Strategy? (Part 1)

When it comes to finding or creating the best visuals for your content, there is no set formula for knowing what will work each time for your company goals and intended audience. Creating the right content, and then distributing that content in the right form, takes serious, specific, and strategic risks that determine what works best to connect and engage with your audience.

Static visual content includes such things as images, infographics, and slideshows/presentations. Interactive visual content includes such things as quizzes, webinars/webcasts, and videos. While there are several other forms of static and visual content, we will briefly look at the three aforementioned static forms in this post and the three interactive forms in Part 2.

Static Content

1. Images

Make concepts more appealing to your audience by converting plain text into images that better explain your words and increase your readers’ ability to remember them. Most (90%) of the information that comes to a person’s brain is visual and almost half (40%) of people learn better with visuals than plain text. If your plain text is accompanied by images, your audience is more likely to remember your information. You can publish images on their own or in a fun layout like a meme or animated gif. However, not any old image will do. To increase the number of views your content receives, make sure that the images you use are relevant to what you’re writing about.

If you are presenting “boring” statistical information, make use of data visualizations such as charts, graphs, and maps that will bring such information to life in an engaging way. Research has shown that long sections of text that are broken up with charts or infographics are more likely to have significantly higher reader engagement. Speaking of infographics, let’s move on to our next point.

2. Infographics

Infographics are liked and shared on social media 3X more than any other type of content. Why? Because they combine data, design, and storytelling in a colorful, compelling, and compact fashion. Per a 2016 report from the Content Marketing Institute, 58% of business-to-business (B2B) marketers and 63% of business-to-consumer (B2C) marketers find success using infographics.

Infographics are especially useful for showing an expert understanding of a complex subject or dense topic in a form that will grab readers’ attention. Although they usually come in the form of one long image, consider cutting up your infographics into smaller sizes so it will be easier for viewers to share on their socials.

3. Slideshows/Presentations

If you are putting together content such as a how-to or instructional guide, consider putting it in the form of a slideshow. There is almost no end to the variety of presentation tools that are available online to help you create unique, interactive, and user-friendly slide decks. Keep the text sparse, but pile on the design, color, and illustrations to help users visually follow directions.

To maximize your SEO potential, consider making each individual slide sharable for users to post on their socials or post the entire thing on platforms such as LinkedIn SlideShare.

Do you have content for your next marketing strategy that could be visualized through images, an infographic, or a slideshow/presentation?

“Yes!” you say.

Well, don’t settle on a static form just yet. Check back next week for Part 2 in which we’ll look at three interactive forms that may suit your content even better.