Visual storytelling can be one of the most effective ways to get your business message across. According to research the human brain can process images in as little as 13 milliseconds. That certainly beats how long it will take you to read this blog post. Storywheel can help you construct a story from your Instagram photos. It’s quick and easy to use and the results can be quite interesting.
This could be a great way to tell the story of an event, introduce people to your staff or showcase how your customers use your product or service.
Here’s an example made by a story collector and visual artist. I love the way she showcases her work and her happy customers.
How to make a Storywheel
Visit the Storywheel site and click ‘make a storywheel’
Connect your Instagram account
Click on each image that you want to add to the story in the order you want them to appear
Click ‘record’ and allow the app to access your microphone and camera
Narrate your story as you click through the slides. It would be a good idea to have a script in place before you start. In the example below I didn’t, hence the big silence at the start.
Here’s one I made earlier to tell the tale of me visiting the CongRegation.
Planning a Storywheel
With a bit of planning this could be a really interesting storytelling tool. Here are some ideas for planning a Storywheel to tell the story of an event. Even if you don’t use Storywheel you will end up with a great collection of Instagram images that will showcase your business, customers or events.
1. Decide in advance what story you want to tell. Are your characters those attending? The staff? Could it be the day in the life of an event planner.
2. Write a list of shots that you need to capture.
As an example here’s a list of shots and ideas that you might want to capture:
- Event organisers, speakers, attendees
- Meetings and plans
- Setting up the venue
- People arriving
- The event in action
- All aspects of the event, decor, speakers, food, chill out time
- Happy faces
- People leaving
- The aftermath
- Clearing up
3. Write a script – Take some time to write a narration that brings the whole story together.
Storywheel has the potential to be a really useful visual storytelling tool. It’s a simple yet clever way of bringing images together. I would like an embed option so I can show off my creations on my website.
If you give it a go do let me know. leave a link below in the comments, I’d love to see your stories.
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I can see this being great for some visuals such as recipes – great way to tell a story about how to bake a cake and all with photos. I really should use instagram more – just thinking this would be great for Maggie Moo – (the blogging calf) to describe her world. I’m hopeless with accents though – how could I create a calf voice 😉
Get one of your Children to do it 🙂 Could be fun!
I really like the idea of that! Would work with gardening too, or perhaps garden visits. Can you only pull in instagram pictures though? I would have to think differently about what I post with storywheel in mind so that I remembered to photo people and not just flowers.
Yes only Instagram. I think the key is to have a plan and make sure you get the shots you need for it.
Wow, this looks really great Amanda. Sorry for the lame comment, but I off to try this out and I may be back with more thoughts then 😉
Let me know how you get on. It took me a couple of goes to get it right 🙂