How to Utilize Visual Content on Social Media to Maximize Marketing and Boost Audience Engagement
You must utilize visual content for your business’ social media and digital marketing campaigns to make a tremendous impact on your success rate. This includes increasing sales and fostering the audience’s loyalty to your brand. Scientific research by MIT found that the human brain only needs a tenth of a second to fully comprehend the message of an image. In contrast, reading 250 words will take around 60 seconds or longer for the reader to understand the text.
This proves that visuals are more effective in growing traffic, inviting clicks, and generating conversion, which is the reason why 80% of marketers prioritize visual assets in their social media and digital marketing campaigns.
If you want to grab your target audience’s elusive attention and boost engagement, then you must utilize photographs, memes, GIFs, infographics, or videos in your various social media content. These kinds of posts elicit more engagement with a higher number of likes, shares, and comments, as opposed to simple text updates. Here’s how to utilize visual content on social media to maximize marketing and boost audience engagement.
Use Videos and Live Streaming
Videos are a big hit on all social media platforms, so you must capitalize on them to promote your business. On YouTube alone, there are over 1.9 billion logged-in users that are monthly visitors. Because of its popularity, the popular video channel can now be navigated in 80 different languages with a local version in more than 91 countries.
In fact, YouTube is the second most searched engine next to Google, which means putting your company credentials along with your products and services on this platform will help boost your company’s reach. It is important to note that you need high-quality content to engage a ton of subscribers.
The number of followers is a big deal on Youtube, Facebook, and IG as the more you have, the more people you can reach with your company’s content, as reported by Social Media Daily. Take note that videos have a way of capturing attention immediately, which is critical as they can lose their concentration after 8 seconds if they do not find your content entertaining.
It is also crucial to tap into social media platforms that make live-streaming possible with their “live stories” function. The reason you have to make an effort to produce videos for your company is that 64% of consumers or buyers have been documented to be more likely to purchase a product online after they’ve seen reviews or advertisements on video.
Choose a Variety of Image Types and Formats
Due to the natural attraction to visuals, narrative content with visuals garners 94% more views when compared to pure text updates, making it essential to add images to your posts. You can also choose to add screenshots of your how-to videos and tutorials, so your clients can easily see how things are done.
You can also craft a graphical checklist or create an informative visual summary of your post for easier understanding and faster dissemination of information. Memes and GIFs are perfect tools for you to showcase your brand’s personality. This will give your page the edge it needs to make your site even more inviting.
Think about this, the click-through-rate of a website becomes 47% higher when they contain images. Thus, it is important to choose a wide variety of image types and formats for your content. In return, this will bring attention and of potential clients focused on your business.
Don’t forget to include pictures of your team at an event, at work on a project, or behind-the-scenes stolen shots because all of these add authenticity to your content. Utilizing various images serve your business well because studies indicate that people remember visual messages six times better than hearing or reading about the information.
So for your Tweets on Twitter, be sure to add a corresponding image because tweets with visuals garner 18% more clicks and are successfully retweeted 150% more than those without them. The primary thing to understand is that the images you choose to use must be aligned with your brand’s message, as well as your complete marketing strategy.
Optimize Your Visuals for SEO
You have to work hard in optimizing your images and videos for SEO or search engine optimization because visual search has increased during these modern times with 27% of all searches being solely for images. Over the past years, search engine technologies have improved, so there is now a better understanding of image components which lead to more reliable SEO results. It is crucial to amplify your visuals with the right keywords and descriptions.
These keywords and descriptions will ensure that both your images and videos will always be ready to come up on top of the list for any kind of visual search. Of course, as much as possible, you want to remain on top search results whether it is on Google, Yahoo, or Bing, especially since 93% of searchers never go past the first page, often using the first ten results only.
It is important to note that visual search results can drive your clients to make purchases and to increase traffic to your website. When you are working on these details, you have to include the ALT tag in the source code. This is a vital attribute that works for the indexing of your visuals. Remember, 91% of adults use search engines to find the information they need on the internet.
Observe Copyright Laws
Every visual out there is protected by copyright law. If you share something that is not yours, then you may face severe penalties because you have broken the law. This is an important criterion that is often overlooked and forgotten. Save yourself the heartache and save your company from the expensive penalties that can be levied for illegal use or illegal distribution of images.
A simple rule to abide by is if you made it, then you own all the copyrights and it is safe enough to post. As for any other images that you may choose to use, you will have credit the original owner, or better yet secure a consent form. Without the right protection, all of your marketing efforts will be in vain if you do not follow the right protocols.
An effective social media marketing and digital marketing strategy always start with having a real understanding of your target audience. They are the key stakeholders you are trying to please, so it is critical to fully comprehend their wants and needs.
This kind of understanding will ensure that all your content creation efforts are not wasted. The kinds of posts you make should resonate well with your intended market all the time.
On top of that, make sure to keep track of your sites data analytics. You have to measure the success of all your marketing efforts. You need to see which methods were successful and which weren’t, so you can drop them and stop wasting your resources.
In the same token, you have to know which methods had the most engagement, so you can craft and continue to share similar content. Visual content creation is not a one-shot deal and you always have to stay on top of your game to remain effective and to continue producing positive results.
