You’ll be surprised how certain visual aspects of your blog can increase engagement. Many times a simple infographic, chart, video or images can be more than a thousand words on a piece of paper. This is why the famous quote is so popular “a picture tells a thousand wordsâ€. However, in blogging it’s NOT that simple because you need to know what works and this will depend on the type of audience you are attracting. For example, the problem with online websites is that many visitors can be from foreign countries or many visitors can simply be impatient. They are looking for a quick solution so won’t wait around to read 1,000+ words. This is why visual marketing is so important and beginning to change the way we interact with content.
My clients often ask me the question: What can visual marketing do for my brand? I directly tell them it can increase engage 2-3 times. However, you need to know some of the MOST proven methods to implement this strategy into your marketing. Let’s get started.
Creating Images
One of the MOST oldest and effective visual marketing strategies are images because they tell compress content. For example, through an image I can illustrate my point better which otherwise might have been difficult. Nowadays with social media expanding images are becoming an effective way to attract people to my content and providing them a glimpse into my content. I’ve encouraged bloggers to always use images within their content and if you skim over to any blog in your niche you’ll notice the use of images within the excerpt.
Infographics
The popularity of infographics over the past 1-2 years has been astronomical and they are popping up everywhere. You’ve also noticed when simply typing “infographic tools†into Google you’ll find more than a handful of companies providing awesome tools to easily create infographics quickly. Why are they so attractive?
First, they provide a whole solution quickly and a quick glimpse will summarize 1,000+ words on content. Secondly, they are more engaging than images because many of them can be tweaked to move and including charts, different fonts, call-to-action buttons, etc. Third, they can be shared easily because below is a code that you can paste onto your blog for your readers. All of these factors have made it very easy for people to share and engage with infographics. However, keep in mind a few things when using infographics:
- They have to be relevant
- They have to be attractive especially because many people are using them
- They have to load quickly
- They have to be easy to share and access
Using Videos
Platforms like YouTube.com and others have blown up over the years and I contribute the success to these two factors. First, the internet can handle videos more effectively than it ever did before. Secondly, videos are a great way to provide “how-to†content showing people step-by-step how to solve a problem. Videos have done very well in the past simply because they are simplistic and visitors get so much information for doing little. They don’t have to skim through 1,000+ words to find a solution and simply watch a video while following through. Next,
Platforms like YouTube.com have made marketing through them very effective. They have introduced easy to share buttons and relevant advertising portals. However, keep a few things in mind when utilizing videos:
- Make sure they answer a common problem
- Make sure they are optimized with keywords
- Make sure they are easy to share
- Always focus on quality before publishing (make it better than your competitors)
Image Quality
Once you have your images selected it definitely helps to make sure they are high quality and attractive. I am emphasizing the importance of this because you are against some serious competition online so need to be able to divert a visitor’s attention to your content. Focus on tweaking your images so they are clear and very relevant at the same time. Here are some more tips to consider when creating images for your content:
- Compress them so they load quickly
- Add quotes or even add some interesting facts
- Use colors that stand out
- Use colors which are easy on the eyes
- Make them shareable
- Test and tweak the size