“Visual marketing is a cost-effective way to engage your audience on social media” – Every social media blog post of the last five years. While this statement is inherently true, these posts seldom go into how to effectively create this content… but we’re here to help! Below you’ll find a few of our best tips for creating great content.

 

1. Make them laugh

Visual overload will do little good for your brand if the people have no reason to digest that visual — and humor excels at making people come back. Jeffrey Gitomer said it best “If you can make them laugh, you can make them buy.”

However, be sure the humor is tasteful and representative of your brand, as off-brand lowbrow humor can do more harm than good!

 

2. Encourage participation

Creating content that encourages your audience to participate can mean all the difference in how that content gets received.

Not only do these help your audience break away from the tedious monotony of reading, they also help you collect valuable insights and data.

3. Complement the text with the image

Visual marketing serves to complement your text, not the other way around.

You can use images, infographics, pie-charts and a whole lot of other visual elements to support and guide the audience through the content they’re digesting.

4. Use consistency, avoid repetition

Consistency is how you build your social brand. People follow you because they know the type of content to expect — but they’ll leave when they feel like they’re not gaining anything new.

Hence you should build a visual strategy where you constantly experiment with a variety of content types to drive out repetition.

You should still maintain a uniform color theme for your visual posts, but what’s important is that you get creative with the meat of the content.

5. If it’s stock, everyone can use it

It’s hard to avoid stock images, I know. Especially if you have a client that is light on assets.

But if you want to connect with your audience on a deeper level, it’s time to wave goodbye to stock images by replacing them with less generic, or even original photos/videos.

Show your human side, your consumers want to see that anyway.

6. Use CTAs that invite participation.

Visual content, alone, boosts your online presence. But when accompanied with an inviting CTA, the same visual content does a lot more to grab your audience’s attention.

An effective CTA is one that doesn’t come off as if you’re coercing participation, but rather that you’re inviting it. Your customers should ultimately feel like you want them to participate, not that you’re trying to force them to.

7. Test Test Test

It may seem shocking that this makes our list, but you’d be surprised at how many people don’t A/B test their visual marketing. Don’t just assume you’ve mastered your visuals and that it cannot get any better — and perhaps more importantly don’t be too proud to admit when something you thought was the best fit turns out to be anything but.