Years ago, when blogging was introduced as a content marketing strategy, everything was text-based. Today, blogging has been transformed into a multi-media affair that places at least as much emphasis on visuals as on written words.
But if they study the demand for visuals and how website visitors respond to them, most bloggers are compelled to recognize they aren’t using nearly enough visuals. Are you?
Try These Five Types of Visual Content
In the early days of SEO and content marketing, the belief was that more text was better. The more copy you generated, the more keywords you had the potential to incorporate.
But as time passed and the Internet became more visual, Google tweaked its algorithm to place a heavier emphasis on visual content. Thus, it became a desirable practice to invest a significant portion of your content expenditures into visual content.
Not sure exactly where to start? Here are five types of visual content that tend have performed well.
- Infographics
Have you done much with these? It could be argued that infographics are the single best content format for synthesizing large amounts of data into an easily digestible format. People absolutely love them.
Not only are the appealing to look at, but they’re easily shared. This means a simple infographic can potentially become a viral piece of content over time. There are lots of ways to design an infographic, but the key is to keep the content simple.
A clean color scheme and scrollable layout will boost your conversion rate. Here’s a good example of a sleek infographic from CNN.
- Educational Graphics
“Both the short-term and long-term memory store information in chunks, but the former is limited. One of the easiest ways to ensure that learners store information in their long-term memory is to pair concepts with meaningful images,” marketer Karla Gutierrez notes.
In fact, research has shown over and over again that pairing visuals with text increases recall. You don’t have to develop elaborate visuals in order to see the benefits. As you can learn from this example from Blinds-Direct, even simple graphics can do the trick.
- Memes
Most people know memes as the funny graphics they see float around on social media. We’ve all seen the classics like Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka or the Ryan Gosling “Hey Girl” meme, but memes have a lot more to offer than just clichés.
Used appropriately, a well-timed meme can humanize your marketing and foster stronger connections with followers who want to interact with relatable brands. Brands like Jimmy John’s and Telegraph Travel are particularly adept at using visual content format.
- Behind-the-Scenes Pictures
In the same way as memes, behind-the-scenes pictures can humanize your brand. For example, taking images of your team developing a new product in your warehouse facility and publishing them on social media can help your audience connect with what you do — even if they aren’t otherwise directly involved.
- Videos
Who could forget video? Though it’s an admittedly broad category, video may well be the single most powerful visual format in all content marketing. Whether you choose to use live streaming video on a platform like Facebook, or prefer to produce professional videos and publish them directly to your website, video content tends to attract and engage people at a pretty healthy rate.
Are You Prioritizing Visual Content?
If you’re accustomed to developing written content, a sudden switch to emphasizing visual content might feel strange … but you mustn’t let that stop you. There’s tremendous value in visual content and you should be willing to complement your textual content marketing with engaging visuals.
Are you ready to shift your priorities?