Have you ever looked at your website and wondered if its lack of visual vitality is hampering your success?
Perhaps like me you’ve had that niggling thought that simply having a bunch of text on your website isn’t enough — after all, some people are creating amazing visuals for their sites, so you have to make your content stands out more too.
Research by BufferApp, Kissmetrics and Dan Zarella has proven that there is a continuously increasing emphasis on visuals on the web. So savvy businesses can take advantage of this to stand out and attract customers.
Visual content works well because it’s quick and easy to digest and has a greater chance of catching one’s eyes in a long stream of posts.
Visual content also significantly enhances a website’s ability to capture and retain visitor attention. Research indicates that web pages with relevant images attract an average of 94% more total views than those without. According to Moz, posts with videos attract three times more inbound links than plain text posts.
And with the increase in visual scanning that website readers must do to filter through the sheer volume of content these days, entrepreneurs and marketers must use visual content marketing more strategically than ever to attract and hold attention, especially with complex topics.
So how do you leverage this for your business?
Use the following 65 visual content marketing strategies to help you connect, converse and convert.
This is a long post, so to find sections that are of interest to you and that you would like to revisit, use the links below.
Incentives
Humanize Your Brand
Educate and Inform
Illustrate
Boards
Incorporate Customers
Employees
Tap into Emotions
Build on Themes
Optimize
Increase Reach and Visibility
Take It Further
1. Incentives
Providing incentives to boost sales or build an email list works well. However, using visuals to bring focus to such offers will help even more with conversions.
Make Use of Coupons
According to a RetailMeNot Shoppers trend report, 92% of American consumers shop with coupons, with 29% using online coupons. Coupons are a great business and lead generation method, an effective targeting tool, and highly shareable.
Jay McKeever offered a coupon for 10% off, which meant that their customers would save quite a bit when average orders are over $1000.
Take a look at some of the results below. (Source: Constant Contact)
2. Encourage sharing with contests
Contests tend to spark conversation and engagement.
Photo contests are a way to involve your loyal customers, while at the same time helping you gather plenty of content.
Michael Kors conducted a successful Instagram campaign in which fans uploaded their images of MK watches with the hashtag #MKTimless. The winner won a limited-edition watch.
3. Use snap offers
Got an offer with a deadline? Consider sending it out to your Snapchat contacts, or via Instagram Direct. On Snapchat, once that image self-destructs, so does the offer.
On Instagram Direct, you can delete the post when the time period for the offer has expired. The social platforms really help reinforce urgency and scarcity with customers. You can build your audience and target loyal followers with special previews to new products or test drives, special discounts to popular products or even freebies.
4. Use email marketing
Visual content can be used to great effect in emails, as it helps break up the monotony of text. Emails should do everything possible to point the reader toward your visual call to action. Accor Hotels consistently does this in their incentive emails by using prominent graphics and call-to-action buttons, all of which tie in well with their email copy.
The Brain Pickings newsletter has something entertaining no matter where you look, and visuals pull it all together. This only encourages sharing of content and more sign-ups.
5. Add giveaways
Growing a subscriber list is a vital part of content marketing, and visuals show potential subscribers what they will receive, making the offer more tangible — as ContentVerve does with their free e-book in the sidebar of their site.
Another way to use visuals is to reinforce the call to action. For example, Amy Porterfield has a header on her Facebook page that encourages people to sign up for free live training on how to create an easy-to-implement Facebook marketing plan.
Humanize Your Brand
Visual content can provide that missing element in having an online brand presence – the human touch, which helps you bond with your audience.
6. Share the unseen magic
Whether launching or promoting new products, behind-the-scenes magic presents many opportunities to help build some buzz and humanize your brand. Capture these behind-the-scenes moments via photos or videos.
Sharing these on your blog and social media platforms is like giving your followers an exclusive backstage pass.
Black Milk Clothing regularly features behind-the-scenes pictures of staff and models on their blog.
Old Spice commercials have gained popularity for their humor and creative, yet seamless, set changes. The video below shows a behind-the-scenes look at the production of one of these commercials.
These are moments that few people get to experience.
7. Show off your product’s ability
The great thing about visual media is that it can create demand by helping consumers imagine new or novel uses for your products that solve real issues that they face.
Better still, your audience can provide user-generated content such as photos and videos that demonstrate how to solve real life issues, and show creative new ways of using your products. You just need to pick the best ones to post.
The folks behind Vanish washing powder use this principle to great effect in their advertorials and tip exchange site.
If you’re in an industry such as home renovations, auto body repair, interior design, makeup or landscaping, show your audience the impact of your work with photos. Share photos of your subject before and after you apply your magic. Side-by-side photos of the before and after will add the wow factor and may even result in a few customers.
The Charlottesville Makeup Artist blog does a great job of showcasing their work and including customer feedback.
Educate & Inform
There is great value in simplifying complex processes and concepts. Businesses and entrepreneurs can teach or inform their audiences by showing them how simple, yet vital, something can be.
Resource: 9+ Proven Ways to Create a Successful Customer Driven Marketing Strategy
8. Show them how
Visual media is a powerful tool for educating your audience. For example, wikiHow routinely uses photos or screen captures to illustrate a step-by-step guide on how to use a device or app. The example below from their site demonstrates how to use Vine.
Consider Sharing newfound features or resources that your audience should be aware of, such as the example below from Social Media Examiner’s Facebook account.
9. Tell visual stories with data
A simple visualization for dry subjects like data and statistics can have a transformative power in terms of gaining your audience’s attention. Seeing the differences between percentages can drive home the facts and give readers a better understanding of the significance of the statistics.
The New York Times published an interactive data graphic called Ebb and Flow of Movies: Box Office Receipts 1986-2008 that presents time series data for movies and their gross domestic box office revenue.
Infographics offer a fun, colorful and visual way to share the same information via an image.
10. Make use of announcements
Announcements about new products, new websites, new website designs, and product upgrades are all opportunities you can leverage.
But make sure your announcements and makeovers are short, easy to understand, engaging and shareable.
Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk posted a major announcement about a significant new feature for the Model S. To ensure the audience got the point, he added GIFs showing the feature in action. In fact, it is impossible to ignore those GIFs.
11. Share twists on quotes
Sharing quotes has been popular for quite some time, and shows no sign of dying out because of their ability to inspire and inform. They have a way of generating a sense of authority, and they make readers take notice, especially if it is in a contextually relevant visual format.
12. Offer sneak peeks
People like to be in the know, and they especially like being the first to know. Make your followers feel special by giving them exclusive previews of products or services, and virtual tours of stores, property, production facilities or offices in the making. If those items haven’t been seen before, they should make for shareable content on different social media platforms.
Illustrate
Standing out from the crowd with your content can be as simple as illustrating your point to ensure it gets across to your audience effectively and simply.
13. Share illustrations to connect
These examples from Wendy MacNaughton and Neil Patel show how you can use illustrations to communicate a variety of information, including who you are, mission statements, benefits of products and services, personality and even how prospects can reach you.
14. Show don’t tell
Show don’t tell is such a cliché these days, but what better way to explain tough concepts or hard-to-explain selling points than to show people. Explainer videos are great when you have difficulty explaining just how amazing your product or service is with more traditional means, such as brochures or text alone. The video from Evernote below is an example.
Consider for a moment that you’re selling powerful blenders. You can produce a brochure that gives customers an idea of the blender’s design, power and features. But a video showing the blender’s power has a much bigger impact. Check out this Blendtec video. The Dollar Shave Club came out with its startup explainer video, skyrocketing the company to near overnight stardom.
15. Add comic elements
Comics are an underused visual content strategy. They are usually cheaper and quicker to produce than videos, they tell a story with instant visual appeal, and best of all, they don’t make you wait for the good bits, unlike video. Google realizes the power and potential of comics, having used it to announce the launch of their Chrome browser.
The Oatmeal and gapingvoid are just two examples of what businesses could do with web comics. If you need more convincing or inspiration, check out Mathew Inman’s (founder of The Oatmeal) presentation “How to get 5 million people to read your website” below.
16. Create a unique perspective with visual note taking
This is a process whereby ideas and concepts are represented visually. Like the image below from Leo Babauta’s manifesto, visual note taking is more of an artistic way of capturing and representing ideas.
Most people are visual learners, so when visual note taking is done well, it is an effective communication tool and resource that distills complex information into the essence of what is important to remember or use.
17. Illustrate with SlideShare
This is a great educational way to create and share slides without the dreaded walls of text. SlideShare can show off your newest products or services, convey statistics, provide how-to instructions or even use parody slideshows to show off a sense of humor.
Boards
Pinterest is a great platform to use for building a following and driving sales, if used in appropriate ways that engage your audience. The best part is that it doesn’t matter if you have an image-driven business or not.
18. Create and share inspiration boards
Share your ideas with your audience on Pinterest with your dream boards. Fashion and accessories can be modeled, and home décor and furniture can be featured in professionally styled rooms so that pinners can see great ways to use the items. Essentially, the sky is the limit in terms of being able to highlight and showcase your products in use. You can even create new boards if there’s more than one way to use your products.
19. Make use of your product catalog
J.Crew puts their entire catalog on Pinterest. The same could be done on Instagram. You could do the same, but be sure not to post everything all at once, as posts have a short life span. Instead, post no more than four to five times a day. Research shows that including prices and descriptions on Pinterest will more likely lead to a purchase.
20. Use boards for non-image-driven businesses
Pinterest boards and pins allow for people whose content may not be image driven to form relationships that are critical to social media success. Think about your customers and ideal clients and create boards around what they would be interested in. VerticleResponse, an email marketing firm, has created a number of boards on their Pinterest account.
Need board ideas to get started? Consider sharing videos, featuring clients, highlighting books worth reading, including how-to information regarding tools and issues customers face, sharing your favorite resources, shining the spotlight on your peers, sharing infographics and data, sharing inspiring quotes and spreading the word about upcoming events and conferences.
21. Create shared boards
Need to reach a new audience? Consider partnering with another company and creating a shared board on Pinterest. You can invite the company you partner with to pin items that match a theme that fits your company. For instance, a furniture company could partner with a bookseller to pin books that belong on a coffee table, bedside table and bookshelf. This group board between Etsy and Random House is an example of just how effective it can be.
22. Create user style guides
User style guides are guides to selecting the right types of clothing and accessories. An example is this guide to women’s clothing based on body type.
ModCloth includes a user style guide with just about every item in their extensive catalog. They invite customers to upload images of their products in use. So the style guide not only incorporates user-generated content, but it also has customer’s voices being shared and heard.
23. Make use of now trending items
Integrate Pinterest with your website and not only do you get SEO benefits, but you also show visitors how cool customers think your products are. Target does a great job of doing this and leveraging the social proof that the integration generates. Their mobile optimized micro-site features products that are aggregated from a combination of top-pinned items and those with the best reviews on Target.com.
24. Use curation of the best sources
Become an information curator for your niche. Gather the newest and best resources on your boards. Become a trusted source of information on Pinterest and Storify, and your following will grow by leaps and bounds.
Incorporate Customers
Your customers can be your allies in helping get the word out and creating engagement within your online channels. So consider making them part of your team to help create visual content that can win rave reviews and drive more traffic to your site.
25. Encourage user-generated commercials
Doritos is a brand that has really built itself on user-generated commercials, resulting in winners like the one below.
Don’t have a million-dollar prize like Doritos? Don’t worry.
Offer prizes that would have significance to your fans. Quite often, the chance to be included as part of your social media content can be incentive enough for fan-produced commercials around your brand.
26. Use customers to leverage the unexpected
Visual content is engaging and shareable, but combine it with the unexpected and you’ve got a winning combination.
The Art Series Hotel in Australia leaves postcards in their rooms, encouraging guests to jump on the bed, share the fun photos with their friends and tag the hotel in their posts. The tactic infuses fun in their guests’ stays at the hotel and has also increased social shares.
Consider offering special discounts for those who share these kinds of photos, and offer a separate monthly or weekly prize for the best photo shared to perpetuate the submissions and sharing.
27. Share your feedback
Did a customer send you positive feedback about your product or service? Share a screen shot of the email (if it’s okay with the client).
Need more screenshot ideas? Share unusual weather phenomenon in your area, a hilarious text, a new web design or blog post or even a screenshot of another social media platform.
28. Add testimonial videos
Consider giving your customers a voice by including video testimonials and reviews. You could either accept videos your customers produce themselves or invite them onsite to participate in a video production. Either way, they will be thrilled to be part of your company and are likely to become proactive ambassadors on behalf of your business as well.
29. Drive content production with polls
Why not give your customers a chance to vote on your next products? A poll is a great way to get everyone involved and build some buzz around the product launch. It could be as simple as sharing photos of items you have in mind and allowing people to vote for their favorites. The results can also make for great content as part of the product launch. Made.com uses polling to determine which products to make available and which to pull out of.
30. Show reviews as images
Positive reviews can help with branding and sales. So take a screenshot of a review and save it as an image to share on social media platforms. Some people may not go to Yelp or other directories and review sites, but sharing the reviews on your Facebook page or Twitter will allow followers to see it.
31. Show off your BFFs
How do you make your loyal customers feel super special? Why not feature them on social networks. Make the choice of fan of the week, customer of the week or even our new BFF, a surprise so your followers check in to see if they have been chosen. Alternatively, if you want to build a bit of competition around the honor, let them know what you are looking for and then sit back as word spreads.
Employees
Encourage your staff to help get the word out about your business and offers; they are often an underused asset in most businesses.
Showcasing your employees through visual content puts a human face on your business and takes away some of the mystery behind what you do.
32. Encourage sharing of staff picks
Get your staff involved with your social media content by sharing their favorite items in the form of images or videos. For example, a bookstore could offer staff reviews of a favorite book and also offer a discount on it for a limited time. Similar things could be done with retail or e-commerce stores as well. You will be surprised how many of your customers take your employees’ opinions to heart.
Vimeo does this with the Vimeo Staff Picks channel which has over 149,000 followers.
33. Bring employees into the limelight
Spotlighted employees will enjoy the recognition, and followers will get a chance to see the people behind the brand. You could make it an ongoing campaign where fans are taken around the office to meet staff working in a variety of roles. You can even share a little about each employee in the photo captions. Keen does a great job of showcasing employee moments in their office.
Your audience may have wondered at some point what it is like to work at your operation. So show them. Post photos that provide a glimpse into a day in the life of your office – moments in training sessions, cubicles, meetings in progress, employees at lunch, tech guys at work, and new hires at orientation — like Zappos did with the following photo.
34. Celebrate your big moments
Celebrate moments that you are proud of as a business by sharing them with your audience. Whether it be an award, meetings with celebrities, certifications or new clients, these types of images help with visual brand storytelling and help get the word out as well.
Tap into Emotions
People buy based on how they feel, and they justify their decisions with facts, according to Bryan Eisenberg author of Always be Testing and pioneer in improving online conversion rates. So it’s more important to use visual content that builds trust and confidence in your business than to just use facts and data. Make sure online conversations with your audience tap into their emotions with visual content.
35. Use original content, not stock photos
Stock photos do not help build trust with your audience. Authenticity will help generate trust. Don’t have exciting products or services? Have a humdrum routine? Then be creative. A number of apps and filters can aid in your creativity. Anjelika Paranjpe and Althea Davenport have some creative ideas to help you get started.
36. Share the cuteness
The appeal of babies and animals on social media is undeniable. Sites like Lolcats and Cute Overload prove this.
Share photos of pets and babies you know. Make them the stars of your ads. Have them sport your swag.
37. Get emotional
Sparking emotion in your audience via your visual content is what inspires trust and loyalty. Visual content that connects with your audience and tells a story could result from a photo, a whole album or even a video.
For example, TOMS uses visual content and emotion to tell the story of their company’s values and mission. On their Facebook page, they highlight how their products and customers help people around the world. With every pair of shoes sold, they donate a pair to a child living in poverty.
38. Add humor with tact
Humor in your visual content strategy will give you an edge. Empire Cat does this on a regular basis on their Facebook page. They are a Caterpillar dealership, so you’d think they wouldn’t be able to post engaging yet relevant content. But they manage to stay true to their brand while engaging their fans, as they did with the following caption contest.
The Dollar Shave Club rose to prominence because of a video they launched their business with, and they’ve carried on with their humorous ways on their Facebook page as well.
Build on Themes
Visual content around themes is a great way to build a following. For example Fat Mum Slim runs a monthly photo a day challenge #FMSphotoaday around monthly themes. In such instances, preparedness is the key to building on themes, and technology, apps and services make it that much easier.
39. Build on themes by keeping apps handy
Gone are the days when only graphic design and Photoshop skills would allow you to create the visuals worth sharing. Need to create visuals or visuals related to themes on the go?
A whole heap of apps are available to choose from. Flipagram, Pic Play Post, Magisto, Aviary, GoAnimate and Pixlr are just a few of the apps that can be used on mobile devices. Picmonkey and Canva are great for use on desktops.
40. Create content for various occasions
From seasonal sales, products, contests, and micro-sites, to cover images and videos, the sky is the limit regarding leveraging the holidays with related content. Home improvement store Lowe’s used commonly found household tools to wish their followers a happy July 4th and yet show a fun side to their brand on Vine.
Target got into the holiday action by asking questions coupled with cute relevant images on their Instagram account.
41. Meet the mascot
Mascots tend to be customer favorites, especially if they’re cute and cuddly. Mascots can play a supporting role in your visual content marketing and messaging, as it does for Mailchimp. If the mascot is a real animal, share images and videos of its adventures with the company. If it is a cartoon character, short films can highlight that cuteness while also sharing information about the company. Mailchimp leverages its mascot in advertising, so much so that the mascot has become a recognizable figure no matter where it is spotted.
Optimize
Optimizing visual content for people and search engines is an often overlooked strategy, but one that can yield dividends by increasing your content’s visibility on the search engines.
42. Optimize landing pages
From graphics and banner images, to explainer videos and customer testimonial videos, visuals can make up critical parts of a landing page. The visuals are part of the message, so they should aid the comprehension of content, engage the audience and highlight key aspects of the offer. Ensuring that the images are optimized without sacrificing quality is critical, as is their optimization from an SEO perspective. So spend the time and money to do it right and A/B split test it to optimize for conversions.
43. Change your visual’s filename
According to Google, IMG00681.JPG is not quite as informative as my-new-black-poodle.jpg. Descriptive filenames are especially helpful when suitable text on the page cannot be found and the search engines use the visual’s filename instead in the search results. Sure it takes a bit of extra time to prepare and publish, but it’s worth the extra effort.
44. Watch your embed code strategy
Do you have images or infographics that your audience would like to share or even post on their own sites or blogs? Don’t use links in embed codes. (Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s Webspam Team, has publicly stated that links included within embed codes may in the future be “discounted to a degree.”) Instead, just ask for a backlink. Most site owners will include one anyway, but asking for one will serve as a reminder and help acquire a natural backlink. If you do want to include a link in the embed code, make sure to add a rel=”nofollow” attribute to the link tag.
45. Add a text transcript of visuals
Search engines cannot crawl text embedded in an image, or any rich media content for that matter. Search engines use textual data on the page to get some idea of what the page is about. So to allow search engines to better analyze what the page is about, place a transcript of your visual content on the page.
46. Use search data to position your visual content
Optimizing your visual content for SEO can be as hard as coming up with ideas for your visual content. A good place to start finding ideas is Google’s Adwords Keyword tool. It can give you insights into what topics people are interested in and help you find new ideas of visual content creation. You’ll also have a keyword to optimize the content for.
Increase Reach and Visibility
Using and placing appropriate visual content that reinforces your brand message or brand offer doesn’t just have to remain on a sales page or a social media post. The following locations and content types could increase your conversion rate by as much as 51%.
47. Make use of background space
Your Twitter background also provides space for promotions and advertising. Consider switching the background image to promote seasonal offerings, promote contests, introduce new products or just show off some fun new visual content that keeps with the theme of your business.
48. Make use of cover images
Cover images create first impressions on social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest. So make sure your cover image is clear and conveys your business message. Consider having a few cover images that you can change with various seasons or occasions that are relevant to your business.
49. Make use of feature boxes
A feature box is a box that runs across the top of a blog’s content or on a home page and is used to highlight a particular message or call to action. Quite often, it is used to encourage email sign-ups to a free offer. A visual image of what is being offered is a great way to get your readers’ attention and increase your chances of getting an email subscription. DIY Themes claims to have had a 51.7% increase in subscription rates with the addition of a feature box with a visual image of what subscribers can get.
50. Design your call to action
A call to action (CTA) is one the most important elements of lead generation and sales, irrespective of the platform being used. Making them prominent so they stand out, are clearly recognized and fully understood are basic requirements for any call to action to work. Consider this example from Mozilla.
51. Cross promote
Using visual media on any one platform alone would be a mistake in the long term. While the bulk of your engagement and success may occur on one platform, you can integrate your marketing efforts across platforms. For example, Bondi Harvest, whose main channel is YouTube, leverages Instagram. They host a weekly cooking show on YouTube featuring local produce around Bondi Beach, Australia. On Instagram, they post beautiful pictures of their cooking show as well as pictures in and around Bondi Beach.
They use the captions on their Instagram photos to generate interest and direct their followers to their YouTube channel for more information and ideas. So use your different social media profiles to support each other and remind viewers that you offer additional content and value across the web.
52. Understand which visual content types drive +1s and comments, vs. shares
According to a study by the University of Trento, Italy, images containing a face were more likely to get +1s and comments rather than shares. To get shares, try memes, animated gifs, quotes, and images of pets, animals and even food. The quality of the content is what truly drives ongoing sharing. In other words, to mold brand reputation, design is important, but text-based content that is valuable and relevant matters too.
53. Make images on blogs shareable
Using images in your blog posts is great, but the best way to get your audience to share them is to make sharing easy for them. Using plugins like Markerly, or using the Pin button, allows your readers to share with their followers with just one click.
54. Share bite-sized video content
Vine and Instagram videos are great ways for a business to advertise their products in short video clips that are easy on the bandwidth, and communicate better than an image. Vine lets you post and watch six-second videos that loop.
Instagram, however, allows users to upload 15 seconds of video footage and comes with an inbuilt video editor and Instagram filters that can be used for any video. No longer is making video an expensive and time-consuming affair. You can now tell business stories in a visual yet engaging way, much like Jamie Oliver does to complement his cheeky yet personable nature.
Take It Further
Time-tested strategies that can start a conversation or add to one, with content that tells a story from a unique perspective, could work well in your overall content strategy.
55. Add animation with animated gifs
According to Joe Puglisi, Senior Creative Strategist at BuzzFeed:
“If a picture is worth a thousand words, a GIF is worth 10,000. GIFs are a mini-vehicle for storytelling, capturing emotions and communicating them in a concise way that words and pictures alone cannot.”
Animated gifs are becoming a favorite of content marketers and can be used to tell a story (more so than a photograph), show emotion, highlight a product, show before-and-after impact using a product, draw attention with movement and also animate text like the example below.
Need more convincing? Check out BuzzFeed posts; you’ll notice most make use of animated gifs. Their brevity and ability to generate curiosity creates greater engagement with visitors.
56. Create haikus
This short form of Japanese poetry can form the basis for short-form text and visual content. For example, the New York Times has a blog that only showcases Haikus that are selected from the content posted on the site by a computer algorithm.
57. Throw timely visuals into the mix
Jumping in on the action of the moment is a great way of building engagement. One of the best examples of using visual content to do this is Oreo’s response to the unexpected blackout during the Super Bowl in 2013.
The popularity of the tweet was in large part due to the image they shared, resulting in over 15,000 retweets.
58. Share celebrity moments and sightings
People are crazy about celebrities and all that they do. So what better way to engage your audience than to share pictures of celebrities interacting with your staff and brand. Whether they are visiting your offices, using your products and services, signing autographs, attending a sponsored event or even public speaking, these posts are sure to get your followers talking. Nike shared a photo of Li Na during a winning moment at the Australian Open earlier this year on Instagram.
If encountering celebrities really isn’t all that feasible, share pictures of community leaders, authority figures, and industry leaders.
Make use of cat memes
It almost seems that cats run the Internet. Why is it that cat memes and videos get shared so much? Psychological reasons aside, research proves that users are more likely to retweet memes about something they posted in the past. Woven into the very nature of memes is the fact that they are popular and populist; easy to create, copy and disseminate and very difficult to filter out. So depending on your audience and the platform you use, give people what they want. Example: LOLCats
60. Create parody videos
These videos may not offer much more than fun, but they are a great way to show another side to your company. Yet be sure to test the video out with trusted audiences so that the video doesn’t go viral for the wrong reasons. Present a lighter side to your company, whether it be through re-enacting a popular music video, writing your own skits, or presenting your own take on an old favorite or on issues that are relevant to your audience. This Generic Brand Video is an example.
61. Create a Collage
Have too many great images to choose from? Consider creating a collage. It can engage your audience as well as communicate a number of brand messages at the same time. However, a collage may not work well on all platforms, so think about what platforms the collage would be well received by your audience.
62. Add text to images
Get more mileage out of photos or images that you share on social media sites by adding text to your images. Text helps get your message across to your audience a lot quicker, and these enhanced images are more likely to be shared by your audience on social media platforms.
63. Use kinetic typography
This form of visual media is essentially multi-media stories that allow creators to accompany the text with music and images. This hybrid form of text and video content is the perfect medium for explaining facts and communicating important statistics. They can be used to create curiosity, and they can be used for educational as well as promotional purposes. In the example below, David Shiyang Lu provides his take on Ira Glass (producer and host of This American Life) — his talk on YouTube.
64. Get a close-up for a different perspective
Sometimes extreme close-ups are required to show your audience what they may have missed with a regular photo. These close-ups can be quite dramatic and can capture and hold your audience’s attention.
65. Remix existing content
Take a look at your blog analytics. If you have a post that has been doing well over time, promote it again. You can pick one key takeaway and turn it into a meme or infographic to share on social media. Consider remixing old or long content into several snack-able bit-sized pieces that can be easily shared.
Create your own visual content marketing
I would be lying if I said that producing great visual content marketing is easy, or that there are a few shortcuts and hacks that enable you to produce visual media in your sleep.
The reality is, producing any content, whether visual or not, is hard work. No, it’s not as complex as rocket science, building skyscrapers or curing cancer, but it does take time, resources, energy and persistence. In this article, we cover the latest visual content marketing statistics that can help inform your strategy.
If you are worrying right now about the lack of visual content or whether your visual content sucks, that’s a good sign. If you are worrying about it at two in the morning, that’s even better.
Achieving significance through visual content is no different to any other form of content creation. You need to work like crazy, spending the time to craft and breathe life into it and then work to make sure that the life you have given it becomes something beautiful.
It means creating visual content every week instead of once in a blue moon.
Do that and you’ll always have an audience on the web. People will seek you and your content, and you’ll always be able to stand out.
So answer this – What are you going to do with these visual marketing content strategies?
You now have a lot to take in and implement. If you are feeling overwhelmed by the possibilities available to you, pick one or two that interests you the most and work on incorporating them into your content strategy. When you are comfortable with those, try adding another strategy to your repertoire.
Let me know in the comments below of one thing that you will do today to use, grow, or restart visual content in your overall content marketing.
#ContentCatchup: Visual Content for Social Ads, Ranking Brands by Love, More
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