The Power of Visual Storytelling: How to Use Visuals, Videos, and Social Media to Market Your Brand

by Ekaterina Walter, Jessica Gioglio

Attention is the new commodity. Visual Storytelling is the new currency.
Human brain processes visuals 60,000x faster than text.
Web posts with visuals drive up to 180% more engagement than those without.
Viewers spend 100% more time on web pages with videos.
Filled with full-color images and thought-provoking examples from leading companies, The Power of Visual Storytelling explains how to grow your business and strengthen your brand by leveraging photos, videos, infographics, presentations, and other rich media. The book delivers a powerful road map for getting started, while inspiring new levels of creativity within organizations of all types and sizes.

"This book is not only a complete overview of [visual storytelling] but, most importantly, the key to doing it right, a total Right Hook!"
--Gary Vaynerchuk, New York Times bestselling author of Crush It! and Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook

"A valuable guide to understanding how to develop powerful marketing programs using the art of visual storytelling."
--Guy Kawasaki, author of APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur and former chief evangelist of Apple

"The Power of Visual Storytelling is the new marketing bible!"
--Nancy Bhagat, Vice President, Global Marketing Strategy and Campaigns, Intel

"If a picture is worth a thousand words, The Power of Visual Storytelling is worth a million."
--Scott Monty, Global Digital & Multimedia Communications for Ford Motor Company

Genres: Business, Nonfiction, Design, Social Media, Communication

240 pages, Paperback

First published March 7, 2014

Reviews

[Dr. Tobias Christian Fischer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Think about what you post and your story. A good reminder and very exceptionally written. What’s your goal/vision? How do you build a story? How does your customer look like?

[Wayne McCoy · Rating 4 out of 5]

'The Power of Visual Storytelling: How to Use Visuals, Videos and Social Media to Market Your Brand' by Ekaterina Walter and Jessica Gioglio is not a typical book that I might review, but the 'Visual' in the title appealed to me.

The advent of more internet and more social media has accelerated a lot of things. It has also, in some ways, brought consumers and brands a bit closer together. This book explores how to use visual storytelling on a variety of platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube and others. Every platform has unique approaches, and finding your companies voice and focus takes effort to succeed. There can be missteps, but there can be big successes, like the Oreo Daily Twist campaign, where they posted an image every day for 100 days. The approaches and advice here seem pretty solid.

I am not in marketing, but I know how hard the folks at my company work at keeping things relevant on Instagram and Pinterest. This is an interesting book with what seems like some good advice.

I received a review copy of this ebook from McGraw-Hill Professional and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this ebook.

[TS Tan · Rating 5 out of 5]

While the given tips and recommended tools are written with the enterprise as the target, they are applicable to the individual, too. As the book makes reference to the fast changing social media world on the Internet, it is inevitable that the tools mentioned might have changed or acquired by various companies and even acquired new identity, so readers need to be aware.

[VampireNovelFan · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a good read about how to include visuals in your social media campaign. Some of the insights were spot on but the book could have been stronger and provided more examples and detailed case studies. There were good takeaways but I wish it were more substantial.

[Ruth · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this to prep for a work project. It was interesting, but in the world of ever-evolving social media practices, the information was out of date probably right after publication. Still contains a few evergreen tips, though.

[Fatima Mohammed · Rating 3 out of 5]

This started out as a very promising book and ended up as somewhat of a disappointment. It's not really for startups and humble beginnings, not when the author tells you that you need need a team for pretty much everything; unlikely to happen for many aspiring entrepreneurs. There was redundancy, so I had to skip a few pages. And there's really NO practical way to put all those +200 pages, those details on each App are no breakthrough intel, nor are they unattainable insight. I was really hoping the authors would include practical ways & tips on how to put it all into effect. Not a bad one, but not a great one either.

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read it a while ago. Very interesting book, with many practical parts. In my opinion a bit too much self-promotion, but good stuff.

[Anisha · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a great book for someone starting off on social media. But for the rest, the chapter summary would suffice.

[R. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very insightful. Resources provided were useful for reference as well.

[Lingyuxiu Zhong · Rating 1 out of 5]

If you could call a compilation of google search top results a book?

[Kara Rochester Garcia · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a little outdated at this point and could probably benefit from a 2nd edition; the chapter on real-time marketing was good though. :)

[Bojana's Library ❤]

I hate my university...

[Savannah Flack · Rating 4 out of 5]

I overall enjoyed reading this for my PhD class! It was very visual and easy to read and incorporated some good content ideas.

[Jason Machinski · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent read for those starting a small business and those managing a large corporation’s marketing and social media content. Some of the content is dated but the core concepts of visual story telling discussed are timeless.

[Bianca Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow, The Power of Visual Storytelling launched with a bang.

My Twitter feed during SXSW was filled with praise for Ekaterina Walter and Jessica Gioglio's new book. In the book, there are endorsements from power names, including Gary Vaynerchuk, Guy Kawasaki, and Charlene Li.

With these high expectations, what's The Power of Visual Storytelling about?

It's 221 pages of stats, profiles, and recent case studies of social media campaigns. I especially loved Ekaterina's personal experiences with @BenefitBeauty's #BeautyBoost campaign.

The call-out boxes off each social media platform make the book a valuable resource, for now at least. We all know that social media is dynamic and it's often hard to get a conclusive profile and how-to for each platform. I applaud the research that went into this.

Who is The Power of Visual Storytelling for?

This question was tricky at first because I overlooked the sub-title and was expecting a book on actually story telling and using visuals to tell narrative. You know, all the hero's journey and overcoming adversary etc. This book comes after that. There's a short chapter on the benefits of storytelling, but if you're looking for more on storytelling, check out Nancy Duarte's books.

For the next few months, The Power of Visual Storytelling is a brilliantly useful resource show how to tactically use images on social media. Just get in quick, before facebook makes a major change... again.

Originally published on Tap Dancing Spiders

[Edythe · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Pictures are the basis of our storytelling, but no one seems to want to admit it.” A picture will attract my attention to look at an ad, a book cover, or magazine. If you think about it, it will attract you also.
This book starts with the history of visual storytelling, giving key statistics for marketers. There are different types of visual content that is employed in marketing. Sometimes it is used in conjunction with text or word art. The types of content discussed are videos, photography, graphs, and cartoon images just to name a few.
Chapter 2 includes the seven elements of visual storytelling and its importance in visual marketing.
Chapter 3: Power of the Platform, discusses storytelling on social networks such as Pinterest, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and others. I must investigate the lesser known, Slideshare and Vine. Each social media outlet has its own in-depth section. Ekaterina and Jessica share how to engage with the audiences.
Chapter 4: Brand & Product Marketing and Chapter 5: Real-Time Marketing delves deeper into creating your ultimate visual storytelling goals. They ask the question, “…how do you make the centenary commemoration strike a chord with a younger, more tech-aware audience?” It is all explained, with examples, in this section.
The Notes section is a list of reference links for all five chapters. This, in itself, is an excellent resource of information. I recommend this book for business-minded individuals and professionals wanting to take the next step in branding themselves.
I received this book free from McGraw-Hill Publishing for this review.

[Heath Henwood · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Power of Visual Storytelling
How to Use Visuals, Videos, and Social Media to Market Your Brand
By Ekaterina Walter, Jessica Gioglio

With the rise of social media, particularly digital media, there is an ever increasing number of books for business on visual marketing.

Walter’s has brought her expertise provide advice on how to effectively use social media, whether it is Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram, or any of the hundreds of other tools.
The Power of Visual Storytelling is a brilliantly useful resource show how to tactically use images. The book includes case studies and statics to highlight points. The colourful pictures and screenshots are perhaps the most useful aspect to the book.
All businesses and organisations that are actively or considering utilising social media should read this book.

Reviewed by Heath Henwood.
Copy received via NetGallery in exchange for an honest review.
Books reviewed by Heath can be found at http://books-reviewed.weebly.com/

[Samonster ㅤ · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book talks about a lot of things like digital marketing, KPIs, file formats and specs, social media that don’t exist anymore, but nothing at all about storytelling.

I was expecting storytelling techniques, principles, emotional journeys, even storyboards would have made it for me, but there’s none of that in this book. It’s interesting in its own way if you want to read fun facts about the results of some companies after running a marketing campaign, but none of that is actual storytelling in its core.

I guess I’m just wondering why did the editorial decide to go with the title of “The Power Of Visual Storytelling” and then run completely into another direction and just bring it back by mentioning it briefly in the conclusion. I give it two stars because some of the marketing campaigns were interesting, but it is not what I was expecting to read in a book supposedly about storytelling.

[Lauri Rottmayer · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great book about how to use images across the social media landscape to market your business.

I was excited to read this book because I'm familiar and impressed with the author's other work. I was not disappointed!

From the beginning, this easy to understand and implement book grabbed my attention and I started thinking of people I would recommend it to.

A picture is worth a thousand words and this book shows you how to put that into practice towards your success. I loved the detailed graphics throughout the book, too. Visually appealing!

I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in using social media in a way that's highly appealing to the consumer.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am a marketing student, so I was curious about this book and what it could teach me. It went right along with my lessons in class and reinforced many statistics/facts about visuals in marketing. Much of the book was filled with relatable data and common sense-type examples that I knew about, but never really thought about in terms of advertisement and marketing. I will be using the ideas and experiences from this book in my future classes, and hopefully, my career as well. Very informative read!

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Checked this out from the library and within 10 pages knew I had to buy it. Skipped around a bit and no matter where I landed I learned something new. Tons of great, easy, practical, useful tips that have already inspired me to make changes and add new tools to my marketing kit. Looking forward to thoroughly marking up my copy and filling with sticky notes to remind me of all the things I need to do. Great research and very well laid out.

[Lauren · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even if I didn't know Jessica and Ekaterina personally, I would have given it the same amount of stars. This book was easily digestible, informative and fun to read. Throughout the experience, my mind was spinning over how many awesome ideas I could deploy for both my personal and professional brand. That has never happened to me with a how-to book until now! I expected this book to be more for beginners, but frankly any social media marketer would benefit from picking this up.

[Debbie Wakefield · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book and would recommend it to those in digital marketing careers. My biggest issue with the book was that the photos didn't have captions or explanations so they felt out of place. There'd be an image of a Dunkin Donuts Facebook post but no explanation as to what purpose it serves.
And I was hoping there would be more practical examples of what stellar visual content looks like and why. The irony of this book about visual content is that it's a lot of text.

[Isaiah Fapuro · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is great at exploring why it is so important for brands to incorporate a visual stimulus into the marketing communications when telling a story to customers and prospects. What I loved about Walter's books is she wasn't afraid to explore brands who do it right and wrong!

[Jenny · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellant , informative and engaging .

[Kathy Cowie · Rating 3 out of 5]

review to come in sept/oct issue of Global Business and Organizational Excellence.

[Edafe · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some interesting insights and statistics but overall pretty light-weight and not much more than I'd expect to find on a blog.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very useful review of social media sites with examples of how to use them for business. Well organized.

[Matt Bucklin · Rating 2 out of 5]

A little wordy for a book on visual storytelling. It would be good for someone that knows nothing about social media.

[Eila · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good enough. Some nice examples but nothing outstanding.