It’s common knowledge by now that visual content gets you more engagement. You’ve seen the stats, and you know from your own experience that visual content grabs attention and garners lots of shares. Since more and more people are grabbing pieces of the visual content pie, you might need to step up your visual content game to keep your fans and followers, readers and potential customers engaged.
Firstly, what is visual content? It’s not just images and videos. And it’s not just on social media. Visual content can be put to effective use on multiple channels. We want to be sure that we’re looking at the complete picture when thinking about—and planning—a visual content marketing strategy.
Some major types of visual content:
- Infographics
- Memes
- Images
- Videos
- Comics
Several visual content channels:
- Website
- Blog
- Social media
- Mobile
Now that we’re seeing the big picture, here are a few other things to keep within your sights as you’re creating engaging visual content.
1. Remember your audience.
Make sure your visual content is relevant to your target audience. Pick topics they want to know more about or speak to their pain points in humorous ways. What do they care about? What problems do they need solving? Keep your content relevant—and that means timely, like in this example from Home Depot on Vine shared 3 days before the Super Bowl XLIX:
2. Match your brand.
Be consistent with your colors, font style and other design elements in every piece of visual content you put out there. If you check out Filament’s website and blog, you’ll see that every single image uses the same color scheme and font style.
3. Make the best use of each channel.
Different channels require different types of visual content. On Twitter, for example, images get more retweets than videos. Look at what works for other brands and look at your own analytics too to see which type of visual content works best on each channel for your specific audience. Maybe you’re seeing a lot of clicks when you use video in email. Or maybe you should keep your videos on Vine.
N.B. Each social media platform has different dimension requirements for digital media. Know what they are and follow them to get the best results and ensure your visual content looks great across platforms.
4. Craft compelling copy.
Whether it’s the copy in your infographic, social media posts, a caption for an image or the copy accompanying a video post, you want to be sure your copy is always on brand, that it not only informs about the visual content but also adds a little something more, as in this tweet from Grammarly:
What are a few of your favorite examples of visual content? What brands do you think do visual content well? Which type of visual content works well for your target audience on each platform? Share your tips and tricks with the Filament community below.
Still feeling unsure of how to begin? We can help develop a visual content strategy for your business to help you get more engagement. Filament is all about illuminating your business online, and visual content is a smart way to do it.
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