When you look on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and LinkedIn what stands out? It’s the content that has a photo, video or element of visual content attached to it. Today we’re constantly immersed in posts and conversations online, and whether it is a music video, movie, video game or photographs, people love an eye-catching piece of visual content.
Visual content can enhance in telling your story because it evokes a feeling of emotion and allows us to read into what someone is trying to communicate that much more. It allows us to take notice of something that may have been overlooked as just another post. However, there are a few things you must consider when using visual content in your marketing.
#1 Consistency
The first thing is staying consistent with the types of visual elements you use like colors, overall design feel and logo placement. This will help your target audience easily recognize your current campaigns which will help overall brand recognition.
When you are planning out your social content, let your content tell your story. Everyone loves a good story, and there is no better way to tell a story than through a good picture book. A great way to do this is to turn your blogs into breath-taking images that include a link, directing your reader back to the full blog on your company’s website. Make sure the message and the look and feel of the images stay consistent throughout the month so that readers will know that the image belongs to a series just by taking a quick glance.
Keeping your social message focused on one topic for the month, quarter, or year, depending on your goals, will help your images stand out and be instantly recognizable.
#2 Pop, lock and drop it
Make your visuals POP, LOCK that font in, and DROP IT into your saved documents.
Now that you have your visual content message planned out, it is time to focus on the design elements. You may have the luxury of sending your design off to a graphic designer or you may have to work on it yourself. Either way, here are a few tips to remember.
Make your design pop so that readers will want to know what you are putting out there. Grabbing their attention is the first and most important step, but after you have that completed the rest is easy. Your new eye-popping design will now scream to be shared across social media profiles all over the world.
Next, lock that font in because you will want to use the same font over and over every time you have new content that needs to be created. This will help your visuals stay consistent. Nothing is worse than posting a series of images from a campaign and each one looks completely different. Keeping your visual content consistent will help keep your readers attention, and on the lookout for more.
#3 Analyze
Keep an eye on what is working! Are your visuals sending users back to your website? Check your analytics on your social profiles as well as your Google analytics to make sure users are clicking on your links. Good visual content will leave the user wanting more, and in return send them back to your website.
Analyzing your click-through rate, likes, shares and comments on your posts is a great way to measure your ROI. You always want to make sure you are getting the most out of your time and money so set some time aside to check your analytics to ensure a successful campaign.
Getting Started
If you are just getting started on creating an image for your brand, you will want to seriously think about the colors that you choose to use. Color is more than just visual; there are psychological connections to color. Certain colors trigger certain emotions. You can easily find your colors with the ColorPick Eyedropper or EyeDropper chrome extensions.
To create unique images that are similar in form and theme, you can start by using online editing tools like Canva, RelayThat, and Picmonkey. These tools will help you remain consistent with your branding. When it comes to creating a font that stands out and is easily recognizable, you can use applications like Word Swag and Over App.
Now that you have your design perfected don’t forget to drop it in your saved documents so you don’t lose all of your hard work.
“These days, it takes only seconds - seconds - for a picture, a photo, to suddenly become an international headline.” - Leon Panetta
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