Simple Tips to Create Engaging Visual Content for your Brand

Visual vs. Textual Content:

We all know the sharing of visual content is far more impactful than the sharing of textual content. We only have to look at a few statistics to validate this fact.

• It is estimated that 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual, with visuals being processed by the brain 60,000 times faster than text.
• Photos and videos yield more likes, comments and shares than plain text content on Facebook.
• There are now a staggering 600 million Instagram users, with an average of 200 million stories shared each day.

Visual sharing is being taken to another level with the exponential growth in popularity of video content. The following statistics illustrate this fact.

• Almost 90% of all web traffic is video based.
• Marketers using video content in email campaigns reported increased click-through rates.
• An astonishing 5 billion videos are viewed on YouTube each day.

With the introduction and persistent growth of solely visually based social media sharing sites and applications, such as Pinterest and Instagram, it is now more than ever before vitally important to engage with your consumers in the medium in which they are conversing with one another.

The Benefits to your Brand of Sharing Visual Content:

Visual content is now fundamentally important to social marketing tactics. This is simply and explicitly illustrated with the growing consumer interest in images and videos, supported with the above statistics.

In taking all previously outlined statistics and market trends, it would be foolish not to begin engaging and reaching out to your consumers using content and mediums with which they are familiar and comfortable with in engaging.

• Engagement:

Users will engage more readily with visual content, through commenting, liking and sharing. Optimally this increased engagement will drive the reach of your message and brand through the roof.

• Action:

Studies have highlighted that consumers are more likely to take action in response to visual content rather than textual, optimally driving physical interaction with your consumers and sales.  

4 Tips for Creating Visual Content:

1. Relevance

Through the use of relevant images, your consumers will be able to resonate with your brand. Although the sharing of kittens and puppies is extremely popular and will encourage users to share, this will not deeply engage consumers with your brand and brand messages.

2. Stand out from the crowd

Consumers are overwhelmed by content each day, receiving an unbelievable amount of stimuli each minute. It is important to make sure your content can be seen through this clutter.  The use of visuals will help optimise your content. Ensure your content makes consumers stop and take note. The more engaged they are with the content, the further the optimisation socially.

3. User generated content

If you are lacking in your own content, an easy way of increasing the amount of visual content shared across your social platforms, is encouraging your consumers to submit and share their own photos. This could be incentivised through the running of a competition involving the posting of a photo or video as an entry mechanism.

4. Infographics

If you need to share a large amount of information or data, but you don’t want your customers scrolling through endless lumps of text and professional jargon, why not create an infographic. This visually stimulating and appealing method of delivering information and data is becoming increasingly popular, with an exponential growth in the sharing of infographics online.

For more information on how to create engaging visual content for your brand to help drive sales and interest in your products and services, or if you have any questions contact Social Media Brand Experts (SMBE) on query@socialmediabrandexperts.com, +44 (0) 2031 029 690 or through Twitter @SMB_Experts.