#ContentCatchup: Creating Compelling Visual Content Marketing

Content Marketing Media

Creating visual content marketing that is compelling can be a challenge. However it there are a number of ways in which businesses even from non-visual or boring industries can create compelling visual content.

To get some inspiration we start by looking at the video content that Turkish Airlines have been publishing of late. We also look at critical elements like building publishing consistency and incorporating emotion like humor in marketing before looking at some practical aspects of visual content marketing and furthering conversions with UX improvements.

Cinemagraphs are perhaps not the most widely talked about form of visual content so we also look at ways in which it can be applied to a business and how it can be created. For now lets kick things of with a look at video content that Turkish Airlines has been publishing.

Turkish Airline’s Attempt at Creating Visual Content Marketing

Turkish Airlines have been putting out some great short story format videos as part of their visual content marketing strategy of late. These videos have been getting quite a number of views. Take for example the recent Wedding Above The Clouds – a story of Stefan and Vjera who first met on a Turkish Airlines flight from Istanbul to Ulan Bator. Published about a week ago it has already acquired more than 1.3 million views.

And its not just heartwarming love stories. The airline is encouraging people to send in their #DelightfulStories to encourage people to achieve their dreams with inspiring, passionate and courageous stories like this one on Staff Benda Bilili – a music band of paraplegic musicians who formed a band to pursue a common dream – a dream for change fuled by music.

Facebook Launches Instant Articles

Facebook has launched Instant Articles which it promises will make the article reading experience faster and richer. The company claims that while people share a lot of stories load times average around eight seconds. Instant articles solves the issue making articles load ten times faster than standard mobile web articles.

There are interactive features like: the ability to zoom in on photos, tilt your phone to explore them further, auto-play videos, listen to audio captions, play with interactive maps, and Like and comment on individual parts of an article.

Facebook is currently working with publishers like – The New York Times, National Geographic, BuzzFeed, NBC, The Atlantic, The Guardian, BBC News, Spiegel and Bild for content.

Facebook Introduces New Call-To-Action Buttons

Facebook has also introduced two new call to action buttons. They are the “Call Now” and “Get Directions” buttons.

When users click the button their phones will automatically dial the advertiser’s number making it easier to connect to local businesses or be guided to the business location depending on the button. It is currently available in the US, UK, Australia, Brazil, Canada and most of Western Europe.

Getty Images Lures Instagram Users

Getty Images is now allowing users of Instagram to apply for grants to support their efforts to document stories from underrepresented communities around the world. Applications will be judged on the basis of existing images on Instagram with a focus on quality, photographic skills, the project and its ability to tell a story through photos.

Content Marketing Know How

How To Plan A Blog Schedule That Will Crush Your Goals

Nathan Ellering in his “post” talks us through how to improve your publishing consistency. The main effects of which should result in an increase in social media shares, social media followers, traffic to your website, newsletter subscribers and customer conversions.

14 powerful ways to revive humor in marketing

In this post we look at content marketing humor in different formats including visuals. Discover what you can learn from the science of humor in marketing and how to use content and humor in marketing to increase shares and trust.

5 Ways to Produce Eye-Catching Content without a Designer

Vince Chiofolo says that creating good visually appealing content is a huge challenge faced by many however there is no need to hire pricey graphic designers. With a number of tools that exist that allow even the non-designers amongst us to whip up memes, ebooks and images. Check out his recommended resources.

The Best Typography, Colors and templates Used in the Highest Converting Social Media Images

Getting that #wanderlust started early. Get your fill of adorableness with #TravelTots: http://t.co/yk3j9iMOga pic.twitter.com/ekVsSTMDeo

— American Airlines (@AmericanAir) April 21, 2015

James Johnson dives into scientifically backed research to provide actionable advice on how to create social media images that get shared. Shareable images need to contain five elements:
• Emotion
• Colors
• Relevance
• Typography
• Hashtags and Text

If you stopped publishing your social content, would anybody notice?

Brooke Ballard tackles this contentious issue by delving into recent research which might suggest that less is more.
where the majority of brands fall with publishing frequency:
31 percent of pages studied posted two to four times per week
25 percent posted once per day
18 percent posted once per week
4 percent posted more than 10 times daily
3 percent posted five to nine times per

6 Psychological Triggers That Make UX Design Persuasive

Spencer Lanoue in this post stresses the need to learn about human psychology to design compelling user experiences. He explains key psychological experiments and academic research into actionable steps that can help create better user experiences and in turn conversions.

Mobile Checkout: What Works and What Doesn’t?

Vivian Suen takes us through a User Testing study which was conducted to determine which mobile checkout processes customers prefer. It is no surprise that users wanted a process that was quick and easy to use. Check out the winners of the study and other elements you could incorporate into your mobile UX.

Creating Compelling Visual Content Marketing with Cinemagraphs

Cinemagrpahs are not a visual medium that gets talked about a lot yet have the ability to capture your readers attention by bring photos to life. The articles below explore ways in which we can apply cinemagraphs to a business.

Cinemagraphs are visuals where individual instants of motion are isolated against a static image. Joseph Lin talks to pioneers of the cinemagraph Jamie Beck and Kevin Burg to discover more about this visual medium.

Brian Honigman provides 7 best practices for using animated GIFs and Cinemagraphs for business and engaging your audience.

To apply cinemagraphs one needs to be able to create them, so here are a few resources to help you with just that.

1. Fotolia provides this guide on creating cinemagraphs with Photoshop.
2. This post also provides 10 Photoshop tutorials for creating cool cinemagrpahs
3. Photojojo goes through the technical details of taking the appropriate images and videos.
4. This guide runs through apps you can use on your smartphone to create cinemagraphs.

Cool Tools I Have Discovered

Beacon – an online tool to create books and ebooks from bog posts.
Speedlancer – Probably the worlds fastest freelance marketplace for design, writing and data entry jobs.