Visual Storytelling Online & Examples

Storytelling in marketing as a whole has always been a key factor. After all, people love stories. Visual storytelling offers you a something new.

As an avid writer who has written and published books on Amazon, I wanted to focus on ‘visual storytelling’ online and the opportunities it presents to marketers.

It’s an instinct for humans to depict stories — whether it’s a photo they’re looking at or a sentence, there’s always a deeper meaning within it. Because of this nature, it opens up many great opportunities for us storytellers.

It’s not a new concept to describe digital marketers as storytellers, but it’s something which has always spiked my interest as an author.

Traditional Storytelling & Visual Storytelling

Beginning a story requires a plot. Once you have this you can then develop the world and characters for your plot. As satisfying as this process is for novelists, digital marketers can similarly use this process for their marketing through visual storytelling.

Visual storytelling is highly effective online. It’s rewarding to capture the imagination of your reader through the words in your book, but you can still tantalise the imagination of your audience through digital & visual marketing.

Make the most of visual storytelling online

You can do so much online with visual storytelling. You may have a story to tell, but through visual storytelling, you can convey a lot of information in just one simple visual aid. That’s the beauty of it!

Here’s what we made earlier…

Although these are pretty basic ideas of visual storytelling, this is what we’ve made to inspire you on your visual storytelling quest.

Feel free to let us know what you think the story is from each of our ads!

Visual storytelling works so well because it fits your users’ typical behaviour

Users online don’t want to read bulks of text like they do in a book. People’s browsing habits differ, and it’s vital that you respect that with your approach — whether it’s through imagery, graphics or a video.

Don’t disregard content though, it’s still important. You may just need to alter the way in which you produce your content to ensure it’s suitable to your audience.

My previous blog, ‘Don’t Write Your Website Content for Humans or Bots!’ is a useful read if you’re looking to learn more about publishing concise content on the web.

Your digital narrative opportunities are endless

The digital era has unlocked new modes to tell your story — there’s no need to write thousands of words when you can tell the same story with a single picture!

Hubspot actually published a great blog — ‘The Power of Visual Storytelling’ — where they’ve provided 15 great examples to inspire us. It’s definitely worth checking out!

Don’t be afraid to experiment with digital design for your storytelling strategy. It’s far more impactful to show your users a narrative rather than tell it to them. This goes for both digital and traditional storytelling!