When you’re browsing through your social media accounts, what types of posts catch your eye first? Your friend’s text-only status update, or the picture of the sun shining onto a beautiful blue lake? The answer is obvious, you’re attracted to the photo first.
According to the “Pictorial Superiority Effect,” people tend to remember 65% of the information they saw three days ago if they saw it in both picture and word formats.
Visuals play an important role to your social media strategy. The power of visual content not only lies with its ability to tell a story, but to generate positive returns and being remembered. Visual content can bring more readers, customers, leads, and traffic to your website. If you have visual assets that are engaging, chances are, people are more likely to click on your social media update, share it with their friends, comment, and like it! Most of the time, visual content are extremely affordable and sometimes they're even free!
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The Importance of Having Visuals in Your Content
So, how can you use visuals to increase social media engagement? Here are twelve ways to do so!
1. Make Videos
Videos can help people to better visualize an idea. They’re a great way to showcase your expertise and skills to your users.
Another way to use videos are by creating educational lessons that will teach your users something about your business, product, service, or the culture of your company. If you have a Chart Tool, like SEMrush for example, you can create a video that guides users on how to use it. Moz also does a great job at creating videos to teach viewers about SEO with their Whiteboard Friday series. Sure, writing a blog or FAQ is great, but the addition of a video can just spice it up even more.
2. Create Resourceful Infographics
Who doesn't love a visually enticing and colourful infographic?
One of the best way to portray information is to create an infographic. With the correct combination of text and visuals, you can be sure to create something that will be shared and pinned constantly. Make sure to have bold colours and a consistent look for the overall infographic. You don’t want to clutter it with too much text, so use visuals that can represent your ideas.
3. Share with SlideShare
SlideShare is one of the world’s largest community for sharing presentations and other resources. It’s an easy way to upload and share PDFs, infographics, slide show presentations, videos, PDFs, and webinars.
When you have a specific idea that you want to share, consider turning it into a SlideShare. You can even turn existing information into a SlideShare. It’s great way to convey your information into a slideshow and have users navigate through the slides at their own pace. SlideShare also allows you to easily share it on your social media platforms, like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.
4. Use Multi-Product Ads
Earlier this year, Facebook announced the launch of Dynamic Product ads. These multi-product ads allow businesses to promote their products or entire product catalogue on Facebook.
Multi-product ads allows you to highlight different products through images. Rather than displaying an advertisement for one specific product, you have the ability to showcase 3-5 products. You can now attract more customers with a variety of products being showcased in a Facebook ad.
5. Share Images on Twitter
Did you know that over 3.5 billion tweets are sent every week? If your followers are following a lot of accounts on Twitter, how can you stand out from the hundreds of tweets they see in their feed? Well, according to Twitter, photos averages a 35% boost in Retweets.
Taking a picture of your products, company life, employees, or anything that can generate engagement and reflect your business is great for sharing. If you’re posting an article or link, try attaching a photo to your tweet to increase engagement!
6. Post Photo Albums
Facebook and Google+ are two platforms that allow you to upload photos in albums. It’s a great to way to showcase your products and services in one place.
Think of it as a photo album catalogue of your business. What’s great is that you can include short descriptions of the image and users can comment on the photos.
Of course, you’re not limited to uploading business photos onto your social media platforms! You can be creative and upload employee photos, office tours, special birthday events, or company wide events. Expedia, for example, upload amazing destination photos that can attract users to use their services to book their next vacation and decide where to go.
7. Upload Videos onto Facebook
According to MarketingProfs, 70% of marketing professional reported that video converts better than other types of medium. Videos are a great way to share information with your fans. A great feature of Facebook is that videos are automatically played on someone’s newsfeed. Often times, when a fan likes your video, there is a chance that it will be showcased on the network of that fan’s showcase. This makes Facebook a great platform to increase your reach and brand awareness through videography.
8. Share GIFs
Graphics Interchange Format, also known as GIF, is an image format, which can conveniently be made into an animation. The reason why GIFs are so popular is because they draw people’s attention. It encompasses most of the benefits of a video, but in a shorter length. Now that Twitter and Facebook have allowed GIFs to be shown, why not attract your fan’s attention with a creative GIF?
9. Make Memes
You might be worried that memes would be too casual for your business or have a negative effect to your business image. However, if you choose the right image and match it with the correct phrases, then you can create a positive effect. Memes are extremely popular on social media, so don’t be afraid to show a little bit of humour and laughs with your fans and followers. Check out this article to see how you can create your own social brand memes.
10. A Worthy Quote
Quotes are no stranger to social media platforms. Whether you’re a business or just a friend, sometimes you’re inspired to post a quote or two. So, why can’t your business do it, too? Are there any quotes that your business follows? What about your CEO’s favourite quote? You may not think quotes are an effective way to generate conversations, but the right quote can inspire a majority of your followers. If your quote is worthy of a share, then you’ll be sure to see re-share and retweets.
11. Don’t be afraid of Emojis
I think emojis are a great way to spice up my messages, whether it’s a text message or a tweet. Emojis are cute, simple, and helps to put emotion into your bland text and often make your page less boring and robotic in general.
Some people feel that emojis aren’t professional, but on the other hand, emojis can give your brand a more personable vibe. Test out emojis in your social media posts, but make sure you’re using them in the right context.
12. Photoshop and Edit Images
As a Photoshop user, I love editing photos and making strange things. It’s extremely fun to create an artistic piece of work that can be both humorous and creative for your audience. TechWyse does a great job at including Photoshopped images for their Facebook updates. It’s unique and can definitely catch your reader's attention. Take a look at this funny photo of Bamboo turned into Nyan Bam. Sure, it's not related to the industry or business, but it can show the personal side of TechWyse.
Next time you’re brainstorming and scheduling your social media posts, try to incorporate some visuals into it. Social media is all about generating conversation and engaging your users, so don’t be afraid to share memes, quotes, or gifs to connect with them in a more personable level. Let me know in the comments below how you use visual content to increase engagement for your business.
on
Differently will affect each of these councils, depending on what we want to increase visual content. If it’s possible to use one, it needs to be adapted adequately.
on
This article was really helpful to me. I’m a text-only person at heart and I appreciate text-only sites more than most people; but I realize that the majority of people need visualization. I’m a big fan of infographics because they’re visually stunning (most of the time) and they actually engage the viewer and require them to read information instead of assuming information. I have never made one myself. Can you suggest a specific program for making infographics? Or, perhaps there’s a site or an app? Thank you!
on
I agree on almost all fronts. But I think brands do need to take care in creating memes or using any visual aid (Photoshopped images or even emojis). Some images taken out of context can snowball into something rather unpleasant. I think this happens a lot when they choose to pre-plan or schedule their social media posts. Brands need to stay on top of current events in order for their messaging to stay relevant.
on
For sure, therefore, it’s really important consider what kind of visuals you’re posting onto your social platforms. There’s always a fine line between humour and offensiveness. You’re right! The best way to avoid these situations is to make sure you’re knowledgeable of the current events.
on
Some people are already moving on this, but adapt memes to fit your business. There are all sorts of meme generators out there that quickly let you superimpose text upon a picture, and then hotlink to it. You won’t even have to host the image on your own site if you wish.
Memes are becoming recognizable advertising entities in their own right. A significant portion of the internet’s user base identify with the modern meme culture, and it’s nearly free advertising. just avoid using memes with people in them, or copyrighted products.
on
I think it also ties into the fact that many millennials can be connected with through memes.
It’s a way to show that you’re adapting to the new things happening in the digital world.
on
It’s also that Millennials are harder to target than any other online demographic – they’ve grown up with banner ads and every form of advertising out there. If you want to reach them you have to play on their field with their rules. They’re also the generation most likely to ensure online success, because they share literally everything on social media.
A catchy ad campaign can go viral. That might not always be a good thing, but I subscribe to ‘any publicity is good publicity.’
on
These tips are great! I totally agree with you with these. Facebook pages that are garnering a huge number of likes are those that follow these tips. Using emojis help a lot since it makes the page more fun that you would’t think its for business. Uploading memes, GIFs and videos that are related to current issues are great as well since posts made have more chances of getting shares, hence, more likes and audience for your Facebook page.
on
Thanks Yavannah! Definitely, I find that using emojis make everything more “personable” and adds a touch of emotion to it. Plain text can sometimes seem too robotic and emotionless. I suppose you can say emojis, gifs, and memes can all add a bit of spice to social marketing!