For years, businesses and marketers alike have been putting tremendous effort into generating optimized content that serves both the needs of their visitors and search engines.
They have scrambled to keep up with the latest Google algorithm updates, and are paying for expensive tools to find the keywords that will boost their website traffic.
And while text still reigns supreme (video and podcasts are catching up), their are other ways you can engage and delight your visitors resulting in more shares, links and website traffic.
If you’re here, you’re looking to make your content more share worthy and memorable. The best content not only resolves a visitor’s question, but also gives them something that catches their eye and evokes an emotion.
The solution?
Enhance your website with catchy and clever images, engaging videos, artistic illustrations, icons, favicons, memes and animated illustrations.
Let’s take a look at a few of these types of visual content and how they can enhance your current content marketing efforts.
1. Use Images that Evoke an Emotion
Consumers these days are scanners.
We’re constantly bombarded with ads and content that’s competing for our attention.
As a result, we’ve become scanners and tend to quickly glaze over anything that doesn’t appear to address the specific info we came to find.
With that said, the right images can make us pause, smile, appreciate the creativity, and provide an overall better visitor experience.
With that said, we’re all busy and it can be soooo tempting to find an image “that just works” and run with it.
Below is a tasty example of custom imagery from the Quest Nutrition blog:
Using your own original images is the ideal option, but if you have a limited budget, resources and time, finding free images that are licensed to use commercially or purchasing images from stock photo websites also will work.
The following are a just a few examples of paid and free photo websites you can use:
Free
Paid
2. Embed Engaging Videos
Videos are a powerful form of visual content that will keep your visitors engaged and are a great way to reinforce your brand’s messaging.
Making a video for your business has never easier. You don’t necessarily need a professional film crew – a smartphone with a good camera, and good lighting can be enough to get started.
Here’s a great example of an video from Indeed that works to reinforce a message about equality:
Animated explainer videos are also popular and a cost-effective way to create effective, engaging content.
Need help creating one, there are plenty of freelancers on Fiverr ready to help!
3. Infographics
We couldn’t talk about visual content and not mention infographics!
As we all know, infographics are visually engaging way of summarizing a lot of information.
This type of visual content can include including stats, charts, visual and textual data.
Here’s a good example of an infographic from Spiel that breaks down the process of shooting a video by yourself:
4. Illustrations
Over the years, illustrations have gained a lot of popularity across the web.
From websites designed on fully illustrative themes, to adding illustrations on the homepage, About Us page, or elsewhere – this type of visual content is a great option.
If you decide to use illustrations, make sure they all have the same vibe and feel. They should be relevant and on-brand.
Look how Upsly uses illustrations to reinforce messaging and makes their homepage more interesting.
Want to take your illustrations to a new level?
Check out LottieFiles for a variety of animated illustrations that will make your page or post stand out!
5. Don't Forget about Gifs!
Gifs are yet another way to diversify the types of engaging visual content you are using and can also add a touch of humor to your next post.
Needs inspiration? Check out Giphy for a huge collection of free Gifs.
Visual Content for the Win 🏆
Finding and creating captivating visual content relevant to your business can be a fun and and challenging task, but one that will reap rewards.
Hopefully this post sparked some ideas for your next blog post or landing page. Good luck!
