Most people think of content marketing as producing text-based content, writing words and sentences to sell a product or convey an idea. While that is true, that’s not all content is. Content also consists of images, infographics, logos, and other visual elements of your business, such as your website’s or blog’s look and feel. All these visual elements matter when it comes to marketing.
You’ve probably noticed that so many things are more visual on the internet today than they used to be. People create photographic memes to pass around an idea or thought, they share pictures, and due to the advent of social media like Pinterest, marketing is more visual than ever before.
Today we have Pinterest, Instagram, Foursquare and even Twitter Pics, as well as images being shared on Facebook. All social media has gone visual. Blogs now are more visual, too, due to the easy way bloggers can add compelling graphics to blog posts. Creating visual content has never been easier due to software and apps like Pixlr.com – a popular, free and easy to use online photo editor.
If you’re not willing to share an image of yourself online, be it a professional headshot, or a picture of you hobnobbing with the movers and shakers in the online world, then you’re almost a non-entity. What’s more, visual marketing is not at its peak; it’s just getting started. If you’re not adding images to your online content, you need to start doing so now.
It’s important to understand how images draw readers to your content, and how they might repel readers too. If you create videos for your audience, it’s important to understand how long a video should be for your audience and what types of images to include to get the best results and the most action.
If you start making it a habit now to pair helpful visuals with relevant content, you’ll be ahead of the visual marketing game. You want your images and content to tell a story that sparks your audience to act in the way you want them to act -whether that is to buy something, comment, share or sign up for something.
People are attracted to images, especially of people’s faces (including their eyes). You may notice if you use an image of your own face, or a nice face that looks inviting, showing the eyes of a person along with your content will get a better reaction and more results. This is because as humans we feel more connected to real people by seeing their face. Visual marketing recognizes this need and helps connect content marketing with visual elements.
Seeing a visual of your products or some sort of visual representation of your services will help your audience remember your business better than if they only read a description. If you can capture your business in pictures, whether infographics or other types of images, you’ll automatically see bigger results in terms of actions like sharing, liking, and actually buying.
Depending on what type of business you have, you may have to really think outside the box to come up with appropriate visuals, but it can be done. No matter what type of business you have, if you give it some thought you can create a visual marketing campaign that gets big results.
