Storytelling has always been an important part of an explainer video. Brands have mastered creating a story surrounding a product or offering and making sure that story is understandable throughout a video. The art of storytelling for company videos, however, is changing and consumers are beginning to expect something a bit different from brands.
A few years ago, explainer videos would simply talk to the audience, telling them the story of the product, and why they need it. But today, consumers expect more than to just be told a story; they want to experience the story, and become a more active viewer.
For brands this means a few things. First and foremost, most viewers aren’t passive anymore; they are not simply watching a video and moving on. Instead, they are sharing the video, commenting, and engaging with the company. Video producers should understand this and give consumers an experience that is worth sharing with their followers.
Doing this requires talented scriptwriters and experienced producers that understand the changing dynamic of storytelling.
The Rise of the Micro-Story
With the rise of social video, brands must also be able to convert this new type of storytelling into micro-stories suitable for social media networks. Videos are dominating social media platforms, and consumers are now wanting more high quality videos in their news feeds. Brands must also know how to capitalize on the audience of each social network by using the most popular form of video.
ReelSEO took a look to find the most popular genre on each network:
- On YouTube, it’s music
- On Facebook, it’s UGC/Ripped
- On Vine, it’s comedy.
- On Instagram, it’s pop culture
As the article aptly says, each platform must have its own strategy in order to gain the audience’s attention.
Measuring Videos is Changing
With the new form of storytelling also comes a change in analytics. “Video views” will no longer be very important; instead, video engagement will be the analytical aspect to watch. Whereas once how many times your video was watched showed how successful a video was, now what the viewer does with the video will tell if a video was a success or not.
Just like in website analytics, the amount of clicks no longer matters. What has become very important is who clicks and what they do after they land on your site. The same is with video. It doesn’t matter if tons of people watch your video, if you only have 100 views, but if all 100 of the viewers share your video and buy your product, that is much more valuable.
This year consumers are gaining more control over what type of content brands produce, and video is high on their list. But brands need to know that a video requires an engaging element if they want the viewer to take action.
