February 2021 - You need an effective digital strategy to connect with potential customers online. Nothing has driven this point home more than our collective experience the last year. Prior to the pandemic, successful businesses and non-profits may have had been able to get away with little or no digital strategy. But that has changed.

Today, we all realize we must be able to connect virtually .

While inexpensive digital technology has been available to us for quite some time, this past year it has become the ultimate essential worker.

Suddenly you realized that your website is very important in connecting and communicating with your customers. Same goes for social media. Every brand needs to be able to connect digitally with customers and potential customers.

We live in the era of search. Regardless of industry…whether you are B2C or B2B…much of every buyer’s journey is online. Research. Vetting. Discovering. Verifying. Qualifying. Connecting. Transacting.

All brands – large & small & everything in between- should be consistently blogging and sharing videos.

We developed our professional video storytelling as a service to help brands consistently and credibly offer their consumers news and information online.

We are very different from any other video production company.

What sets us apart from them is we follow a brand journalism approach to video storytelling using some of the most experienced and talented TV reporters around. We act as your outsourced digital newsroom, creating compelling content relevant to your target audience.

We don’t do expensive scripted corporate videos that look like infomercial ads.

While those certainly have their place, too often they can be awkward, inauthentic and too expensive to be justified. The scripted corporate video approach doesn’t lend itself well to doing multiple stories over time unless you have a Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos level budget.

Our approach is journalism from a brand point of view. We assign TV reporters to help businesses tell their stories professionally so they can authentically and credibly connect with their customers online and via social media. It is a telling, not selling approach that is more credible and authentic to audiences.

Think about it. When you go looking for answers on google, more often than not you simply want to be told, not sold .

We developed our unique service because all brands should be consistently blogging and sharing videos online.

The communications landscape has changed in our lifetimes in a very significant way. Today, more media is produced by the masses than mass media .

Google is the great gatekeeper on your business online. It is all about search, which is really empowering when you think about it. Your business can reach anyone anywhere in the world if you have website and post content. When you do that, your potential customers can find with a simple search.

The fact that more media is produced by the masses than mass media compels all brands to start thinking of themselves as an online media outlet capable of connecting directly with their consumers with search responsive storytelling. This digital reality is why you need a video storytelling strategy.

We believe you should be using storytelling to develop and nurture relationships with your potential customers.

The good news is that brands like yours are on equal footing with news media, the general public and your competitors when it comes to being able to provide information that is responsive to consumer search.

Brands like yours should own their own narrative sharing their stories directly with their target audience. Along the way, your storytelling will introduce you to potential customers and position you as a trusted source in your area of expertise. All you have to do is start sharing stories.

Sounds simple right?

But if you are a plumbing company, a dress shop, a specialized business-to-business manufacturing company or an amazing non-profit organization working 24-7 to help others, how are you a supposed to take on the additional role of being an online media outlet?

The experts are telling you that you are supposed to be sharing videos and blogs monthly to connect with customers. How is that supposed to work?

That is where StorySMART comes in.

We recognize that not all brands are staffed to consistently offer professional video while also running their business or non-profit organization.

We all have enough stress in our lives these days don’t we?

Taking on a monthly or more frequent chore of blogging and doing videos is a lot to ask of most business owners.

Who has that time or, let’s be honest, that talent?

We developed our service because we want to empower you to engage a journalist to tell your story in an affordable, high-quality, honest and credible way.

Our journalist will be the difference maker for you. You will get a trained professional storyteller who has a nose for news. They have perfected their craft over time and work for you to tell your stories.

Our journalist does all the storytelling work for you, taking the stress out of it for you. You know it will be done right the first time.

While we do all the storytelling work, you are actively involved in each key step of the process to ensure you get what you pay for.

·You define the story.

·You help us determine the 2-3 key messages that will be conveyed by the story.

·You also tell us who the reporter will interview and you secure permissions for those folks to be interviewed for the story.

Your job is simply helping us coordinate with right people. Then our reporter takes from there.

Our reporter interviews people, shoots video and produces a news story. After our reporter produces the first draft, you review the story and offer constructive feedback. We make small edits and finalize the story. Basically, we make sure we get it right for you . This is a step you rarely (or never) get when you talk to a traditional TV reporter on deadline. But since we work for you, you obviously get final review.

Once you’ve approved the video news story, we do all your writing.

·We write a written news story to you can share it on your website blog.

·We also draft all of your social media copy so you can share the story via your social media platforms.

If you don’t have anyone managing your social media, we can help you with that for an additional fee.

Our goal is to be of service to you. Everything is designed to be turnkey easy for you with our “as a service” approach to the work.

Finally, you pay us a flat fee for our work. You pay us per story. There are no hidden fees. It is all cost certain to you.

Our service is incredibly value priced when you compare to most professional video production. Our pricing enables you to tell multiple stories for the typical cost of a single scripted corporate video produced by any one of a number of very good production companies.

A quick word about Covid-19. We can work virtually or do in person – socially distanced video storytelling. You define those parameters with us based on what you are comfortable with and what is practical for your business right now.

Our turnkey process makes it easy for you to integrate consistent professional video storytelling into your business operations and marketing.

Give us a call to learn more about how we can help you grow your business online with professional video storytelling as a service. We will set up a free consultation and provide you with a customized plan designed to achieve your goals within your defined budget.