The Power of Visual Storytelling: Promoting Content With Stories
Welcome to the Issuu Feature Series, where we’re releasing a series of blogs aimed at helping you learn more about digital publishing and content marketing. We’ll spend time highlighting unique Issuu features and teaching you how to take advantage of these dynamic tools. Last week we covered the digital content revolution and how to create and embed dynamic flipbooks. This is the second blog in our series, which will look at the power of visual storytelling and how you can better promote your content with Stories.
Whether you’re a content creator, digital marketing manager, or business owner wearing many hats, creating and publishing meaningful content is critical to the growth of your brand. Let's look at why Stories can help you increase your reach and how you can quickly repurpose existing publications into exciting Visual Stories.
Content is Still King — And it Lives Online
There's an old saying in the world of marketing that "content is king." This sentiment remains true today, and content creation is a continual (and important) process for businesses in any industry. Content helps attract new audiences, engage with existing customers, and increase the reach of your brand.
We know that today people primarily consume information online, so content marketing should lie at the heart of your business's overall digital transformation strategy. Here are three ways that online content can grow your business:
Content continues to play a vital role in your business' online rankings. Search engines and social media platforms favor brands that provide fresh, unique content on an ongoing basis. From blog posts to social stories, your content helps increase the number of customers interacting with your brand. Period.
Customers are consuming it. In fact, according to recent data, the average time spent consuming content has reached nearly 7 hours per day. (Have you checked the screen time analytics on your phone recently?) With customers spending so much time browsing endless content from the palms of their hands, your brand needs to create a powerful digital voice to ensure you’re not left behind.
Stories compel people. Content is about more than simply promoting your brand. It’s about forging customer connections and showcasing your brand's unique values to build a long-term loyal customer base. And with attention spans shorter than ever, you have mere seconds to capture a potential reader’s attention. Stories can convey your entire message without all the words.
Capture Your Audience’s Attention with Article Stories
Take your content online in minutes by transforming all of your documents, eBooks, and other marketing collateral into flipbooks with Issuu’s digital publishing platform. Simply by uploading a PDF or other supported file type, you can turn existing content into an engaging digital format that readers will love. From magazines to newsletters to brochures, flipbooks make it easy for you to publish and distribute digital content faster and more efficiently. Not only that, but you can even embed content within your flipbook, turning static content into an interactive masterpiece.
Once you've created your flipbook, you can repurpose the content as Article Stories for sharing and promoting across all channels. There are many reasons why Article Stories are beneficial, but in case you’re not convinced, here are just a few:
Article Stories take an existing publication and transform the section of your choosing into a professional story format. Rather than spending time creating a whole new piece of content, Article Stories allow you to repurpose existing content in a new, engaging way.
Your Article Stories will automatically be optimized for Google AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages). Since the Article Stories you create will be built using an AMP framework, the content loads lightning-fast, specifically optimized for mobile devices.
Article Stories are designed to be engaging, allowing you to individually share specific articles from a magazine or chapters from a book. You can take your current content and turn it into multiple pieces of article-style content ready to be promoted across digital channels.
Learn more about creating and sharing Article Stories! And watch our tutorial video to see this feature in action:
Set Social Into Motion with Visual Stories
Similar to Article Stories, our Visual Stories feature turns your Issuu publications into highly shareable assets that are particularly critical for boosting social media engagement. With our easy-to-use tool, you can use your existing flipbooks and convert them into motion-graphic stories already optimized for Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat story formats. Here are a few reasons why you should turn your content into Visual Stories:
With image takeovers and dynamic text animations, you can create Visual Stories that grab the attention of social media followers and readers. Think about it like this: Would you be more likely to pay attention to a brand that posts a static image on social media, or would you be more compelled by a dynamic Visual Story?
Visual Story templates allow your content to speak for itself. Through imagery, viewers can connect with your brand on a deeper level. A picture is worth a thousand words, and stories take this to the next level.
When creating new social media content, Visual Stories make it easier for you to produce a continual flow of compelling content quickly. Rather than taking the time to build out stories for each channel, our Visual Story tool makes it easy for you to repurpose content in a new way.
Visual Stories come tailored to fit AMP and Facebook Ad guidelines. Turn around on this project is fast and allows you to invest in brand reach without cumbersome amounts of work.
Learn more about our Visual Stories feature. And watch our tutorial video to see how to create Visual Stories:
Stay Tuned
Check back next week as we release another blog sharing valuable insights into how Issuu's tools can help you effectively enhance your digital content publishing and marketing process. Our goal is to help designers, content creators, marketers, business owners, and everyone in between simplify the creation and distribution of compelling content. With Issuu, bringing digital content to life has never been easier.
Stay tuned — there's more to come!