Photo of author

by Karl

How to Plan Your Visual Content Marketing Strategy

Home / Content Marketing / How to Plan Your Visual Content Marketing Strategy
visual content strategy

How to Plan Your Visual Content Marketing Strategy

Home / Content Marketing / How to Plan Your Visual Content Marketing Strategy
visual content strategy
Dreamgrow is reader-supported. When buying products through links on the site, we may earn a commission (at no extra cost to you).

Having a solid strategy on how to visually enhance your content will give you an edge over your competitors.

You will spend less time and get better results as you have a well-defined process.

Take a look at what platforms you need to get most out of visual content and what tools help you create your visual material.

You are putting superb text on your content, but somehow you also feel an urge for more. To get more traffic and engagement, you need to attract your reader by enhancing your content. Still worried how to enhance?

Get noticed by enchanting techniques of visual content. Images and videos have become ‘universal language’ now. Social networks are flooded by visual revolution and captivating users more than before.

How important are images for your content marketing strategies? Here are some reasons:

  • Statics say that most of the transmitted information (90%) is visual in the human brain
  • According to 3M Corporation, research says, human brain processes visuals 60,000 times faster
  • The things we see has a profound effect on us
  • Your content will get more views, likes, shares, retweets
  • On social networks, engagement rate is higher for visual content

website page visit time
55% of users who view a page spend less than 15 seconds looking at it. You have to make sure to impress your audience in less than 15 seconds!

Here is how you can plan an effective visual content marketing strategy.

1. Organize Your Goal for Visual Content

First, you need to identify:

  • Why do you want to use visual content for your marketing strategy?
  • How will visual content help you?
  • What do you want to achieve by using this visual content marketing strategy?

Possible answers may be:

  • To educate your readers
  • Increase engagement
  • Promote your brand
  • Enhance your service
  • Bring more leads

Analyze your previous marketing strategy and measure what type of content you created before and what was the impact of that marketing strategy.

Did your effort bring more views, likes, shares, profits, referrals?

To track this information you can use Google Analytics and evaluate.

2. Think About the Statistics

The survey lead by Software Advice and Adobe shows tactics for optimizing content. Take a look at it:

social optimization tacticsMost important social media optimization tactics

It is evident from this study that using images or photos are playing a vital role:

  • 65% of senior marketing executives believe that images, videos and illustrations and infographics are core to communicate their brand stories with the audience. (Source)
  • 73% of content creators give importance to create engaging content
  • 55% content creators are prioritizing visual content in 2016. (Source)

3. Give Your Readers a Visual Break

Your images are like oxygen for your readers. Let them breathe between reading paragraphs and feel to inspire read more.

To do that you can use:

  • Graphs
  • Charts
  • Customized images
  • Cartoons
  • Screenshots
  • Memes
  • Videos

Whatever visual form you like to use just add an alt tag to it. By doing it, you will make your images more accessible in case of tech issues and also for search engines. It will help improve your rankings on Google.

Make sure NOT to overwhelm with text! Founder of Social Triggers, Derek Halpern noticed a psychological effect when we read fewer character per lines beside an image, then it is:

  • Easier to read
  • Text appears smoother

visual content style

Mark your style

A large number of people don’t like to read, they scan.

Add some variation by changing font size. By adding font size variation and adding images you can make your content scannable by the audience.

It’s also important to make sure that both the image colors and the overall color scheme you use on the page speak to your audience.

So, for example, if you are talking about the benefits of sleep like Each Night is here, you want your colors to provide a soothing and calm visual appearance.

On the other hand, if you are writing about something very exciting, you might go for more vibrant and popping colors.

using colors to set the mood

4. Post High-Quality Images

Featured Images

Use a featured image at the beginning of your content. It will capture the attention of your audience and inspire visitors to stay.

Besides, you can choose style how you want to apply the image:

  • Your image can span the width of the post
  • Half width image
  • Wrapping text around the featured image

Social Media Posts

Images that you post on your social media feed are very important, as your brand's image depends on it.

On social media use your own customized photos or use the stock images. Readers like to read text combined with visuals.

An image overlay with text is getting popular day by day. When you put your text on a picture, readers likely to feel more interested.

5. Video Content

Create Short and Inspiring Videos

Statistics shows that short videos (length less than 60 seconds) get 40% more engagement on social media.

You can present the everyday problems and show how your products can offer a solution, how-to videos or Q&A videos.

Make sure your videos are inspiring and motivating your audience. For inspiration, see following videos: Apple 40 years in 40 seconds and Set a Goal.

Be Consistent
Create and use enough video to stay connected. People are always hungry for up-to-dates information. Gradually increase the number of your video to publish to get more traffic.

Consistent Visual content sharing
This YouTube channel posts their video in every week with update videos.

6. Target the Latest Trends

Create your content focusing on latest trends. It will give you more engagement, more eyes in your social platform. Just make sure you tag the relevant niche.

For example, GIFs have become widely popular. Bring some change to the way you are communicating with your audience.

With the online tools like GIPHY, GIMP, LICEcap, you can create your own GIFs fast and with little effort.

Make your readers and followers smile and feel light hearted. It will leave an effect and make the reader feel to keep in touch with you.

visual content Starbucks GIF
E.g., Starbucks has successfully implemented gifs in their content marketing

7. Infographics

If you want to grow your traffic and referral links, then try to invest in an infographic which has became very popular. From 2014 to 2015 infographics were used by B2B marketers up to 62%. It may look complicated but can deliver information efficiently with visual.

The infographic must include the right colors, fonts, and shapes to present your data. Make sure that all the info on the infographic is accurate and relevant to the topic.

Also, share your infographic on different social media platforms. This will bring more traffic to your site. For Example, take a look at this image:

Visual content marketing InfographicSource

This infographic shows you why infographics work. Put pictures and statistics on your infographic with a clear information and neat look.

Some tools to create infographic:

8. On-Site Photo Gallery

If you want to give your audience a memorable experience create an on-site photo gallery. People need to see what you offer in order to believe. It helps you to describe your service and goal. Besides, it’s useful for landing pages too.

visual content photo gallery designOn-site Photo Gallery

9. Use Social Media Platforms to Utilize on Visual Impact

Promote your visual creations on several social networks like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest.

Keep in mind that your content goes with the nature, type and meaning of your platform.

It will help when you are linking back the blog posts to get noticed by a huge number of the crowd while sharing on Facebook as an image and as a video on Twitter.

However, you have to balance between effort and time to create your desired content.

Besides, you need to know where and how often you should post content.

  • Slideshare: LinkedIn owns SlideShare, and it is used by millions of well-known brands to share their information and for communicating with customers.Make sure your slide contains your brand logo and personalized images. For businesses, it’s a lead generation tool and brand fixture too.
  • Pinterest: Pinterest helps you to be organized making a visual approach. It helps your content be visible and go viral on social media. Include image name, board name. People will interact with you by re-pinning and commenting. You can start the conversation by creating different boards relevant to your brand.
  • Facebook: An article with the image on Facebook got 64.9 times share than without pictures. 2,460,000 posts shared in this platform in every 60 seconds. Don’t make your post promotional on Facebook. Make it relevant and compelling.
  • Twitter: Think about 277,000 tweets on Twitter on every second and share your visual content or customize posts on Twitter. You even can share Slideshare links on Twitter, which can add some variety to your tweets.
  • Instagram: It passed 300 million user mark at the end of 2014, and each day, an average 70 million photos are posted and shared. To engage your audience, Instagram will help you by increasing your visibility and provide more opportunities through the social network.
  • Tumblr: It gives your brand a marked personality, looks, and voice. Tumblr gives you the freedom to distribute different types of posts.
    It’s just ideal for the visual storytelling to engage active users. You can share here GIFs, Quotes, audios, videos and so on.
  • Snapchat: It lets you get to know the real-time story with snaps! 40% of users are teenagers. It’s an addictive way of marketing among young generation. Content created by Snapchat is easy to understand, compelling and able to give your brand a unique overview.

Use Hashtags

Using hashtags on social media helps you to connect with relevant and targeted niche and helps them to find you as well. Read more about hashtag strategy.

Using HashtagsOn this picture, the brand has used hashtags to reach their targeted niche and customer.

10. Visual Content Creation Tools

Many tools can help you to create viral content. If you search, you will find these names for content creation tools as follows:

  • Canva – create images quickly
  • Be Funky – upload pictures, edit and save, no need to sign in
  • Snappa – graphic design tool that produces stunning images, able to sync social media
  • Skitch – customize image and screenshot activities
  • Haiku Deck – create presentations and start up designs online
  • Picmonkey – edit old and new photos, add texture, sticker, badge, create collages

Also, take a look at visual content scheduling tools:

  • Hootsuite – schedule and manage your posts for your social media networks
  • MavSocial – publish your visual content across all traditional social networks
  • Viraltag – share images on various social media networks
  • Pinterest – a must-have platform for your visual content
  • Vine – highlight your personality by every loop of video
  • Sendible – schedule, pull comments from various social sites and respond from one place to all

Additional Tips

  • Choose color which fit your platform and content
  • Give a professional touch by using collage photo or grid style
  • Use photo filter to make your post more recognizable (it's better if you always use the same filter)
  • Make your post colorful to trigger emotions
  • Ensure that you have strong CTA button in your post
  • Create your unique landing page

Wrapping up

Survey says we can remember 10% of what we hear, 20% of what read and 80% of what we see and do. So before you invest in your marketing rethink your ideas and spice up strategies.

Visual content is very powerful to drive your traffic. Apply techniques according to your site and niche. Get ready to meet your passionate audience!

Free Images for Blogs and Marketing (39 sites)

What to do when you need images all the time, but their marketing lifespan can be measured only in days, maybe hours? Images for Facebook posts, email newsletters, individual slides in presentations that you use only once… Paying 10 or 20 dollars per image for these adds up. So where do you get free images?

I have collected a bunch of sites that give you exactly that… free images for blogs and marketing (commercial use).

_____________________
Photo credit: Unsplash

Recomended Readings