VISUAL STORIES – the secret behind snackable content

2020 starts strong with the first release of our dedicated tool to enhance fan engagement through compelling storytelling. Called VISUAL STORIES, it’s here to enrich the experience for end-users when browsing content.

How? VISUAL STORIES create full-screen, immersive moments that elevate editorial content to boost the overall content offering.

Dr. Lynell Burmark, education consultant who writes and speaks about visual literacy, said: “Unless our words, concepts, ideas are hooked onto an image, they will go in one ear, sail through the brain, and go out the other ear.” So, think of fans hungry for stats and audio/video content pre, during, and post a sporting event. VISUAL STORIES help producers to tell stories in an immediate way, encompassing all the elements that social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat have brought to our screens.

We rounded up the five key features that make the tool ideal for creating snackable content and interactive storytelling.

#1. Seamless experience, no matter the device

Social media has sparked a new concept for content consumption– vertical cards displayed on mobile screens which are ‘swapped’ to guarantee coherent and seamless storytelling. However, not everyone uses smartphones or tablets to access and consume content related to their favorite events in sports and entertainment. VISUAL STORIES brings to our screens a seamless experience in a device-agnostic way, as it’s able to adapt to different screens – full or mobile view – to make stories fit every device without missing the opportunity to create a high-quality experience.

The feature is available for administrators and editors to toggle via the back office, and it becomes fundamental to enhance the storytelling, especially when using video and photo assets.

#2 Richer content on every ‘card’

Content never sleeps, that’s a fact. And it can never be static. One of the key aspects of today’s marketing strategies for sports organizations is the need to make the most of the ‘dynamicity’ of content that’s produced on a daily basis, especially when events are live. The best way to make content consumption easy is to make it bitesize, flexible, and quick to adapt to different media outputs.

That’s why we created VISUAL STORIES – to grow the possibilities for content makers wanting to make the most of photos, videos, or carousels of images as a background for specific cards making it to a story. There’s even more to it than meets the eye. When using this tool as part of the FORGE suite (read more here about the latest product update), the direct integration with our sports-first publishing platform’s video and photo galleries is the easiest way to add a touch of class to your stories.

So, be creative! This feature offers a number of ways to make stories more compelling, including the ability to set videos to play in loop with or without sound, and for photos to be presented with sliding effects including transparency or fading colors, and so on. Cool, right?

#3. Understand – and monetize – your audience

Business intelligence and the ability to market every aspect of your content offering are obviously a must. VISUAL STORIES include tools to monitor analytics tag integration and allow DoubleClick code configuration. These additions are key if you want to know how content is performing against specific target audiences, and how monetization can be improved by deploying ads to specific cards and pages.

The integration of Google Analytics helps organizations control standard sets of events, meaning it becomes possible to fully control the way fans consume content. More importantly, the integration is fully compatible with other analytics tracking tools, such as Adobe Analytics.

Finally, on the DoubleClick side, the available code configuration allows producers to deliver a native set of ads as part of the visual story. Think of an ad that becomes part of the storytelling, perfectly integrated in the context of what end-users are consuming.

#4 Make editors’ lives easier

Publishing tools today must keep up with the speed of every editorial workflow. VISUAL STORIES’ back office brings to the market this fundamental aspect, enabling editors to preview in real time the work in progress on a card. Select a background, add foreground widgets among the set of texts, graphic elements etc., and there’s no need to generate any offline preview or – worse – publish the card. A live preview automatically displays ‘on the fly’ what the card will look like.

The feature works for both single cards and the story in its entirety. It allows all the editorial teams to go live with the final version of the card, always spot on and reducing the margin for error – which, let’s face it is rather important when delivering content live and around the clock.

#5. A centralized dashboard for graphic assets

The VISUAL STORIES product comes with a dedicated dashboard for graphic assets of all kinds, which are stored and always available on Cloudinary (a cloud-based image and video management platform). This aspect addresses at least three of content producers’ key needs:

1. All files are kept neat and well-organized in dedicated folders so they can be easily identified to enrich the stories (i.e. sponsor logos, layout elements, flags, crests, videos).
2. All files are separated from the assets stored on FORGE, which are photographs and not graphic layout elements.
3. Content producers have seamless access to such sets of files when working on a story.

On the horizon

We all love snacks, let’s admit it. And bite-sized content is an increasingly important asset of winning marketing strategies today. The first release of VISUAL STORIES has opened the gate to a new year of development on content production and enhanced fan experiences.

Stay tuned, and learn more about what we have in the pipeline for the next few months. In the meantime, let us know your thoughts on LinkedIn or Twitter @deltatre.