My guess is that at some time or another you heard the old adage, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” Now, more than ever images are more important in your marketing plan and content strategy.
Nothing against text, but we live in an increasingly visual world. Ever thought about why everything nowadays is on video? How about the creation of more technologies to capture what we see (i.e. Google Glass)?
We make decisions based on what we see. Images appeal to our emotions and much faster than reading a 1500 word page. In this age of information, people are screaming “sum it up already!”
And now it’s so much easier to get a message across with networks like Pinterest, Facebook , Instagram and Twitter, images are shared instantly form your smartphone.
Visual content including photos, videos and graphs, have been proven to grab the attention of your readers and are more likely to be shared than text alone. As a marketer, images can help you build effective and shareable selling campaigns.
A couple of good posts with visual marketing stats
- |Infographic| Visual Marketing: 5 Reasons Your Content Will Sell Better With Visuals gives some interesting stats like this one “posts with compelling visuals receive 94% more visits than those lacking visual content”.
- The Facts and Figures on the Power of Visual Content Marketing by Jeff Bullas shares some historical reasons why there is a migration towards more visual marketing citing the growth of services like Pinterest and Instagram.
And check out this slide deck on What Is Visual Marketing, a quick primer on why it works.
In my own short time on Instagram (literally just a few weeks into the year) I’ve found images to be a great way to share stories that inspire, educate, and equip others to take action without writing a lengthy book.
My followers are growing steadily as the word gets out and it’s easy to repurpose the images to other social networks like Facebook and Twitter.
Of course, you don’t want to just throw random images into your marketing mix. You need relevant and professional looking images that engage and help communicate what you are trying to say.
Here are a few tips I’m learning to incorporate for maximum sharing power
There are 3 basics of creating effective visual content:
1. The style and type of image needs to be consistent throughout your all your products. That doesn’t mean all your images have to be photographs or clip art. What I mean is you should be keeping a consistent color and font style.
Awhile back I had this really cool cartoon caricature made on Fiverr. Sure it was cute, but did it connect well with my branding? Nope, not at all when I studied the metrics. People on my blog responded better to the “real” images on my articles than they did the cartoonish image. It just wasn’t a good fit for my writing style.
2. Know your target market. Knowing who your target market is and their preferences will help you determine where and what types of images to use.
When I looked at the demographics of my audience, I could see the majority of my audience responds well on Facebook to advice, quotes and practical tips. That is why many of my images now incorporate these things when posting on the platforms I use.
3. Think outside the normal. Be creative in your use of images. Go ahead and change images, add text to photos or combine images.
You do NOT (I repeat, NOT) have to be a designer to create great images. Use sites like Picmonkey (<= by the way, click this affiliate link and you can test out their Royale plan for a day) and experiment with text, color, texture. Remember how when we were in Kindergarten and we used to play with fingerpaints?
Just try it out and if it really isn’t your thing, you can always hire a designer on sites like Fiverr to create visuals for you. I recently had sue_23 take an article I wrote and turn it into a batch of slides to use on Slideshare. She saved me tons of work and time!
In another post I’ll give you more ideas on how to use visuals.
Check out my upcoming webinar if you need ideas on where to find actual content to turn into visuals!
One more tip if you’re wondering where to use images
Full length articles need images to break up big chunks of text. Images can be used in your branding and logo. Use images in your social media channels to make it more interesting.
Use images online in your website and offline in any advertising or conferences you participate in.
My prediction is in the next few years, images are going to be a major part of buying behavior, not only because they grab attention and evoke emotions in your buyers – but because there are more and more media promoting fast consumption of information. Nothing supports this better than visual marketing.