What comes immediately to your mind, when you know that –
- 37% of marketers said visual marketing was the most important form of content for their business, second only to blogging (38%).
- 51% of B2B marketers prioritized creating visual content assets in 2016.
- 90% of information that comes to the brain is visual
And,
- Presentations with visual aides are 43% more persuasive
What exactly do you think when these statistics come flashing by? Of course, the growing importance visuals have in the Digital Marketing realm, as well as the inevitability of using them in our marketing strategies.
It is thus quite true to say that we must thoroughly keep visuals, and more visuals, in our marketing approach, since people have an inherent psychological resonance with engaging images. With 65% of people being visual learners, you cannot expect your marketing efforts to be more texts and fewer images.
To be precise, visual content was, is, and will forever be the prime element of online marketing. So today we have come with ten hottest trends in visual content marketing that you should be doing in 2017 and beyond.
1. Images optimized for Social Media
As we all know, images create magic. The interest quotient of people depends highly on what their eyes see. So, it goes without saying that more you give images supporting your content, more will you get eyeballs drawing to your posts. Jeff Bullas has rightly stated that articles that have images get 94% more views than those without.
To create higher engagement across multiple social media platforms, create exciting social media graphics that are loved by all. You may take help of the free online tools to create them. For e.g., Canva could be a good choice for engaging social media images.
However, as we all know, templates and free tools indeed help you to create images, but they have certain limitations. Moreover, you won’t get any scope of customization. So it is always recommended to hire a professional graphic design agency, with a vast portfolio, and ample scope of customization.
2. Online Video
Demands for videos are rising higher and higher, and we can see the Internet world is getting flooded with video contents. Today if you see five websites, three out of them have an explainer video on their homepages. Online videos are great tools to engage the audience and explain about your products and services.
Apart from explainer and animated videos, webinars, video reviews, short video ads, are also in high demand. So create as many video contents you can. These are going to help you stay afloat in your industry in 2017 and beyond. Because already we have the prediction from Cisco that says by 2021, 78% of mobile traffic will come from video.
However, while you create your video contents, ensure they possess quality and variety in them. Because the way video contents are swarming the Internet, very soon they will reach a saturated point, just like any other content tools. Animated Video Company can come to your help by creating some cool videos for your brand.
3. Infographics
We can’t really get enough of Infographics. These amazingly informative yet engaging graphics are widely accepted all over by all Internet marketers. Every now and then you could see an Infographic hovering around. It is extremely convenient to make an audience understand some complex data through an easily understandable visual display. Infographics are one of the most important genres of visual contents that you must work upon in 2017 and beyond.
Every day, millions of Infographics are being created and published, dealing with various topics. To cope up with this ever-growing competition, your design must have that specialty, that uniqueness in it, which will make it stand out. This uniqueness will not be available in any free online image generating tool, owing to the generic templates used by all.
Only a professional company with several years of work experience in the graphic design field, and a vast portfolio can help you out in this.
4. Make use of Charts and Graphs
Usually, a well-executed research piece with original data and information are revered by people, owing to the originality of the content. There are hoaxes everywhere on the Internet, and if by chance an original piece comes flashing by, people tend to flock to it and read.
But what if the piece of data is only text and text? The reader retention rate decreases. To prevent this, get yourself working on graphs and charts from today. If you had lost your interest on graphs and charts lately, I am telling you, these are going to stay in 2017.
And not only stay, but graphs and charts are also loved by many, so it’s very likely these visual contents will dominate the Internet. Tables of data and overwhelming information could be very coherently arranged in graphs in charts. So start creating your own from today.
5. Memes are the new Trends
Memes are the new buzz on the Internet. First coined in 1976, memes have made their way until 2017. And today we can see half of our news feeds are filled with interesting memes.
So tap into this new trend, first, you have to identify who are your target audience, and whether memes will be acceptable to them or not. You might try publishing 2-3 initially. And when you see the results, you can proceed accordingly.
But whatever is said, memes are very famous on all social media platforms, and more and more witty memes with sarcastic captions are being generated. So be ready with your arsenal of great memes with quirky captions, make people laugh, and build a community for your brand.
6. Try GIF images in your content
GIFs are light, they are handy, and they are equally engaging. GIF images create a sense of amusement in the viewer’s mind. If you need to depict a flow of any kind of process, nothing can be better than GIFs. Because unlike videos, they are not required to be uploaded to any other network. Also, they are much lighter than a video with heavy file size.
The recent visual content trend is all about incorporating GIF images in tutorials, how-to articles. So nothing could be better than GIFs as visual contents for you to work with.
7. Create more Interactive contents
Get your audience involved in your content. Make them interact with it. This year, focus more on interactive contents such as questions and answers, interactive quizzes, feedback exchange, surveys, polls, and so on. These elements would not only make your content stronger but would also make people share it. Because comparing results with our friends and others is an innate trait of all of us. Anything clickable is worth sharing!
8. Webinars are extremely effective Visual Contents
Webinars are extremely popular in these recent days because carrying out a real-time seminar or conference with a large number of audience is sometimes difficult. Hence getting connected with an audience virtually, is a time-saver, as well as an efficient mode of communicating to a large number of people at a time.
Moreover, webinars can get your conversion rates higher. You can get emails of your prospects when they sign up for your session; you can also reach out to an influencer to take part in the hosting of your webinar, as well as promoting it. So when you get your email list, you can nurture the list and turn them into paying customers.
Work yourself to create interesting and engaging webinar sessions this year, and you will reap the benefits for a long time. You can take help of social media and leverage the power of it to make your webinar a hit.
Also, you may take a look at here to know the five simple, yet effective ways to improve your webinars this year.
9. Include Screenshots from your own Website
If you are short of any other visual content idea, why not use screenshots? Yes, screenshots are the perfect visual content to support your claims about your products or services. Also since they are directly taken from your website, the authenticity level is much higher in screenshots.
Use this new genre of visual contents in your content marketing strategy, and let your target audience have a sneak peak into the workings of your products or services.
10. Don’t forget, Presentations
Those days are long gone when presentations were confined to your conference rooms, annual meetings, and product demos. Now you can bring your creation to the world stage via SlideShare, SlideSnack, Slides, authorSTREAM, SlideBoom, and many more presentations sharing websites.
Ensure the fonts, and colors match your brand identity, as well as there are no typo errors. This is paramount because any such flaw will directly impact your brand image. You can also include short Infographics in your presentations to increase the views.
You may check out some tips and resources here, of using Infographics in your presentations, like a pro!
There’s no way around Visual Content
So you see, whatever effort you give for your content marketing, all will turn to sheer wastage of time, if you don’t take up to visual contents seriously this year. Because as per the 2016 report of Social Media Examiner – “73% of marketers say they are going to invest more in videos and 71% – in visuals.”
Always remember, each day zillions of contents are being created and published. To make yours stay ahead of the competition, ensure that is evergreen. Evergreen contents are never off topic and are always contemporary and relevant. You may check here some of the contents that always remain evergreen.
Also, re-purposing your content has an added advantage because you already have a quality content on your finger tip. You just have to re-purpose it into an engaging visual content. For, e.g., you can easily turn your existing Infographic into an interesting Video Infographic. Here you can find ten more easy ways of re-purposing your Infographics into other exciting visual contents. This way you can impress the search engines also.
Do you have any other idea as to what other visual contents should be focused more this year? Please share your insight in the comments section below. And if you are in need of any visual content for your brand, feel free to get in touch with us!
