Leveraging the Power of Visual Social Media

Leveraging the Power of Visual Social Media

Recently we offered up some of our own thoughts on what to expect from social media for the coming year. One of the things that we believe will continue to grow in popularity over the coming months is visual media. Why? It’s simple, really.

A study by YODA London revealed that as of 2013, there were 130 million users on Instagram and 70 million on Pinterest – numbers that are expected to continue to grow. Simply put, when it comes to making an impact and increasing your brand awareness, visual media is one of the most powerful tools available.

Let’s take a look at a few ways that you can harness the power of visual content in your own marketing strategies.

Show and Tell

Whenever you’re sharing content, whether it’s on your blog or via various social media channels, include images as an accompaniment. This is an especially powerful tool on Facebook, where images receive twice as many “likes” as text updates. Overall, content that contains compelling images receives an average of 94% more total views than content without images.

Spice it Up

Visual media comes in many shapes, sizes and forms, so don’t pigeonhole yourself into just one or two.

Pictures – Chances are you have a smartphone that takes good quality pictures. Get into the habit if using it! Snap pics of your products, your team members and anything else you think your audience would find interesting and start sharing by pinning them on Pinterest, including them in your blog posts and sharing them on all of your social media channels.

Video - YODA London’s study revealed that incorporating a video into a landing page can increase conversion rate by 86%. Create a YouTube channel and record tutorial “how to” videos to help your customers. Film and share micro-videos using a site like Vine. Be as creative as you want!

Infographics – In simplest of terms, infographics take complex data and present it in a way that is visually appealing (aka easy to scan and digest). They also happen to be quite effective. In fact, a quality infographic has a 30% greater chance of being read than plain text. What’s more, businesses who use infographics receive an average of 12% more web traffic than those who don’t. (Oh, and here’s an infographic to back these stats up.)

Quotes – Another type of imagery that has been gaining a lot of traction in social media circles is visual quotes. You can easily capture and design any quote you like from the web using free tools like Quozio. Simply highlight what you’d like to quote and optimize it by choosing the font, background color and attribution. Voila! You’ve got another visually appealing piece of content to share with your audience.

Make it Shareable

Visual media is more about engagement and connecting with your audience, rather than generating click-throughs to your blog or website (although these will likely come as an added bonus). The goal is to make your imagery useful to your audience so that they will want to share it with their own networks.

Think about it - how many funny memes or short video clips do you see shared on your own social media feeds on a daily basis? Every like and share is another chance for your brand to be seen by the masses. Increase the odds by including a sharable image or clip on every page of your website, and in every blog post.

Tap into Your Biggest Fans

Who better to back you up and promote your brand than your own loyal customers? Encourage them to share pictures or videos of themselves using your product or service by hosting a contest. The photo or clip that receives the most “likes” or “shares” is the winner. More importantly, your business wins because every one of those likes and shares means further reach for your brand. This is another reason it’s so important to have your own army of brand ambassadors in your corner.

In conclusion, while content most certainly remains one of the most powerful tools in online marketing, the way you present that content can make a significant difference in the results you achieve. 2014 is set to become the biggest year yet for visual content, so make sure you’re leveraging this highly effective mechanism in your own marketing strategy.

Looking for other ways that you can tap into your biggest fans? SendGrid came to us wondering that exact same thing. We helped them leverage their biggest fans to grow their customers by 25%. Schedule a consultation with one of our diplomats today, and we'll show you how they did it.