Consider These 5 Things When Adding Visuals to Social-Media Content

Six in 10 social media updates are images. Three in 10 updates are videos. Your success at growing and maintaining an engaged, active audience relies on your ability to produce relevant, visual social media content. Some points to consider as you plan visual content for social media:

1. Don't think mobile, be mobile. Social media and mobile are married at the hip, offering a captive audience for you and convenience to users. Your job is to make sure that if they click into your content on a social media property from their mobile device your infographic, video, or interactive piece displays and performs consistently. Have the mobile conversation in the early planning stages, not as an after thought before launch.

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2. Create content that interacts. Pieces that require user input or integrate user data to create personalized experiences stimulate more interest. Use interactive pieces that give users engaging options to control how to view data and what data to view or that offers interesting insights from user-provided data.

3. An image for every blog post. Using the company logo as a blog anchor image doesn't work in a world where the recent spate of successfully launched social media platforms like Instagram and Pinterest are image-focused. As you select images choose ones that both accurately represent your piece and have the power to pop out of a users overloaded feed to drive clicks and shares.

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4. Leverage GIFs & social media videos. These aren't the demo videos or the cheesey GIFs of yesteryear. GIFs are making a comeback and video is continuing its domination with smaller bite-sized clips. These nuggets of content gold are the backbone of platforms like Vine and Instagram. With just a few seconds to grab attention, they are often a fun, gripping few minutes used to reinforce brands or causes.

5. Plan for real-time reaction: Can you pull together an infographic about breaking event to be timely and relevant? Much like a newsroom, you need to put in place resources and processes to jump on hot stories quickly. Social listening systems can help you figure out what to listen to, but you need the creators and designers or a reliable vendor ecosystem to ensure that you can execute before the buzz wears off.

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