Next week’s podcast guest is Ekaterina Walter, a passionate marketer, who writes and speaks on topics of leadership, business innovation, and digital revolution. She is the author of Think Like Zuck and a new book, The Power of Visual Storytelling: How to Use Visuals, Videos, and Social Media to Market Your Brand. Below is an excerpt from the podcast.
Joe: What’s the mistake someone makes when they first enter into Visual Storytelling? What are some of the traps I need to avoid?
Ekaterina: They try to cram a lot of marketing messaging or product messaging into a very small space. They try to force it down people’s throats. And people don’t want to build relationships with you just because all they want to see is your product information. They want to build relationships with you because they want to hear you but also be heard. They want that really two way relationship. So that biggest mistake is we’re trying to design something really cool and really useful but let’s make sure that our marketing product message is crammed everywhere where we can find a free corner.
Another mistake is even doing that design wise. If you have something cool that works but “Oh well no there needs to be a bunch of text in here because people will really not get it.” If you have to cram a bunch of text into a really cool visual that’s self-explanatory, then that visual is not self-explanatory enough. So there are a lot of those mistakes where people still want to cram words in where they sometimes need to leave people to guess a little bit or give people whitespace to noodle on the image that you’re providing or whatever message you’re trying to convey without being too prescriptive.
Joe: So we need whitespace?
Ekaterina: You know whitespace – there are a lot of studies that have been done that say that whitespace is fantastic for creativity. Steve Jobs used to go away for a number of days to just go to an orchard or sit with Buddhas and just think and clear his mind and come back with amazing thoughts on product design. So whitespace is definitely a friend of creativity.
Lean Sales and Marketing: Learn about using CAP-Do
Special Marketing with Lean Book and Program offers on Facebook