It’s challenging to capture and hold the audience’s attention these days. An effective way to get people to watch your videos is by telling a story. In every video, storytelling drives each second to make videos memorable. It connects people emotionally through dialogue, visuals, and actions.
Whether it’s for educational, marketing, or entertainment purposes, storytelling can make an impact on viewers. Incorporate these storytelling process hacks into your videos:
Understand Your Target Audience
Learn and understand your audience before you begin writing. This will help you learn more about the people’s interests and pain points to create content they can relate to.
Your content should be professional if you’re targeting corporate employees. If you’re aiming your content at teenagers, it should have a lively and youthful vibe. Keep a friendly persona when making explainer videos. Write emotional content for brand storytelling videos to build an emotional connection with your audience.
Tailoring the story to the audience makes the content engaging. With content that tugs the audience’s heartstrings, your brand can become memorable to the public.
Think of a Strong Concept
The foundation of your story that the video revolves around is a strong concept. Gather your team and brainstorm ideas until you come up with an outstanding one. Ensure the concept captures the audience’s attention within the first few seconds and keeps them interested to finish the video.
Create Relatable Characters
Characters move the story. They’re breathing life into the plot and have the power to evoke emotions in viewers.
Each character you create should have personality and depth. They will captivate audiences as the video progresses. Your viewers can even find one or two in which they can see themselves.
Create a Compelling Plot
Use the three-act structure to develop a narrative. These parts include:
- Beginning: This sets the stage for the whole plot. Characters and settings are introduced. Their actions, motivations, and tensions with each other build up to the suspense and climax.
- Middle: This is where the story reaches its peak, which affects everyone in it. Conflicts arise left and right while the characters figure out how to overcome every obstacle.
- End: This is the part where everything patches up, and the story finds a perfect resolution.
Whether you’re writing to reinforce a brand identity or inform the audience about important topics, add plot twists to the story to leave a lasting impression on viewers. Avoid unnecessary scenes to keep your story short.
Enhance the Story with Visual Elements
Video content is a visual medium, and the visuals should improve and complement your story. Play with camera angles, lighting, and framing to communicate emotions and highlight important moments. Visual storytelling can convey more than words, so make sure they’re useful and powerful.
Follow these tips when telling a story visually:
- Write the entire script to create the backbone of your video.
- Include camera shot descriptions in the script so the videographer knows what shot to use.
- Create a storyboard that details every frame of the story.
- Use transitions to move the story seamlessly from one scene to the next. This is especially handy in post-production.
As they say, show, don’t tell. Make your characters act with their facial expressions and gestures to convey the emotions you want your audience to feel.
Use Sound and Music
Music and sounds are crucial storytelling elements as they set the mood, bring out emotions, and build suspense in the video. Pick a soundtrack that goes well with your video’s tone and story. Use clear and well-balanced audio to make your scenes worth watching.
Use a Strong Call-to-Action (CTA)
If your video promotes a product, service, or brand, a solid CTA can help turn viewers into customers and clients. Create a short and convincing CTA to drive engagement and traffic to your official website. Two to five words would do.
Test, Refine, and Learn
Let a small audience watch your video before releasing it on various social media platforms. Get feedback to learn how your story connects with the viewers. Use every input you get to refine the video, whether it’s positive or negative.
After publishing the video, monitor its performance using metrics like views and engagement to gauge its success. Then, apply the results to your next video.
Working with a Video Production Company for Your Video Needs
The powerful tool of storytelling helps you connect with the audience beyond product or service promotions. Write an engaging video story to keep the audience hooked while conveying your message and evoking various emotions. An enthralling storytelling video can help ensure the brand’s success.
Your video storytelling piece can effectively communicate your message to the public. That said, an experienced video production studio will help you with all the work. The people on this team have brilliant minds to support and refine your ideas for the video production process. They can translate your great story into a visual piece and choose the best video format for storing the video.