How Upworthy Won the Internet and You Can, Too [INFOGRAPHIC]

If you're in the content marketing space, you have undoubtedly drooled at the epic rise to fame of Upworthy. The little site that could – Upworthy - has mushroomed to be the fastest growing site in the history of the Internet.

Question is, how? Having talented content marketers that have been successful in their own right helped. Proper financial backing helped. But what really helped the site “go viral?”

Among other things, how they couch the content with clever titles. Can titles do all that? Nope, but it gets you off to a good start when you take a classic title and make it a more emotional two-line title.

Something you might not have realized – Upworthy makes at least 25 titles for everything that goes to print. When was the last time you worked on that kind of an opener for your own content?

The following infographic, courtesy of Marketo usefully illustrates how Upworthy's tactics have put them on top - and how you can use these tactics for your own brand's voice. Do you already do some of these tactics? Let us know in the comments.

How to Create Visual Social Media Content

Do you use images to boost engagement?

Are you looking for tools to create better visual content?

Creating compelling visuals for your social media marketing can be challenging.

In this article you’ll find just about every resource you need to create visual stories on all of the major social platforms.

The Big Picture

Visual content has become extremely important to marketers’ social tactics. That’s because of a growing consumer interest in images as evidenced by popular sites like Pinterest, Instagram and Snapchat.

People connect more emotionally with images than they do with text. In fact, customers are more likely to take action or make a decision when prompted with an image.

That means brands using visual social media content to drive a stronger message to their audience will naturally cut through the noise and rise to the top.

Here’s a lot of important stuff you need to know about visual content for social media marketing.

#1: Making the Case for Visual Content in Social Media

The use of visual content in social media has exploded, partly because it’s so easy to create and share images and video with a smartphone, and partly because images are more persuasive than text content. Here are some important reasons why you should include visual stories in your social marketing tactics.

Why Use Visual Content in Social Media Marketing?: 

Over at the Marketing Tech Blog, Douglas Karr breaks it down for us with an infographic (of course) to explain why any social marketing should be dominated by visuals.

Read up on why your social media should have a visual focus over on the Marketing Tech Blog.

Visual Social Media: How Images Improve Your Social Media Marketing: 
In this Social Media Examiner podcast, visual marketing expert Donna Moritz explains the importance of visual content, and how you can use images to take your marketing to a whole new level.

The Facts and Figures on the Power of Visual Content Marketing: 
 Jeff Bullas takes it home with an explanation of why pictures have become so popular and why using them is smart. He reinforces his point with another amazing infographic that proves how powerful visual content is!

Jeff Bullas shares the facts on using visual content in your marketing.

#2: Exploring Types of Visual Content

There are different types of visual content, ranging from images and video to infographics and SlideShare presentations. Some are easy and cheap to create, while some might require a professional designer. For small businesses looking to get big results on a small budget, check out Fiverr for great deals. Here are some ideas for visual content that will help make your message more engaging.

Four Types of Visual Content That Cut Through the Noise: Ekaterina Walter (author of The Power of Visual Storytelling) shares four types of visual content that your brand should definitely be using to engage communities and customers.

Find 4 ways to use different visual media on Ekaterina Walter’s blog.

28 Ideas for Engaging Visual Content to Post on Social Media: Jennifer Kardell gives us 28 more ways (some simple, some outright genius) to use visual social media content to connect with buyers.

30 Compelling Examples of Visual Storytelling on the Web: For some great examples of visual content, check out these amazing illustrations shared by Jessica Moon on Digital Telepathy. They’ll definitely inspire your visual creativity.

Digital Telepathy explores 30 examples of visual content.

#3: Creating Visual Content

Creating powerful visual content can be challenging. Fortunately, with a little work and some tips from these articles, you should have no problem at all. Check them out:

26 Ways to Use Visuals in Your Social Media Marketing:
Strategy, strategy, strategy—that’s where it all starts. Social Media Examiner’s very own Debbie Hemley is a genius with her complete A–Z guide for getting started with a visual strategy. This might seem like a lot to digest, but once you have it down, you can execute these ideas across multiple social channels (including your blog).

10 Free Design Tools for Creating Stunning Visual Content:
HubSpot’s Ginny Soskey will blow your mind with these free tools for creating stunning visual content. Everything from infographic templates to tools for sprucing up images, it’s all in there.

HubSpot shows you 10 free tools to create visual content.

How to Make Visual Content for Social Media in 5 Minutes: Here’s yet another great post by Ginny! This time she shows you how to customize an image for social media in just five minutes! Don’t miss it.

5 Tips to Make Your Visual Content Pop: Fandom Marketing covers five secrets for designing images for the social web. These tips will not only make your visuals look great, they’ll grab your readers’ attention as well!

The 5 tips in Fandom’s deck will help you design visual content.

#4: Getting Your Visual Content Shared

Creating compelling visual content is only part of the equation. Now your audience needs to know it exists! Make sure you distribute your visual content far and wide via social media and encourage others to pass it along to their friends and peers. Here are some tips for sharing your images.

4 Tips for Making Visual Content Go Viral—and Benefit Your Business:
  Dan Tynski over at Content Marketing Institute shares a study that takes a look at the viral potential of visual content on Google+. Although the research only looked at Google+, the implications are intriguing and can be applied to other social platforms as well. This is fascinating stuff.

There’s an App for That: How to Get the Most From Your Visual Content:
In this post from Social Media Today, Erika LaChance shows us how to use some of the most popular apps (Instagram, Vine, Snapchat and Pinterest) to distribute your visual content and increase engagement with your brand.

Social Media Today has a list of apps to help you distribute your visual content.

#5: Learning the Rules for Using Online Images

If you’ve been blogging for a while, you know the risk of uploading and using Google images on your site. It’s really important to make sure you’re playing by the rules and getting permission for any online images you use. Here are some tips about the right (and wrong) ways to use online images.

Copyright, Fair Use and How it Works for Online Images: Sara Hawkins (a lawyer and blogger) cautions us about the right and wrong way to use online images. If you use Flickr, Photobucket and similar resources to get your blog images, make sure you have permission and give credit to the original creator of that work.

10 Do’s and Don’ts for Using Stock Photos in Your Marketing [SlideShare]: HubSpot’s Ginny Soskey shares a brilliant SlideShare presentation by Brittany Leaning that makes boring stock photos fun. In fact, her best tip is “Don’t assume all stock photos are cheesy.” Take a look and see what she means.

Make sure to follow these easy do’s and dont’s from HubSpot.

#6: Using Instagram

With Instagram, marketers have a potential audience of 100 million active users who take over 40 million photos per day. Take a look at these brilliant ideas for using Instagram to reach a broader customer base.

10 Creative Ways to Use Instagram for Business: Vanessa Au gives away some great content ideas for getting extra visibility for your brand images with the Instagram community! Very cool post.

16 Creative Uses of Instagram Video: In just 15 seconds, you can create visually compelling videos to share on Instagram. Check out these fun (and sometimes funny) videos from brands that clearly know how to engage. Max Knoblauch will have you rolling on the floor laughing and learning at the same time.

Mashable lists a number of examples to help you create your own visual content.

#7: Pinning on Pinterest

Pinterest has become a household name. It’s the fastest-growing social network with over 70 million users. But perhaps the most attractive feature about this platform is the massive web traffic referrals (66.5%) it generates for marketers. Here are some ways you can leverage Pinterest for your business.

21 Unexpected Ways Brands Can Use Pinterest: Courtney Seiter at Marketing Land is all about using Pinterest in interesting ways. Some of these you already know, but there are some well-kept secrets in there too!

Use these examples from Marketing Land to spur your visual content creativity.

10 Creative Ways to Use Pinterest for Marketing: Since direct sales content is not allowed on Pinterest, Susan Gunelius of Sprout Social talks about 10 ways to do indirect marketing.

#8: Leveraging Flickr

Flickr is probably the best place to put pictures on the Internet these days. Flickr users upload and share 1.4 million photos a day and their pictures don’t slide down to the bottom of their friends’ news feeds. Here are some tips for leveraging Flickr.

5 Tips to Increase Your Visibility With Flickr: Ann Smarty addresses some common misconceptions about Flickr and how to use the platform to raise overall visibility for your brand.

Ann Smarty shares visual content visibility tips for Flickr on Jeff Bullas’s blog.

More Than Photo Sharing: 5 Unique Uses for Flickr: Great post from Nancy Messieh that shows how to go beyond photo sharing to give your audience a more compelling visual experience.

Find visual content examples on MakeUseOf.

#9: Capitalizing on Visual Content

Visual content was already important in 2013. Going forward, an even greater emphasis will be placed on images and video as larger numbers of your target audience use mobile platforms and social channels. Here are some resources to inform your visual content strategy.

Visual Content Marketing: Capture and Engage Your Audience: If you have 58 minutes to sit in on this webinar, it’ll be well worth your time. In this presentation, the good folks at Marketo demonstrate how to leverage visual content to create a successful social media campaign.

6 Ways Social Media Marketers Should Capitalize on the Visual Content Revolution: And if you don’t have 58 minutes, check out how Pamela Vaughan breaks it down into six easy steps in this infographic.

This infographic on HubSpot shares some key campaign points.

Well, there you have it!

Pictures are in, text is out. With these tips from the experts, it should be no problem to create and implement visual stories into your social media marketing.

What do you think? What other visual content resources do you have? Link them up for us in the comment box below!

How I Increased My Twitter Followers By 30% in 6 Months

6 months ago I had 1,238 followers less than I have now. That's a 30% increase!

I'm not telling you this to brag, but rather to help you do the same. In this post, I'm going to share with you exactly what I've done differently and how you can use my same strategy to increase your Twitter followers.

A few things you should know first:

1. I did not buy any followers. 
I am very against the practice of paying for fans. If you want real followers who actually care about you, your message, and your business, then you should earn them -- not buy them.

2. I didn't pay for any advertising to my Twitter handle. 
I did pay $20 for a promoted tweet which was spent in about 5 minutes and brought me a few retweets but no new followers.

3. I didn't follow-unfollow. 
In other words, I didn't follow a bunch of people and unfollow those who didn't follow me back. This is another practice I think is ridiculous and quite selfish.

Yes, folks my strategy is 100% all-natural. It takes time, but once it takes hold you'll be happy that you actually worked for it rather than cutting corners.

Here are the 6 things I did to grow my Twitter following by 30% in 6 months:

How To Increase Your Twitter Followers Naturally & Organically

1. Blog On A Regular Basis 
This by far is the most important thing you can do to increase your Twitter followers. By now, you should know that when it comes to blogging, I mean business. And rightfully so, because it is my business. At Convert With Content, we manage social media & blogging for our clients. It is also my business as a marketer to educate clients and potential clients on why blogging for your business is a practice that can increase your social media presence, your authority, your traffic and your leads.

I'm living proof that blogging on a regular basis helps increase your Twitter followers. The reason is simple. When you blog, you have something to share on social networks and you have something for others to share on social networks. If that person has good Twitter etiquette, he or she will attach your name to it. Boom, your Twitter name just got pushed out to a new audience.

2. Tweet On A Regular Schedule 
This is the second most important thing you can do to increase your Twitter followers. Like blogging consistently, Tweeting consistently will keep your name out there, increase the likeliness of getting replied to and retweeted and increase your reach.

Social Media doesn't sleep and neither should your online presence. I automate many of my tweets to keep my profile updated. If you automate right and follow my rules (insert link to automation article) you will see the benefits of your actions. Now don't get me wrong, you can't rely on automation alone. In fact, that's poor practice. But as long as you're sharing valuable content and relevant content this strategy will work.

Because Twitter is a massive search engine, when you tweet about relevant topics to your industry, you will be found by others interested in those topics. People follow keywords and lists on Twitter. Make use of that wisely.

3. Guest Blog 
By creating a presence beyond your own website, you will be introduced to a new network and with that comes new followers. I am a regular contributor to Social Media Today, Business.com,StateOfDigital.com and other online publications. Anytime I blog for them, they share my content with my Twitter handle attached to their audience. It works.

If you're looking for opportunities to guest blog, you can find many by typing in "Guest Blog Submissions" or something similar in Google. Another way to approach the subject is to ask blogs that you follow and pitch them on a topic that suits their audience. Like all things in social media, it's about building relationships.  If you are an Entrepreneur, you should check out EFactor, it's a great network to blog on.

One thing I know for sure is if you blog regularly on your own site and you create great content other people will come knocking at your door to have you guest blog for them.

4. Include Your Twitter Handle In Your Email Signature (& Everywhere)
If you email a lot, include your Twitter handle in your email signature, on your website, within your blog, inside your Pinterest account, in your LinkedIn headline and anywhere else that's public. The easier you make it for someone to find your profile, the more followers you'll get.

5. Live Tweet & Participate In Twitter Chats 
If you attend conferences live tweet them. It's a great way to grow your following with a targeted audience and network. Participating in Twitter chats has the same effect. I participate in them at least once a month and each time I gain new connections and start to build new relationships.

Pretty simple right? You can do it! I'd love to hear what you do to grow your following.