Making Your Social Media Offerings More Visual
It is not good enough nowadays to merely present words on a page through social media. The visual concept applies to everything, including your social media marketing campaign. No matter what size business you have, the visual component will enhance it.
The effect of visuals on your readers
If you want to have a successful social media marketing campaign, visuals are absolutely necessary. However, it is important to understand that, just like other aspects of social media, you will not necessarily need to spend a great deal of money if you want to incorporate visuals into your content. You will, however, need to spend some time and effort in order to make visuals work for your business. Your visuals will serve many purposes, not the least of which is the idea that your campaign will be much more memorable to other people than it would have been otherwise. In order for social media to work for you, you need to put consistent, persistent time into it and you will see that you will be rewarded for your efforts. However, it is important to remember that the fruits of your labor will not happen overnight. It may take six months to a year until you start to see results.
If your online presence does not have a visual element to the extent that you would like it to have, there are several things that you can do with visuals to make that happen.
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Encompass the visual element: As you are choosing the most appropriate social media channels for your business, you should now think about choosing social media channels that are made for visuals. Your content will not work nearly as well if you choose social media channels that have been built for the written word. It is very important for you to put some serious thought into which social media channels you are going to choose and doing the research before hand will be well worth your time and effort. Your visuals should be a strong representation of your brand and what your business stands for. Some of the more popular social media channels that support visuals very effectively are Instagram and Pinterest. You may want to check them out.
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Create visual content with your brand built around it: After you have had the chance to get to know those visual social media channels that you wish to work with, you should start to post your content on those channels. There are several effective approaches that you can take where you incorporate your words and your visuals, such as asking a question in a graphic form or providing a fact about your business in a graphic form. People will find the visuals interesting, appealing, and memorable.
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Create videos full of content: Obviously, videos are in the visual world and they will absolutely be effective for your business. In addition to sharing visuals with your audience that they will remember, you are also giving your audience the opportunity to get to know you as a person and thus, they are becoming better and better acquainted with your business. Your video content will engage your audience and they will want more and more interactions with you. If you don’t have the experience with videos, do not despair. It is easier to learn than you think. You can easily teach yourself and before you know it, you will be an expert at making videos.
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Start small: Once you have mastered making videos, you may want to consider making short videos on several different aspects of your business. Several social media channels have features that will support this and make it easy for you, including YouTube and Google+. As you are working on this aspect of your business, you can get creative and experiment with all sorts of things, including lighting. The more you learn, the better quality your videos will be and the more they will be appreciated by your audience members.
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Use visuals that have the potential to go viral: When it comes to content and social media, viral is definitely a great thing. Your wish is definitely to get people to pay attention to your content and to be so engaged that they have to share it with other people they know. If you can accomplish that, you will be golden.
Conclusion
Each time you offer new content, you must be cognizant of the fact that you need to step up your game. Even if you did the most amazing job the last time around, the next time must be even better and the time after that, even better than the time before. That is the way that you will bring your business to the next level and become more and more successful. If you use visuals in your online marketing, you will be sure to increase traffic to your website. The more appealing you make your content, the more people will want to read it and to interact with you regularly.
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Via LinkedIn Groups
Group: Small Business Web
Discussion: Do You Use Visuals in Your Social Media Marketing?
As a photographer, almost everything I upload contains images – it’s the best form of advertising I’ve found! As more people click “like” or “share”, the images branch out to 1000s of more people.
By Keith Campbell GCGI Cert HE (Open)
Via LinkedIn Groups
Group: The NJ Networking Forum
Discussion: Do You Use Visuals in Your Social Media Marketing?
I create visuals for social media, including infographics. I agree, a visual highlights content and captures an audience quickly. Just look at how much content is now available in video form on news websites.
By Linda C. Modica
Via LinkedIn Groups
Group: Marketing Communication
Discussion: Do You Use Visuals in Your Social Media Marketing?
Great article. Well-placed visuals can make all the difference when it comes to digital marketing. There are many stock photos available for free to use alongside content posts. Making the content itself a visual by imposing text on images is another effective technique. Additionally, taking the time to create your own visuals (i.e. photos, artwork, graphics or infographics) shows creativity and is a great way to build up a file of visual content specific to your company.
By Justin Belmont
Via LinkedIn Groups
Group: Retail Online Integration
Discussion: Do You Use Visuals in Your Social Media Marketing?
My case is a one off but I still want to share it.
I am not a social media marketing guy. I help websites (primarily e-commerce) increase their brand engagements on social media sites using our social commerce products. One of our products shows a pop-up to all site visitors with an incentive to share/like/tweet/pin the brand on social media sites.
Here our client (the website) has the option to customize the text/image they would like to show. In this process, we’ve noticed the websites that show an image/visual pop-up (especially product related) tend to attract 48-50% more social actions than those that show a plain text based image.
This may not be in line with your article, but it does help create visually appealing campaigns than just plain text based campaigns/contests
By Varun Parekh
Via LinkedIn Groups
Group: Fans of Mashable
Discussion: Do You Use Visuals in Your Social Media Marketing?
I agree. Visuals are a must, even to the point of updating on a regular basis. No one wants to go to a site that has looked the same for too many years. The social media landscape changes so frequently that if we don’t offer new visuals it could appear that we are not up to date with the industry.
By Kristen Munson