Videos Speak Volumes

Maybe you’ve noticed the trend of live videos on social media. These real-time stories are becoming more popular as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and LinkedIn are looking for new ways to keep audiences engaged. They have every reason to be motivated: time spent on Facebook alone declined by 5% (50 million hours) in the last quarter of 2017.

Stories and gossip are thought to make up 65% of our daily conversations. People have been telling stories for more than years. It makes sense that we respond positively to anecdotes and ideas as opposed to lectures and lists. This is why so many people are engaged in TED talks; ideas conveyed via storytelling can actually be felt.

When ideas are presented as stories, receptivity and comprehension are boosted in the brain, encouraging trust in the idea. You can see why companies might be interested: with the right story comes more trust, thus more brand loyalty. And why a live interview or a day-in-the-life featurette might be more engaging than a typical employee-of-the-month profile.

Adding video to brand messaging can increase audience engagement. Social media video can generate up to 1200% more shares than text. Many companies will get their audiences to subscribe to a video feed then generate real-time product updates and behind-the-scene business content.

If marketers are lucky, they can even get their customers to share these brand stories with their friends. Remember that video viewers retain 95% of a message compared to the 10% retained from text. YouTube has over a billion users, almost one-third of the total internet users. Do the math.