The Secret Behind Visual Marketing

Photo taken from Nordwood Themes

What better way to boost content marketing on several online platforms than using visuals? Though search engine optimizers use full-length articles for their strategies, visuals are just as compelling. Visual marketing falls under content marketing, but the hierarchy of content importance and the underdevelopment of algorithms to recognize photos make it the last resort to raise SERP ranking.

Visual marketing one way of appealing to search engine crawlers and users through images, photos, slideshows, graphs, and the likes. Audiences like them because they are snackable and bite-sized. Information becomes easy to digest. They are impressive promotional elements across social media platforms. This marketing strategy increases CTR and website traffic which helps with ROI and conversion rate.

Furthermore, it’s a way to recycle full-length articles and newsletters into motion graphics, images, videos and the likes. A website won’t be stuck with popular long-form posts when it has visuals to back them up. The continuous sharing of the content on social media and the web will generate traffic back to the original site. Adding a visual gives the long-form a chance to be an evergreen content.

Lastly, posting another type of content format is refreshing and rewarding to frequent site visitors and loyal audiences.

Four Reasons to Join The Visual Marketing Bandwagon

Photo taken from Unsplash

Not everyone jumps on the opportunity to use the marketing tactic though it’s around for a long time. The technique becomes different when on a digital scale. Still, some things remain the same. Take the advice from a web design company and join the hottest digital marketing trend. Below are four reasons why visual marketing is a useful technique to leverage a business or an industry.

1. Visuals improve recall through association of figures, compelling imagery, and motion.

According to Inc.com, 81 percent of users skim the content they read online. A photo, gif or slideshow gains people’s attention back to the material. It also attracts them long enough to stay on the page.

2. Visual marketing will make you stand out.

Content recycling and creating visual content push webmasters to go out of the usual type-and-publish. It encourages them to look for new ways to present information which results in unique and one-of-a-kind posts.

3. It provides a content personality.

Getting used to the pattern of visual content creation leads to adopting consistency. A designer often has or follows a template. Hence, the set of visuals will have uniformity while remaining relevant to a topic.

4. It promotes brand identity.

Besides consistency, making a logo and using it to brand visual content makes the business or company stand out. Customizing logos for different types of visual content helps users recognize your brand. A small icon is neat and fits well on videos and other motion graphics. Meanwhile, a complete logo that includes the enterprise slogan, website, and name is for images and infographics.

Wrapping Up

Visual marketing is and must be a part of an SEO agency’s strategy. Though it’s short of words for link building and identifies using keywords, it has the power to engage users. The elements on an image taps on the emotional and psychological aspects of audiences. Utilizing it leads to traffic generation, high CTR, and conversion rate.

The post Using Visuals to Leverage Content Marketing for SEO appeared first on Internet Marketing Reach.

Social do’s and don’ts

Do’s

Post often

Although this greatly varies on the social platform, the goal is to be the top-of-mind brand, website or blog through the content you publish. In Facebook, you need to post twice daily on both weekdays and weekends. In Twitter, you need to tweet 14 times on weekdays and 7 times on weekends. In LinkedIn, post at least once per day on weekends, no weekends.

Share own and others’ contents

Strike a balance between publishing original and curated content. Never flood your Timeline or other people’s news feed with purely curated content. Your primary content strategy should be sharing your own content. When sharing other’s content, though, make sure that you read the entire post first to ensure that it is indeed valuable to your readers.

Share various posts

Also, don’t publish the same content and the same type of content over and over. There are many different types of share-worthy social content such as infographics, content with images, and interactive content. If you need to share a particular link within one day, space it out or else, people will think you’re a spammer. You’ll only annoy your audience and alienate them with your purpose.

Share niche-relevant posts

Be wary what you are sharing with your target market. We can only say that it’s a valuable piece of content if your audience will learn something new or find something useful from it. Definitely, this will depend on the goals of your social media marketing. It would be best to define your goals first and make it realistic as possible.

Be grateful

Let your audience know that you are serious about building a lasting relationship with them. Follow back. Comment back. Someone tagged you in a post, comment. Thank anyone who shares your post. Engage your audience through encouraging interactions. You can start conversations with asking questions or opinions. This will not only lead to relationships and goodwill but also gets your brand more exposure without forcing it.

Don’ts

Overshare

Again, learn the basics of posting frequency on each social platform you are at. Don’t share other people’s content too frequently. It will only confuse your audience as to which brand you are promoting – yours or theirs. Don’t publish an update with too many hashtags on it, too. Maintain the right balance and healthy mix of posts.

Share irrelevant information

One tendency is sharing filler content pieces just so you have something to post. No. It would be best to have a social content plan at the start of the month that you can work or build upon. In this way, you won’t struggle on what to post next.

Be inconsistent

Consistency is key when doing social media marketing. Never publish or share too many posts in one week and only a few the following week. This only ruins the expectations of your target audience. Eventually, they will disengage with your business altogether.

Solicit engagement

Never buy followers, likes, and subscriptions. These things offer no real value so it’s just a waste of marketing budget that you should’ve invested on other important things such as creating original posts. Also, numbers of shares, likes, and the likes are just vanity metrics that are punishable by Google once it confirmed that these came from link farms.

Don’t forget these basic rules. A winning social media strategy is all about value, consistency, and balance. If all else fails, let us leave you with a Think Before You Post diagram created by Hootsuite. This flowchat is not the panacea, but a great guide nevertheless when contemplating on what social posts to publish.

The post Do’s and Don’ts of Publishing on Social Media appeared first on Internet Marketing Reach.

Even you – you are doing content curation without you realizing it. Do you have a Facebook profile? Do you share posts, images, videos, infographics, etc. that you think your friends will find fun or useful? That’s content creation.
With that said, here’s what how you implement a content curation strategy.

Proper ways to curate content

1) Provide context to the curated content

2) Mix original with curated content

3) Curate only the most valuable content

4) Diversify the content topic

5) Evaluate the fit of the curated content

6) Share content on social media

7) Attribute the source of the content

1) Provide context to the curated content

Offer your views, insights, and knowledge when presenting curated content. You can do this through a commentary or quote. Do this to each piece of content you curate. Although the content is not yours, there will be a sense of ownership because of your abstraction of the said content, for instance. Also, put a call to action with each content you share.

2) Mix original with curated content

Curated content is good, but it won’t be as good if it’s purely curation. Publish original content, too. In fact, this should be your core content strategy. Otherwise, your target audience and rivals would only think of your brand as an aggregator. As such, publish custom content that’s targeted to your niche.

3) Curate only the most valuable content

It is not enough that you curate content that aligns to the goals, initiatives, and values your brand stands for. Don’t be too you-centric, sharing content that is all about you and your brand. Know what your audience needs and wants and share pieces of content that answer their common inquiries, for instance. This instills your expertise in the subject as well.

4) Diversify the content topic

There is strength in numbers, right? Thus, make sure that everyone in the company understands that they are also contributors. They can share an interesting article that they run into while exploring their news feed, for instance. It’s the internal knowledge-sharing culture that you are building here. You may also create a content hub (perhaps using a tool) where they can share the content with the curators.

5) Evaluate the fit of the curated content

Other than selecting strong content to share, there should be a fit. You don’t just share a piece of content because you find it interesting. It should resonate with your brand and your audience. Otherwise, it will be deemed irrelevant. When structuring content curation, collect as many content pieces as you can. However, when sharing a content, focus on its quality.

6) Share content on social

Speaking of sharing, a piece of content will have no value unless you share it with your people. In Facebook, for instance, you need to share twice a day, everyday of the week. Publish brand-related content on Thursdays and Fridays and save the weekends for other, but still brand- and audience-relevant content. Post on social sites that best resonates with the nature of your business. You can’t be on every and all social site.

7) Attribute the source of the content

Give credit where credit is due. Don’t pass the content as something you create originally. That would be so wrong, and a common pitfall in content curation. You share a piece of content to your audience because you find it relevant and valuable. So, you might as well credit the source of such content and let the owner know that you are using his or her content. Who knows, he or she might share the content thereby expanding the reach of the content.

You can only trust the process when your content curation process can be trusted. Do it right, and everything will fall into place. It all boils down to being selective. If you want to be perceived as the authority within your industry, you should be sharing high-quality pieces of content. You provide your audience value through the content you shared and they will think of you as their go-to source of essential information.

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Content Curation

It is the process of sorting through the vast amounts of content on the web and presenting them in a meaningful and organized way around a specific theme. Which means, once you curate content, it is like handpicking deliberately useful information, to create another one or to make those entries as inspiration or as a source for generating more updated and interesting issues.

Curating helps if…

You know which contents to moderate and what to make out of it. Sometimes, this method makes the workflow fast, but at the same time, it would really take time. Curating is like scraping out the best ideas enabling you to extract them out and form a whole new level of content management. Mixed created, contributed and gathered content sends a powerful message of inclusion to customers because curation is based on brand-safe-rule and practices making it no risks of being exposed to content that is going to damage the brand.

Is Content Curation for you?

However, this method isn’t for everyone. There are three crucial points to decide whether implementing a strategy to curate content is good:   Is there a dominant publication in your market? Does your topic of focus align with the interests of your audience? Is there enough content to curate out there?   One of content curation’s goals is to create a go-to feed for audience members interested in your topic. If your news focus has established, dominant competition, reconsider the inclusion of curation in your content strategy. Upon making a better focus, narrowing your theme may have a better opportunity to become a premiere source for the topic. It should always focus on audience-centric information. Moreover, effective curation requires enough content to fill your quota. As a tip, make sure enough people are creating content before deciding to specialize in curating certain content.

Why curate?

Curation does not require you to replace content creation. Instead it eases some of the editorial burden. Basically, it boils down to having two roles—both creator and curator—of which content strategists are resulted to be. Best practices Explain why the content is important to your audience By having this as a consideration, it is undeniably true that whenever you post content, it should be relevant and useful for them. Allowing them to see its importance is a must so in that way you can imprint your brand on an article by placing your own spin on it.   Include clear links and credit for the original content This is to avoid dubious curation tactics—identify the original writer and the source of content.   Post snippets of content One example of this is Twitter. In one way or another, this can be considered as a form of content curation, by adding your own short description before the link you are to post.   Find a unique voice Associate your brand with your content. In order to accomplish this, find ways to stamp your flair on the content you share via curation.   If you have any thoughts or stories to share, we’d love to hear from you!

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