Our world is continuously becoming more virtual and digital, causing visual content to become vital in marketing. More than 3 billion images are shared per day, making it more difficult to stand out. Online companies are doing their best to create relevant content to attract a broader audience. Marketing companies that utilize this strategy gain followers, likes, shares, visits, clients and revenue. But, how do you create effective content? In this blog post, we will share some tips and tricks to benefit your marketing strategy.
What is Visual Content Marketing?
Visual content marketing is the practice of using images to convey valuable information. To do this successfully, it has to be done in an engaging, visual format. The sole purpose is to attract people to your website, your cause or your offers. Some examples of visual content include images with educational or inspiring quotes, infographics and signature branded images that promote all types of content: audio, video or written.
Tips for Using Visual Content
Creating strong visual content takes time, energy, resources, and knowledge. To truly make an impact and compelling, you need to start with a great story told through engaging, high-quality designs. Listed below tips to keep in mind when designing and creating engaging, content.
Take your own pictures
You don’t have to be a professional photographer to take your own pictures. Stock photos can be helpful, but to really engage in your audience, create a homemade visual image to use for content.
Use Pinterest
Create a pin of every blog post, eBook or content marketing project. You can do this to generate creative inspiration or to plan out the colors for your content. Additionally, you can see which Pins do the best amongst your target audience. This will increase the likelihood that your visual content piece will be effective.
Post on SlideShare
SlideShare is a public platform for sharing visual content. When you are a member of SlideShare, you can read and save visual content that you find interesting or inspiring. So, when creating visual content, be sure to add it to this great website. It can help you get more exposure, and it may even generate more leads.
Use more animated GIFs.
GIFs have been around for a while now, but they are still very popular amongst visual content creators. These are moving animations that you may commonly see on Twitter and Facebook. You can also add them in Word Documents, Pins on Pinterest, and PowerPoints. So, if you commonly create visual content on these platforms or these tools, consider using GIFS. They are the perfect method to spice up your visual content.
Tips for Designing Visual Content
It’s important for visual content to have quality information and to share it on effective platforms. However, the design is just as important. The design must attract readers and continuously keep their attention. Here are some tips specifically focused on the design aspect of visual content:
Color
Use color to highlight important information that you want to stand out in your content. Pick no more than five colors to use, or else it’ll get too distracting. Also, if you are trying to focus on developing your brand, be sure to use your brand colors.
Typography
Fonts should be legible for your content. Don’t pick a font that you, yourself can hardly read. Let it be unique but easy to read. Similarly, with colors, consider using your brand’s font if you have one.
Layout
Presenting content that flows well together enhances your visual content. A messy, unorganized website/page will uninterest the reader because they don’t know where to find anything. In other words, present your content in a logical hierarchy.
Space
Negative space is so vital when designing. Remember in graphic design how much they drilled it in our heads? Well, they were right. Having too much information in one place creates a cluster and the messaging is hard to read.
Illustration
This should always match the tone and messaging. Remember to only use this if it enhances the message, not just because. It should also be a high-quality image so your readers don’t get a bad impression of your content.
Data
Data is so important in visual content. It can be used for a variety of reasons and it enhances and supports your content altogether. However, don’t overwhelm the reader with too much data and graphs—or else they will get lost midway.
Simplicity
Keep your content simple. Less is more when it comes to visual design. A graphic can speak a thousand words, so there is no need to add unnecessary designs and elements. The most important part is your story—if that is strong, everything else will fall into place.
Creating Visual Content
Studies show that 90% of information transmitted to our brains is through visual content. The human brain processes information 60K times faster than normal, written content. Images and videos both get higher engagement and traffic on every platform. Currently, 60% of social media is made of images, which will only get higher over time. If you are thinking about using visual content strategy in your business, we recommend following these tips when doing so. Always remember to promote, engage and share! People love social media for the reason they can interact and communicate. Using visual content to build that relationship with loyal customers will help not only strengthen brand loyalty but brand awareness as well.
~ Written by Gaby Fish, Content Specialist at Joshua Lyons Marketing, LLC.