4 approaches to using video to liven up your storytelling

“The most powerful words in English are ‘Tell me a story,’ words that are intimately related to the complexity of history, the origins of language, the continuity of the species, the taproot of our humanity, our singularity, and art itself.”—Pat Conroy

Stories cut to the soul and pathos of communication.

Science has proven that storytelling cuts through the brain’s neocortex and hits you where it counts—the limbic brain—your middle layer.

In “Story-Based Selling,” Jeff Bloomfield writes:

The limbic brain can be characterized as the “feeling” brain. This is where emotion, feeling, visualization, and memories are housed.

Stories make for better marketing because they elicit emotion. They can play on nostalgia, influence whom we trust, and help us make sense of complex information.

Video is the storytelling king. Hollywood takes in around $10 billion a year, and YouTube is the second-most visited website.

[RELATED: Join us in San Jose for the Brand Storytelling & Content Marketing Conference at Intel.]

What does that mean for your video marketing strategy? Here are four approaches you might take.

1. Don’t start with budget; start with a story. How much do you typically budget for video marketing? You could spend as much as $150,000 on a video, but you don’t have to. Start by considering your buyer personas—the story’s protagonists—and their journey toward a specific goal. Figure out the numbers from there.
2. Repurpose high-performing blog content into social media video bites. Repurpose your top-performing blog posts into 15-second teaser videos for your social media channels. You can do the same thing with e-books, white papers and other premium content.
3. Use how-to videos for SERPS and increase your organic traffic. According to a recent study, video drives a 157 percent increase in organic traffic from search engine results pages (SERPs). Search engines increasingly are promoting video content. For example, Google features how-to videos as “Suggested Clips” for user queries.
4. Create a video series. People love to binge-watch. Find clever ways to repurpose your brand content into a monthly live video or YouTube series to augment your video marketing strategy.

Ultimately, your next video strategy depends on you, your brand, your goals and your budget. There are no barriers to making innovative video content. Smartphones shoot in 4K, and with sites such as Fiverr and Upwork, you can tap into the international labor market and find skilled freelancers to help you with every facet of production.

A version of this post first appeared on the SmartBug Media blog.

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