Visual Content: A Key Element of your Inbound Marketing Strategy

When organizing an inbound marketing strategy, content plays a very important role in ensuring its success. Over the years, marketers and companies have used content as their mainframe to attract customers and ensure brand loyalty. How content is presented has changed over the years, with the latest being the adoption of visual content. The old adage that a picture is definitely worth more than a thousand words is true even in case of internet content. Studies show that photos are liked 200% more than text updates alone on Facebook. And with options like Instagram and Pinterest becoming popular, more and more companies are branching onto the visual content bandwagon. However, in order to truly benefit from these social networking tools, it is important to understand why visual content makes an impact while also understanding the nuances of these tools.

Importance of visual content: Content is extensively used by most website owners to attract their customers and add appeal to their websites. When the content is a visual one, a photo or a video or something that can be seen rather than read, it definitely creates a better impact. This is largely because visual content directly taps into human emotions and feelings and creates impact much better than words. Moreover, when you use visual content, you are actually revealing a side of your personality and attitude. Sharing and interacting with your customers business-wise as well as at a personal level with your friends becomes really easy with visual content. Moreover, there is no room for ambiguity, as your followers or customers actually understand where you come from and more importantly, who you are. Additionally, visual content is easily accessible and better understood, which adds to its appeal.

Pinterest and Instagram: These are the two most important and popular visual content sharing websites that are available today. Providing information to customers and enabling them to collect it easily is done in many ways through these two social networking sites. Where you can create boards with Pinterest, catering to your area of business, Instagram allows you to share the picture such that the viewer can like it and use it for later reference. For instance, if you are an interior design firm or an architecture firm, you can use these websites to put up images of homes that the user can use as reference. These will enable them to get an idea of who you are, what you can accomplish while also helping them decide what they want.

Pinterest is now estimated to be the 3rd largest in social media as far as popularity among users. Instagram is used by over 80 million registered users and 40% of the leading brands!

Utilizing visual content in collaboration with written content: Given the popularity of visual content, many marketers feel that this would ultimately mean the decline of the written word. Although the visual is more effective than the written word, you should ideally use a good balance of both to get your message across. Experts believe that a good photo or image should be supplemented by some written content, which can then be linked back to your website. This would not only add more appeal but would also improve your inbound marketing strategy.

With the increasing importance of visual content as well as the tools that let you customize such content, it has become important that you adopt these newer strategies to ensure that you stay ahead of the competition.