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, videos, and other visual elements of your business. This includes your website’s or blog’s look and feel. All these visual elements are just as important when it comes to marketing your business.
Content is more than words in a blog. It includes all of the visual elements of your brand. Click To TweetYou’ve probably noticed that so many things are more visual online today than they used to be. People create photographic memes to pass around an idea or thought, and due to the advent of gorgeous sites like Pinterest, marketing is more visual than ever before. Sharing videos shows no signs of slowing down either!
Today we have Pinterest, Instagram, Foursquare, YouTube, Twitter, Periscope, Facebook and more. All social media has gone visual. I repeat, all of social media has become visual.
Blogs have become 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 Canva, Pixlr and PicMonkey.
Why You Need to Add Visual Marketing to Your Content Strategy
It fees like you have to put your face online to exist in the business world. Whether you post a professional headshot, or a picture of you hobnobbing with the movers and shakers in the online world, your face matters. Otherwise, you’re almost a non-entity. Yeah, I said that. Welcome to a new reality.
What’s more, visual marketing is not at its peak yet. If you’re not adding images and video 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. For example, if you create videos for your audience, it’s important to understand how long a video should be for your audience. You need to know 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. Your visuals should spark your audience to take action in a desired manner, whatever that means for your business. A desired action could mean buy something, comment, share or sign up for something.
Your images and words should tell a story, and invite your audience to take action. Click To TweetPeople Are Attracted to Faces
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.
Image tip: Use a face in your images that shows the eyes of a person along with your content for increased engagement. Click To TweetPeople Recall Images More Than Text
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, 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 the right visuals, but it can be done.
Now, if you’re thinking this doesn’t apply to you, or it’s too hard to come up with visuals, I have a confession to make. I love words. I seriously don’t need a picture, and I will sit and read a blog post of 2000 words with good formatting and zero images. I’m totally at ease reading with no images and no video.
But me positioning myself as an “expert” ain’t about me and my preferences. It’s about what my audience wants. And my online audience wants some pictures!
Yes I admit, it gets tricky trying to come up with visuals (outside of infographics) as a digital marketer. My industry is not one of the sexy, more glamorous niches like food, travel, clothing, or beauty. (I call them sexy and glamorous because the visuals are naturally more stunning.) It takes some serious thought on my part to figure out what kind of visuals to create. But ya know what, I still get ‘er done. I can’t make excuses in a visual world.
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.
Ciao,
Miss Kemya
How has your content evolved to keep up with our increased dependence on visual marketing?
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