Are you struggling with social media marketing for your business?
In this blog we will show you how visual content can help you get you more likes, shares and comments for your business on social media. We will also give some tips on how to use visual content to boost engagement.
Reaching your followers without paid marketing can be difficult and frustrating at times. That means marketers have to find ways to reach target audience organically. Visual content is a better way to spice up boring content and increase your shareability.
Visual content includes pictures, graphics, memes and videos. According to Viraltag, visuals get 94% more views than plain text content. Posts with visuals grab attention easily. This is why Facebook has introduced the coloured status background for text only posts.
The popularity for visual content is proved by the tremendous growth of visual social media platforms such as Instagram and Pinterest. Instagram users number has grown from 200 million in 2014 to 800 million in just three years.
Marketers know that visuals are a must -have rather than a good-to-have component of content strategy. In 2016, 53% of marketers stated that over 90% of content they produced contained visuals.
Here is how visual content will enhance your social media marketing
Increase Engagement
Posts with visuals get more likes, comments and shares on social media. According to Hubspot, Facebook posts with images get 2.3 times more engagement than those without images. Visual content is also 40 times more likely to be shared on social media than any other type of content.
However, social media feed is overloaded with images today and there is something you can do to stand out among that. Your brand needs something more with their image to stand out. There are many strategies that successful marketers follow to increase their chances of going viral.
Check out this post by EA Sports:Madden 25. They have successfully used a call to action to drive user engagement.
Adding a clear call to action in your images will drive up engagement on your posts. Some of the other strategies that marketers use are sharing DIY photos, entertaining or funny memes, optical illusions and images that evoke emotions.
Create Brand Personality
Visuals communicate much more than words ever can. Images and videos evoke emotions and connect with the audience instantly. You can communicate all that your brand stands for in less than two seconds (which is great considering the fact that human attention span have fallen to eight seconds).
For example, RedBull Facebook page regularly posts videos on adventure and sports. This connects with their audiences who are adventurous and identify with the brand for ‘pushing the limits’.
Images are also more memorable and increase your brand recall. According to Lifelearn, people retain 65% of information when content is paired with relevant image compared to only 10% retention when that information is heard.
Posting images with consistent theme, font and logo increases brand recognition and builds a place in the minds of audience.
Drive Conversion
Visual media can directly increase your traffic and conversions. Visuals are great to if you are a product company. In fact, there are many small businesses which have grown big supported only by Instagram sales. Marketers are now giving due place to visual platformssuch as Instragram, Snapchat and Pinterest in their digital marketing strategy.
Instagram has over 1 million advertisers since the introduction of its ad services only four years ago.
Both Facebook and Instagram have introduced carousel ads (pictures that you can scroll sideways) to make their ads more visual. All social media platforms prefer visual content in their organic as well as paid feed for the simple reason that it converts better.
Tips for creating visuals for social media
Whether you are just starting out with visual content or want better strategy for your visual content marketing, following tips will help you:
> Recreate your best text posts in visuals. You do not need to create fresh content every time. Go back to your best performing posts and blogs and redo them in a visual infographic.
> Know your type of visuals. There are so many things you can dowith visuals. You can use photos, quote covers, comics, infograhics, memes, videos, live videos. Understand your audience and analyse their response to different type of visuals. Also keep in mind your brand personality. A funny meme on Donald Trump is not a good idea if you are a professional and serious B2B brand.
> Optimize images for each platform. Keep your posts in line with the overall mood of the social media platform. For example, Instagram is great for a lifestyle and fashion product whereas LinkedIn would be a better place for a B2B software company. Also keep in mind that the dimension and photo quality requirement may differ slightly in each platform.
> Managing too many platforms can get overwhelming. Limit to three platforms to start off with. Choose platforms based on where your target audience is.
> Keep a good variety of content. Some options that are popular are – DIY graphics, educational infographics, funny comics or memes, entertaining videos, GIFs, etc. Be creative and play around with what sits well within your brand voice.
> Use live videos to show the human side of your brand or to give behind the scene updates. Live videos are not yet very popular but they are very engaging. It’s the perfect time to jump on the rising trend that will be common in coming future.
> Use contests and user generated images to engage your users.
Conclusion
We are naturally inclined to prefer visuals to text. The amount of visual content is only growing on social media platforms. Brands must stand out with their creative use of visuals to enhance their social media marketing. Using images, videos and creative graphics will increase user engagement, build your brand voice and ultimately lead to conversions.