well as how to obtain it and complete their journey.

If you’d like more information about social media storytelling or how Foundation Digital Media can help your brand please contact us. We’d enjoy speaking with you…