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

Perhaps the most widely discussed 2014 prediction for social media was the blossoming of visual content and storytelling. Brands are clearly embracing this brand building concept, and academia is recognizing its importance in curriculum development. But where and how we incorporate these topics into a social media or content marketing syllabus remains a challenge. The Power of Visual Storytelling by Ekaterina Walter and Jessica Gioglio offers a timely and convincing approach to how this might be done.1) Walter and Gioglio provide perhaps the most comprehensive overview of how visuals are used in social network and mobile platforms. Chapters are devoted to the networks’ capacity for creating video and image-intensive content. And highly useful advice is offered on how to best produce GIFs, cartoons, infographics, slides, animations, short-form video and a myriad of other visual formats.2) The authors combine their extensive client brand and social media experiences to provide a credible approach to adopting visual content. Their tips and tactics are colorfully explained and routinely backed by statistical findings as well as convincing brand examples.3) The book is very well written in a conversational style that actually excites readers. I really enjoyed reading this book. Also, some highly useful tips on visual techniques make it an excellent reference for visual production.4) The book is very well organized around a strategic oriented MBA class format. The book begins with an argument supporting the rise of visual popularity and advances to a proposed 7 step strategy process. From there, detailed descriptions are given to each of the major social networks capable of accommodating a visual content strategy. These tactical instructions extend to the creation of new visual formats thereby providing an excellent overview of the how and where to incorporate visuals. These descriptive backgrounds culminate in a strategic roadmap that outlines the steps for adopting a visual oriented game plan. Consistent with curriculum on social media marketing, the book then discusses portability to real-time mobile devices and performance measurement.

This is a book I will keep on my (virtual) shelf and reference many times. There were a ton of great tips and links to additional resources that I know I will continue to refer back to again and again. I only gave it four stars because, in my opinion, the Kindle version seemed to be surprisingly devoid of actual visuals. This was a little disappointing to me because I expected it to explode with well, visual examples! To be fair, there are some examples but I still found myself consistently wondering where more examples were within the text. Despite my personal preference for a lot more visual examples this is a solid resource that explains which content works best on which platform and I think many will find this book to be useful.

I've taken a while to get to this book.I previewed it on NetGalley - read about 20 pages and had to put it down, then read about 20 more and had to stop. When I went back, I couldn't access it anymore so had to buy it. The reason for putting it down was absorbing/using the things in it!This isn't a buffet of information - it's better! There's a lot of facts, figures, statistics and a lot of studies and showing what to do and how to do it. It's over 200 pages jam packed of information that will be used differently by a small direct sale farm like us than a large business in the city - but that both can use to their advantage!I'd already started using photos, videos, etc. This book showed how to use them BETTER. How to tweak it and get more mileage out of it and how to expand it. You cannot get advertising and engagement for $20 anymore. Come on - the cost of a lunch date. If your business isn't worth that, perhaps it's time to rethink the business. This is great info, a lot of it and reasonably priced. It's things that work, and gets beyond reading to doing.

I was expecting the book to be a great example of visual storytelling. It started out that way for the first 40 pages with about 1/3 of the pages having images or illustrations. The visual nature dropped to about 1/7 of the pages for the next 60 pages. And then for the last 100 pages, it dropped to 1/20.The content is OK if you’re new to the topic and want to get up to speed quickly. But if you follow marketing gurus on social media, it’s just a summary of the discussion that’s been going on for several years.

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