There’s no denying the power of visual content.
From Facebook to Twitter, Pinterest and Google Plus – visual marketing has taken the online world by storm.
And it’s no surprise.
In a recent HubSpot survey, 65% of respondents admitted to being visual learners.
Add that data to a study by Wyzowl where respondents said they remember 80% of what they see, but only 20% of what they read, and it becomes clear that visual marketing is critical to keeping you:
- Top of mind
- Relevant, and
- Memorable
But knowing how to incorporate visual marketing is still a challenge for most businesses.
Many wonder where to begin and how to incorporate visual marketing best practices.
To answer those questions and get a better look at the effect of visual marketing on social media, HubSpot teamed up with Market Domination Media to create the Infographic below.
The data tells an eye-opening story and a cautionary tale.
If you’re not incorporating visual content into your online marketing, you’re missing out on significant benefits.
Add it to your marketing mix now, or watch your competition zoom by.
5 Steps to Get MASSIVE Engagement With Your Visual Content
Visual Content Gets More Social Shares
- 43% of social media users share pictures
- Having at least one image in your post leads to more Facebook shares
- The average Facebook shares with at least one image: 64.9%
- The average Facebook shares with no image: 28%
- Having at least one image in your post leads to more Twitter shares
- The average Twitter shares with an mage: 20.36%
- The average Twitter shares with no image: 9.67%
- Infographics are linked and shared 3x more than other content
Just look to Nike as an example of one brand benefiting from the early adoption of visual marketing.
Their clever use of visual content, especially on Instagram, has created a flurry of activity.
Take a look at their profile and you’ll see how they’ve woven brand imaging, messaging and hashtags into a very effective strategy.
3 Keys to Strong Visual Content
Consistent Color Range
Did you know that color impression can account for 60% of the acceptance or rejection of a product or service?
That’s huge!
While there are many factors that affect how and why consumers buy, a recent Kissmetrics study shows that color plays a major role in the decision making process.
Understanding the psychology behind each color will help you get inside the head of your consumer and choose a color that:
- Best represents your company social media promotional strategy
- The feelings you want to impart, and
- The action you want them to take
Font that Match Your Message
Fonts play a critical role in telling your brand story. HubSpot found that using 3 font styles makes it easier to read content.
I would increase that to 4 and find those that feel like you. When determining font, ask yourself these questions:
- Is my company fun, silly, entertaining, serious, inquisitive, playful, or straightforward?
- Is my content fun, silly, entertaining, serious, inquisitive, playful, or straightforward?
Your essence is wrapped up into your branding. The fonts you choose play a big role in helping align who you are with the perception people receive.
Use of Social Media Templates
Each social network has it’s own style, templates and design.
Structure your content according to best practices for each site.
Look to this guide of social media image sizes to create branded cover photos and graphics specific to each social network. (see the full list below)
How to Create A Great Piece of Visual Content
In an online world where the average website visitor spends less than 15 seconds actively reading page content, you better know how to stand out.
This is where visual content comes in.
Convinced you need to get on the visual content bandwagon? Here’s how!
Identify an Awesome Topic
Want to gain audience attention? Create visual content that satisfies their interest and needs while highlighting your expertise.
- Source topic ideas from:
- Keyword research
- Internal sales and support
- Popular industry blogs
- Your own data/research
- Experts
Select the Best Content Type
Find the best type of content to engage your audience. Consider:
Infographics
- There are three types: static, motion, interactive
- Consumers are 30 times more likely to read an Infographic than the text-based piece of content.
- Generate more traffic than traditional blog posts.
- Each Infographic QuickSprout published generated 41,487 website visitors
Images
- Users on Twitter tweet images 361% more than they tweet videos
- Images tend to get 128% more retweets than videos
Video
- Videos increase the likelihood of your visitors purchasing your product or service by 64%.
- Videos provide an increase in your visitors’ understanding of your product or service by 74%
- Video on landing pages increase conversions by 86%
Create an Attractive and Effective Design
Pay close attention to each of the elements below. They play a major role in how your visual content is consumed and shared.
- Typography
- Color
- Negative space
- Illustrations
- Icons
- Accuracy
- Layout
- Comparison
- Callouts
- Simplicity
Identify Potential Content Promoters
Who would love to support you in sharing and promoting your content? Find your tribe!
Look to your:
- Existing social media audience
- Business partners and vendors
- Influencers
- Related industry sites and blogs
- Customers
Create a Promotional Strategy
If you’ve spent any amount of time on my blog, you know what a huge advocate I am of an integrated promotional strategy.
And with good reason.
56% of marketers are flying by the seat of their pants without any content plan in place. No plan = imminent failure.
Strategy ideas:
- Share with your audience
- Branding (partner and co-brand)
- Outreach (build relationships with media outlets)
- Paid syndication (Outbrain and Taboola)
- Guest Posts
Want a few additional ideas? Take a look at my 25 Ways to Promote Your Latest Blog Post.
Final Thoughts
Creating content isn’t enough, you must incorporate visuals into your marketing to truly make an impact.
No matter where (or how) you choose to add visual content, now is the time.
Where do you see the advantage within your business?
I’d love to hear what’s working (and what’s not) for you in the comments below.
PIN and Share the Infographic
Hello
Short and sweet: I wanted to say a quick “thank you” for this great informative site. Specifically the size for image on each social media. Sincerely David
Hi Rebekah,
Great post. Makes sense to use visuals in everything we do.
The human mind thinks in pictures, therefore, when we use them to promote, the reader is getting it on a subconscious level as well as on a conscious level.
Think about when you were just learning to talk. Your mom or dad showed you a cup and would tell you what it is. Then, as you got older and learned the letters in the alphabet (each being a symbol or picture) you were taught how to spell cup. We see the item first, then learn what it is through oral and then the written word.
We might as well promote to people based on how their minds function. It’s only logical.
Thanks for this informative post.
Have a great day…..Chris
Very interesting, informative article and really cool infographic! Visual content is extremely important in brand communication and ignoring this fact is just reckless.
Thanks for sharing your thoughs!
Great article! Easily digestible visuals are such an important part of engaging readers online. I love the emotion color guide!
You and me both Lynan. Color theory is so fascinating. How it emotionally impacts our decisions is incredibly useful as a marketer.
Hi Rebekah,
Hows it going? Been a while since we last chatted! sorry about that! Are you still enjoying that app I made for your page?
I just started up a new blog on a new domain (Well actually it’s an old one just not used it in an age) as I wanted to separate my web dev business from my blogging activities! So personal branding for it is a must!
I use Adobe Fireworks and sometimes Photoshop as I got loads of control over what I create! I love the fact that you talk a lot about colour being an emotional guide! I like to use the colour code #FF4300 as that’s a nice orange much like you have here on your site! I use that a lot; in fact I am about to change up all the link colours on my new blog from green to that orange!
Thanks for an awesome post and infographic. sharing from Brum.
– Phillip Dews
Rebekah,
This is by far one of the most thorough and insightful infographics related to content engagement. Having the right colors and visuals is paramount to learning new information. I don’t know many folks who don’t learn the most from a visual perspective.
It’s amazing how many aspects play into a solid content marketing strategy Julie. And visuals have quickly become a key piece as we see the added benefit of connecting our content with readers through various mediums. Infographics, video — it’s all opportunity sitting right at our fingertips!
Great post, Rebekah!
Visual content is not my strong suit, so I try to pick up pointers wherever I can.
I think you gave a lot of compelling reasons here to start creating some of my own infographics… well, getting it done at least.
After I gather the data, is there a service you would recommend using to create the infographic itself? Or am I better to hire a graphic designer?
Hi Brent! That’s going to depend on a couple of things. Do you have the time to create your own, do you enjoy creating them or would you be better off giving that away and focusing on a higher and better use of your time?
I enjoy creating my own graphics, but I also know how important it is to delegate certain tasks that free me up to focus on critical aspects of my business.
If you want to do it yourself, I’d suggest two tools –
Good Labs: http://labs.good.is/
PiktoChart: http://piktochart.com/
They’re both easy to use and don’t have a huge learning curve. Either way, have fun with them!
Thanks for those links, Rebekah! Much appreciated! Will check them out.
Hey Rebekah,
Surely visual content is the key to a speedy growing audience.
For twitter, I make sure to include an image with most updates – that does takes away a few characters from the message, but is worth it.
From personal experience, infographics does help in getting a lot of attention on the social media and mentions. However the introduction to the infographic is important too and affects a lot in the outcomes. Another thing that I notice about the infographics are that one has to promote it heavily which includes a lot of outreach – expecting things to happen on it’s own does not help.
We have tried videos and got decent results from Youtube but like all other things quality does matters. Good quality videos costs a ton, fiverr quality is cheap but so is the video itself at most times.
Thank you for compiling this article and sharing the infographic,
Great points Shobha. Visuals are important, but just as with your content – it’s all about the quality.
It’s worth the investment of time and money to create graphics and videos that positively represent your company and align with your brand style and voice. As you said, you often get what you pay for with a service like Fiverr.
Really great article and very good information, i’ll share it wit all of my team members ??
Thanks for sharing and stopping by Sadat!
Love the tips Rebekah. One of the biggest pains in the butt for me is the different sizes of images. Templates make a whole lot of difference. It saves a ton of time for me and tools like ShareasImage and canva does it well.
Dennis, I agree with you and that’s the beauty of the templates. They makes the process fast, easy and painless and the biggest plus point is that they are perfect for the branding of the business.
Templates are another great idea Hamayon. It makes it easier to batch images that way. Create multiple images at once to simplify sharing.
Hi Dennis! I haven’t tried Shared as Image, but really like Optimal. It converts one image to the perfect size for each social network. It’s a quick and easy solution to making multiple sizes. http://optimal.pics/
Hi Rebekah,
Thanks for such an informative article. I think most are aware that visual content attracts more notice and it is good to be reminded of this from time to time. I have to say I have been quite slack in regards to the visuals, so hopefully this will help snap me in to action.
Thanks again.
Michael
Start slow Michael and add them to a tweet or post here and there. Monitor how they do and pay attention to your engagement. I guarantee you’ll see a boost!
Excellent infographic Rebekah!
It’s a good one, isn’t it Neil? Lots of data and information packed into it!
Hey Rebekah,
These are some great stats. I thought that videos would get tweeted more than images. Boy a I was wrong by a long shot. But images do make a big difference on whether you content gets read and shared, versus the ones that don’t. I actually have seen a rise in traffic after i started change my sub heading colors. For the sub headings, I’ve been using a combination of red and orange for the past couple of months, and just in the month of May, my blog has been getting a lot more visitors, and also more opt ins. Although I’ve been doing pretty much the same thing for about a year, making this one change made a difference.
Thanks for sharing these stats! Have a good one!
Interesting you say that Sherman about the red and orange- I was just thinking about how much I love the orange on Rebekah’s site!
Hey Lindsay, come to think about it, I’ve never seen too many blogs with dark colors that attract a lot of engagement. I’ve always came across the ones with the bright colors with the most engagement.
Color theory is so fascinating Sherman. I love to hear the success you’ve had – especially with the color orange! It’s my favorite color and has always left me feeling happy, warm and excited. Those are all feelings I hope to convey through my site. Glad to hear you’re receiving great results from making a few simple tweaks to your graphics!
Thank you Lindsay! I had a lot of people tell me to stay away from the color orange. They claimed it was off-putting. Boy were they wrong. It’s been one of the best branding decisions I’ve ever made.
I love that you love it!
Hi Rebecca,
Very informative article, creating infographic is a great idea but my audience are mainly time deprived new mommies who don’t have time to go through a lengthy infographic, maybe attractive images might work, will try to implement these strategies..hope they get my readers attention.
Thank you ?
Time deprived mommies – something many of us can relate to Hemapriya. I would try attractive images that speak to their pain/need and draw them into your content. See how those work and branch out into Infographics down the road.
Rebekah,
This was such a great post not just for new business owners that are clueless to visual marketing but also to veteran business owners who just haven’t made the leap to getting their visual marketing strategy in place. As you said, we’re visual beings! I 2nd what Andrea said above.
Yes we are Reese. No matter where you look, we’re eating visuals up. It’s a huge missed opportunity not to get onboard and incorporate them in one way, shape or form.
It’s tragic to me how many peeps, even some really big social media brands, STILL don’t use visual content in their articles. It’s borderline maddening…I mean, if you claim to be on the pulse of what’s happening from a social standpoint it’s your duty to practice what you preach. What’s on the pulse is visuals…get with it!
Fantastic resource full of ideas to dominate this visual world we live in. Kudos, Rebekah!
It really is Andrea. And not only tragic, but shocking. How can you not see the enormous opportunity in visuals at this point?
Thank goodness there’s you leading the charge and showing these companies how to get on board and do it the right way! 🙂
Rebekah,
Thank you for outlining so many key factors that play a huge role in today’s Social Media!
I’ve learned a lot!
Thx again!
Hi Anna! I love seeing your use of visuals all over social media. You have done an excellent job positioning your brand through beautiful visuals.
Hi Rebekah,
Great article as usual and love the fact that you used Nike’s post! Great idea indeed.
I recently created several infographic and loving it big time. Tons of fun especially when you use Canva!
Keep it up — just shared this on Triberr 🙂
Hi Reginald! Isn’t Nike a great example? I love their use of visuals on Instagram. Fun to watch all that they’re doing and the engagement they receive.
Infographics are amazing in their ability to drive traffic and boost interaction. Especially when you pair them with one of my faves – Pinterest. 🙂