Did you know that when people hear information, they’re only going to remember 10% of that information in three days?
But if you make that audio byte or text clip into a visual, they’ll remember 65% of the information.
That’s a massive leap.
The refrain is the same. Visual content is king. Social media algorithms favor pictures and video.
Just creating images and video isn’t enough. Often, you’ll see visual content that was created just to say that there was visual content.
Your visuals need to be a compelling component of your storyline. They need to add more than a break from the text.
Find out how in today’s post.
Highlight What They Should Remember
Remember that stat from the beginning of the post?
Maybe now that you saw the visual for it, you’ll retain it better.
If your visual content has such a massive role in making information easier to retain, you need to remember to be choosy about what you highlight with them.
When you create visuals, consider what you would want to highlight or bold to get the attention of your reader.
That is the stuff you want to base your visuals around.
These are the most compelling points of your argument. Here are some ideas you can base visual around:
- Compelling facts or statistics
- Really stellar quotes (either from the author or someone they talked to)
- Calls-to-action
- Data visualizations
Try to center your visuals around these ideas, and you’ll find that your visuals are much more effective. If your designer isn’t the one writing the content of the piece, try highlighting the most important pieces for them, and have them create the visuals from those sections.
Make Your Visuals Independent of the Whole
Another good rule of thumb is to create visuals that can stand alone from the associated blog post. This means framing great research, quotes, or statistics so that they can become their own piece of content.
If you create visual content like this, you’ll find a whole litany of places you can put these pieces of microcontent. You can tweet your blog post, but with the image instead of the post link. You can choose to include the link to the post in the tweet or not and let your visual content stand on its own.
Visual content is extra shareable and often is well-loved by social algorithms.
To make visual content that stands on its own, consider the following:
- Your brand’s name or logo as a watermark
- A visualization of the idea
- Any text that compliments or clarifies the visual
- The source (if it is not from your company)
Make your content by making the visuals for larger pieces of content shareable on their own.
Tailor Visuals to Each Channel
You should tailor your content in two ways:
- Change the styling of the visual content to fit channel – for example, on Instagram focus more on visuals, whereas on Facebook you might be able to get away with a more text-heavy image. See what works on each channel.
- Change the size of the image to fit the channel –check out this resource to find out the correct size for all your favorite social media channels.
If you are comfortable making your own graphics, this should be a breeze. But there are options for the non-designers who want to create social media content. Adobe Spark has content creation tools that allow you to use templates to create perfectly-sized images for each social media channel you use as well as a a guide to help you optimally size images for social. There’s no need to worry about your image getting cut off or cropped strangely.
Each channel has a slightly different version of your audience. Run tests to determine what types of visual content perform the best, as well as the format of said content. This will make your standalone content more effective.
Keep Color In Mind
Color is everything when it comes to visual marketing. You must consider a lot of different factors when you choose the coloring of your visual content.
These considerations include:
- Your brand colors and logo
- The colors used on your website
- The effects of different colors on human psychology
You want the colors you choose to illicit the right reaction from your audience, as well as complimenting those already used by your brand.
You can choose the style of the visual content based on the colors you choose. Are you looking for sleek and professional-looking content? Try cool corporate blues and greys.
Looking to get your readers excited? Maybe you want to try orange. If you want your readers to take an action, you can choose to make that action red.
Compelling visual content will only continue to get more important. Make sure that you aren’t phoning it in with your content by trying out the tips in this post. Let us know if you got any value from it.
Let us know what you think:
- Have you tried these techniques?
- Do you apply them regularly?
- How can you apply this post to your own visual marketing tactics?
[…] visuals – People are more likely to engage with content that is visually appealing. Creating compelling visuals is a great way to make your content more engaging. From videos to photos and graphics, having […]