Visual content marketing not only helps you create fresh, unique content, but it also helps you increase engagement with your audience. For a content marketer, visual content is a great way to add personality to the content you create.
Ultimately, customers find brands with personality relatable, memorable and easy to engage with. Taking time to invest in visual content marketing builds trust in your brand over time. And clients who trust you can become lifelong clients.
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What is visual content marketing?
Visual content marketing is the strategic use of image-focused content to promote your company’s core product or service. For example, you can use infographics, videos, photos and memes to educate or entertain your audience. In time, this creative use of content helps you build engagement and trust among your audience members, who eventually become paying customers.
Why is visual content marketing such a huge deal?
Let’s be honest for a second. Would you be excited to read a blog post which was nothing but paragraphs and paragraphs of information? Or a white paper composed of nothing but pages and pages of text? No, you wouldn’t. So, why would you expect your target audience to hang onto every word of that 3,000 word blog post?
Since we are drowning in more and more information these days, our attention spans are getting shorter and shorter. The last time they checked, the average person’s attention span was 8 seconds.
As a digital marketer, these findings present a unique challenge because you need to find ways of communicating that will make the most of those 8 seconds. While sharing information about your brand is important, you need to talk to your audience in a way that will not only capture their attention but also retain it.
Visual content can help you capture attention from your target audience. In fact, people stop to look at visual content 94% more than they stop to look at text-only content. To be more specific, Tweets with images lead to 150% more shares than those without. Similarly, Facebook posts with images get 2.3 times more engagement than those without.
In summary, visual content marketing is good news for you. If you want to capture attention and increase engagement, then you need to develop good-quality visual content.
How to use visual content to grow your brand
There are tons of articles out there about the different types of visual content you can use as a content marketer. In fact, we’ve even talked about some of these types of content marketing before. We don’t want to keep singing the same song.
Instead, let’s talk about how you can creatively use your visual content to develop your brand’s personality and connect with potential clients.
1) Repurpose your content
If you need inspiration for your visual content, look no further than the text-based content you’ve already produced. Blog posts are usually a good place to start. Once you’ve already written a blog post, it’s easy to convert the information in it into visual content.
For example, you can take the points you’ve covered in a blog post and put them in a video or infographic. Your blog editorial calendar is a good place to list down all the ways you can repurpose an original blog post.
Similarly, you can transform long-form content like a white paper or eBook into a series of video tutorials.
The point here is that you don’t have to create all your visual content from scratch. Giving your evergreen content a makeover will help you to keep producing fresh, interesting content even when you’re running low on inspiration.
2) Use non-traditional types of content
Infographics and videos are a lot of fun, but they’re also very common pieces of content. In order to stand out from your competition, you should also try to use non-traditional forms of visual content.
It might seem scary to do something unconventional. Be that as it may, if you’re a bit adventurous, you can create content that goes viral simply due to how unique it is.
What non-traditional types of content can you experiment with?
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Memes/GIFs
Many content creators shy away from using memes or GIFs because they worry their content will look unprofessional. On the contrary, when used well, memes and GIFs can help you seem more down to earth and relatable. Over time, this fosters trust among your audience.
Think about this for a moment. Your target audience uses memes and GIFs to communicate on social media all the time. Since this content is relatable, using memes and GIFs will help you build a connection with both potential and current clients.
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Interactive content
As we’ve already said, we’re bombarded with content from brands clamouring for our attention every day. For this reason, another good way to stand out is to create interactive content. Interactive content creates a unique and memorable experience for your target audience.
Interactive content encourages your audience to actively engage with it instead of passively consuming it. For example, you could build interactive quizzes, landing pages, websites, and videos. This content invites people to click along and be part of the story from beginning to end.
It goes without saying that interactive content generates higher levels of engagement than static content. This is therefore one of the most powerful storytelling tools you can use for your brand.
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Visual CTAs
A good call to action is a good way to invite members of your audience to engage with you further. While most calls to action are text-based, a good way to capture someone’s eye with your call to action is by making it more visual.
For example, you could use an infographic or a button as your call to action. Or you could go one step further and design a video or GIF call to action.
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Visual emails
If you want to give your email marketing a boost, then you can use eye-catching visual content. A good place to start is by designing a professional header that reflects your brand. Additionally, you could include other elements like photos, videos and infographics.
Most people who sign up to your email marketing do so because they are interested in hearing from you. However, they will only consistently open these emails if you make it worth their while. Take time to design fun and engaging emails and you will have a good open rate and high engagement with your emails.
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Quotes/Questions
Quotes which reflect your brand values are a good source of inspiration for visual content. Similarly, questions – whether for your audience or from your audience – can help you create beautiful visuals.
Both quotes and questions can generate conversations addressing the topic you’ve raised. In other words, they are a good way to get your audience talking. Next time you want to spark a conversation on Twitter or on Facebook, try sharing an image with a quote or a question.
3) Apply consistent branding across platforms
Whether you’re creating content for your own company or for a client, it’s important to build a strong and consistent brand identity.
You can achieve this brand identity by firstly making sure you use the same voice across different platforms. Whether you’re writing a blog post or publishing a social media post, your content should sound like you.
If you’re funny in your blog posts, then you should carry the same humour to your social media platforms. If you’re suddenly serious and no-nonsense on your social media, then your audience will get confused about who you are and what you stand for. Use a consistent brand voice so that your audience can confidently say they know who your brand is and why you matter to them.
Secondly, you should be consistent about how you use branded visual elements so that you can create visual recognition. These elements include text placement, use of fonts, your brand colours and your logo.
If you can use your visual content the same way every time, then you will build a strong brand identity which your target audience can recognize easily. This is a big deal, because if your brand stands out, you will remain top of mind among potential and current clients.
4) Align all your visual elements
When you’re designing visual content, it’s important to align things like images and text, because this helps you look professional. Polished and professional visuals contribute to your social proof and make it look like you know what you’re talking about.
By producing professional visual content, you will attract an audience which trusts you to solve their problems.
5) Be authentic
It’s true that you can always recycle and share visual content from other brands. Nevertheless, you will connect better with your audience by designing authentic content of your own.
Instead of using stock photos, consider taking your own photos of your products and your work family.
Showcasing original photos of your products will help your audience trust you more.
Likewise, giving people a sneak peak of your team at work will humanize your brand. This ultimately creates a genuine sense of connection with your audience, who will feel like they know the faces behind your brand name.
If you’re using images in your content, you should fill in alt tags so that these images are optimized for SEO.
By using alt tags, you’re boosting your content in two ways. Firstly, you’re helping Google to understand what your images contain. Secondly, you’re helping low vision or blind people to understand the context of your images.
As you can see, using visual content marketing is worthwhile if you want to boost engagement with your brand and eventually boost sales of your products or services. When in doubt, remember that 60% of consumers reach out to a brand when a visual shows up in local search results.