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!

5 Reasons to Use Pinterest in Your Internet Marketing Strategy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Most of the people today are dependent on internet. Surfing through their computer or smartphones. We are consuming an ocean of data in our everyday lives. Admit it or not, we are becoming less interested in reading long articles. We are now more on browsing images that is good in our eyes. And business see this as an opportunity to use Pinterest in their marketing strategy.

WHAT IS PINTEREST?

Pinterest is an image-based social network allowing their users to explore, manage and share images and videos from their theme-based image collections. Each user have their virtual bulletin boards where they can create their electronic pinboards for their images. It is a place for people to discover new things, browse interesting images and share the things that they love.

It has 70 millions users which is a good factor for a business to promote their products/services. Pinterest is a good way to establish a greater brand awareness and also to increase traffic to your website.

WHY USE PINTEREST?

There are a lot of reasons on why business should use Pinterest with their marketing. And here are few essential reasons to check out:

Create Brand Awareness

It is obvious that business can really use Pinterest to promote their products or services with other users. Capture your current audience interests by creating beautiful and unique images to promote your brand. Let them remember your business by browsing photos and videos in your board. You can also gain new customers by doing this thing on Pinterest. Keep in mind that when you are creating images, always put them in appropriate categories and share with the right people. You can also share your customer's photo using your brand to show your followers that they trusted your business.

Increase Website Traffic

Another positive point in using Pinterest for business is it's ability to increase traffic for your website. It is very useful in building traffic and a lot of exposure for your business because every pin that you will share has an embedded link back to its original source. When you and your followers use a photo that links to your products, then you can get a high-quality backlinks for that. Not only that, you can also improve your search engine ranking by writing a concise descriptions and using the right keywords for your brand.

Engage with Users

Pinterest is all about interesting and great images. But we can also say that it is a social network at the core. Why? Because we can also engage with users, follow, comment, like and 'repin' their great stuff. It is a good platform to establish a good relationship and interact with your customers. If your followers like or comment on your photo, don't forget to thank them. You can ask them to repin your images and return the favor by sharing interesting stuff on their board.

Connect with other Social Networks

You are not just using Pinterest alone when you are promoting your brand through this website. You also have the opportunity to integrate your Pinterest to your Facebook or Twitter accounts. Pushing your pins to your other social media accounts will help you redirect your customers in your Pinterest. Letting them explore more of your product/service images and videos. They can share those photos in their own FB/Twitter accounts if they want. That is the best way to gain more followers or more potential customers.

Conduct Market Research

You can improve your business marketing strategy with the use of Pinterest. It is not only about promotion and getting traffics for your website. It is also about improving the way you market your brand. You can conduct a market research by the use of this platform. How? By observing the result of your pins. You have to know if you are pinning the right images that people are looking. Are these images interest other people? Do they like it by repinning or commenting on your photos? Are you able to maintain your current customers and gain new followers? Are you targeting the right market for your products/services? Doing a good report about the result of using this platform for your business will help you a lot in achieving success for your business.

START USING PINTEREST FOR FREE!

It is very simple to get started. All you have to do is go to Pinterest business page, and join as a business. Set-up your account for free! After verifying your website, you can now add the 'Pin It' or Follow' buttons to your site. Doing this will let your current and potential customers know that you are already using this social network. After signing up, you can now start creating your boards, browsing images and videos, and participate with other users on Pinterest.

How to Get Customers to Post Instagram Pictures

Do you want to use Instagram to add value to your brand?

Are you looking for innovative ways to get your customers (and employees) to post Instagram pictures?

Then keep reading because I’m going to show you four ways to bring your “A game” to Instagram and wow your fans.

Why Customer Instagram Pictures?

Instagram was the fastest-rising social media channel for brands in 2013.

You probably already know it’s an effective platform for branding and marketing your products and growing your community.

But what you may not know is that Instagram is a powerful tool to collect customer-created content you can reuse to your advantage.

#1: Enhance Your Online (and Offline) Store With Customer Photos

Visuals greatly impact the behavior of shoppers. Most brands just snap a photo of the product and share it across all social channels, which may work sometimes. But you can take it a step further by crowdsourcing photos on Instagram.

When customers see photos of other “regular” people using a product, they’re more likely to buy. Why? This kind of social proof is a powerful motivator. Visitors gain trust by seeing others use the products they are about to buy.

Let’s take the clothing industry, for example. The biggest mistake clothing brands make on Instagram is showing bland product photos—clothing worn by hired models, usually with a white background.

Nasty Gal’s The Click gallery powered by olapic features selfies of fans wearing the brand’s clothes.

Nasty Gal clothing company saw an opportunity and started showcasing their fans’ Instagram pictures on their website via olapic. The company has had a 5% increase in overall conversions since implementing the olapic galleries.

#2: Make Instagram Fan Photos Into Stop-Motion Videos

Vine may have made stop-motion video easy to create and easy to consume, but Instagram video is winning the popularity contest. Your fans are using Instagram to take the photos you’re using, so it makes sense to share your videos there, where they’re most likely to see them.


Lexus reached a younger, tech-savvy audience by using its fans’ Instagram images to create this video.

Lexus took advantage of fan images for their aptly titled #LexusInstaFilm (shown above) where a group of 200 Instagrammers met on a racetrack to capture the brand’s new IS F model. Lexus pooled those photos and created a short video to share on Instagram and other social channels.

#3: Create Ads With Customer Instagram Submissions

In 2012, Instagram proposed changes to its terms of service that would allow it to sell your photos to brands for advertising purposes. There was uproar from the masses and Instagram quickly changed its tune.

Based on the uproar, you’d think Instagrammers wouldn’t want their images used in advertising at all. Who in their right mind would voluntarily send his or her own photos to brands so they can use them for advertising? A lot of people.

It’s all about choice and control. People are willing to give out their photos to be used as ads if the transaction between brands and fans is clear from the start. It helps if the fan gets something in return.

Wouldn’t you love to see your name in lights and get some new followers to boot?

That’s what Ben & Jerry’s banked on with their Capture Euphoria campaign. The social-friendly ice cream company ran a simple hashtag campaign to gather earned content. Fans were invited to share their pictures using the #CaptureEuphoria hashtag, then the photos were voted on and the best won a prize.

This is where it gets interesting. What was the prize in question? Taking the winner’s Instagram photo and transforming it into a real-life ad (including print, billboards and bus-stop posters) that included the winner’s Instagram username.

#4: Recruit Employees

Attracting and retaining talent are challenging for any brand. Most companies don’t consider Instagram as a recruiting tool, but Levi’s had great success with this unique idea.

The key to a great Instagram feed that people want to follow is sharing expertly shot Instagram photos on a regular basis. Levi’s leveraged their popular feed to lead a model-scouting campaign.

Levi’s launched an Instagram campaign to seek new talent.

Levi’s used photo and video sharing as a way to gather applications. They cut out the middlemen and directly sourced candidates via Instagram selfies.

Levi’s told fans up front that anyone using #iamlevis in their pictures or captions was granting Levi’s permission to use their photos in campaigns. Applicants knowingly used the hashtag to notify the brand of their interest in the job.

To track applications, Levi’s recruiters ran hashtag searches to scan applicants.

You could easily apply this type of campaign to any brand need. For example, nonprofits could do the same to hire volunteers.

What ideas do you have?

The diverse ways to get customers and fans to create content is one of the reasons Instagram is such a rich and growing platform for social marketers. Marketers are sure to appreciate this earned media and the level of engagement with their audience.

Does your audience share what they like with you online? Then you may want to look into ways to leverage this on Instagram.

What’s even better is that most of the examples here cost little to nothing and are easily replicated by businesses of all sizes.

What about you? Have you ever worked with Instagram fans to implement a grassroots marketing campaign? We’d love to hear about your experiences and ideas. Please leave your thoughts and comments below!