How about … ESSENTIAL? Visual content …Are we talking about images? Infographics? Memes? Videos? Presentations? Screenshots? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes and YES.Of course text will always be important to marketing, but to really understand the power of visuals, it’s important to recognize a few facts. Did you know that 65% of people are visual learners? That 90% of information that comes to the brain is visual? How about that presentations with visual aides are 43% more effective? With these stats in mind, doesn’t it just makes sense that visual stimuli would be critical to a successful digital marketing campaign? Not to mention that having great visuals will get more shares/likes on all social media outlets. All of the major social platforms are becoming more visual and thus require the visual stimuli to get the viewers attention. If you want to grow your Facebook page and your overall social reach, it's vital that youLet’s explore all six types of visual content and see why each is important.(SEE? Visual, even in print lingo!)
Nowadays attention spans are shorter than ever. It’s been said articles with images get 94% more views than those without. Doesn’t it make sense to use the best, most visually compelling images as possible? Original images (images taken by you or a photographer) are most effective, because they’re on point and can portray the subject.
You can also use apps like Canva or photo-sharing sites like Flickr, Morguefile or Pixabay that offer free images and can help you create high quality, attractive images without added expense. Your digital marketing goal is, after all, to achieve great fan engagement by giving your fans a visually engaging image paired with creative, compelling text.
What IS a meme? A meme is an image accompanied by a humorous, profound or touching caption, and chances are you’ve seen them in use all over social media. The practice began as entertainment for college students and has now morphed into a highly popular, easy to create form of visual content. If your brand resonates with a younger demographic, skillful use of memes will gain you good engagement, make your fans laugh and build a community around your brand.
Videos can come in all shapes and sizes. Short ones, medium or long ones. They can be funny, educational, animated – Anything from "How To’s" to clips capturing special or heartwarming moments in life. One thing we know about videos is they can be hugely powerful.
A recent study by Moz shows that posts with videos received nearly 300% more inbound links. THREE HUNDRED! With this in mind, it’s important to put additional thought into frequency and content as well as staying true to your brand and brand strategy.
We’re not all engaged by charts and graphs, but a well done infographic can make the most mundane statistics come to life in a thoroughly convincing and appealing way. They’re great for explaining complex data in an easy to read, easy to understand fashion, just like the one below from our friends at SocialMediaToday. (Click here to see original infographic.)
To create effective infographics, it’s important to combine layout and design features as well as colors, shapes and fonts to bring your point to light. The more shares you are able to achieve for your infographic, the more publicity for your brand. And when sharing via social media, don’t forget to include a thumbnail image as well as a hyperlink to the site where the full image is hosted.
Presentations serve a similar function to infographics, but they tend to deal with more complex issues. By using design and color features, they’re able to draw the reader in and capture their attention. Presentations can not only be entertaining, but more well done presentations provide the user with actionable advice for how to improve his or her content strategy. Since your presentation is likely to include lots of information, it’s critical to stay consistent with fonts, borders and colors, and always keep your sources beyond reproach.
With a screenshot, you can provide your audience with a glimpse into the inner workings of your product or service or offer supporting material in training situations. You can show what services and functions you offer from a direct perspective, and you can even combine your screenshot with some marketing copy or a testimonial to boost your credibility.
Screenshots can also effectively be used to support statements made by your sales staff about your product or service. Visual evidence of statistics used in your “pitch” can go a long way to forging audience trust, capture customer reviews and give your most ardent fans a visual soapbox to sing your praises from and 88% of people using social media read reviews to determine the quality of a business.
