If you are like most people today, you decide whether to open a magazine based entirely on how compelling the cover photo is. Translate that to the online world, and it is easy to see why more than 700 million photos are uploaded daily on Facebook and Snapchat alone!
The importance of your visual content – its quality, its relevance, its viral shareability – simply cannot be emphasized enough. In this post, learn how to optimize your visual content to enhance your outcomes for any marketing campaign.
 

Visual Content and Your Website

While social media is definitely increasing its reach and influence daily, your website is likely to remain the hub and foundation of your online enterprises for the foreseeable future.
For this reason, your site’s visual content is of the highest priority. In a word, it must be stellar, riveting, compelling enough to keep those fast-moving objects known as online browsing web visitors from bouncing away from your site.

As an extra source of motivation, placing just a single compelling image on each page of your site has the potential to boost views by 94 percent!

You can also use the visual content you select for your website as a guide and unifying force to help you select the visual content you use elsewhere, such as in your social feeds and on your blog posts.
 

Visual Tactics to Boost Website and Social Views

Experts recommend these tactics to add compelling visuals in just the right places to boost views and shares.
– Begin each blog post with an image. Right under the title and right above the first line of text, your graphic, photo or video tells the visitor what is about to follow…and if it is good enough, they will stick around to read the rest.

– Add images in the right-hand side of the page. The western eye is trained to move naturally to the uppermost lefthand column on any page for text. So don’t hesitate to divide the page in half, with the right half occupied by an intriguing and relevant image (as a bonus, this reduces the amount of text the eye perceives, making it more likely the visitor will read what is there as well).

– Break up every 350 words of text with an image. A “wall of text” tends to present as daunting even for technical readers. But a page broken up with frequent colorful and interesting images can appear quite manageable indeed!

– Vary your images. Photos, infographics, videos, memes, cartoons, charts, screenshots – all are fair game for inclusion so long as they are high quality and tell a good story. Be SURE your logo and website URL is also visible on each image!
 

Images That Nearly Guarantee a Second Look…and a Click

 As far as compelling images go, some are naturally more irresistible than others. Here are some of the all-time strongest performers to use for your website, marketing campaigns, blog posts, social media feeds and everywhere else you go online.

Coupons.
As of 2016, a whopping 96 percent of mobile users stated they plan to use digital coupons this year. Coupons are HUGE in the online world, and if you include coupons on your website pages regularly, you can expect bookmarks, repeat visitors, shares and plenty of good use.

Contests & Giveaways.
Free stuff will never go out of style….ever. It doesn’t even matter much what you are raffling off or giving away – somebody out there will want it.

Infographics.
A well done infographic is typically not cheap, but there is a reason for that. A well done infographic will generate mad click counts. Bonus points if your infographic is animated (which would technically make it a gif-ographic).

Anything Animated (Such as Memes).
Speaking of animation, it is nearly impossible not to at least quickly glance at something on the screen if it is moving. The key is to make sure that glance holds – which means you want to make it funny, heart-warming, cute or memorable.

Videos.
You may think of videos as its own separate category. But the days when videos were for YouTube only are log gone. Videos are still the most popular type of visual content available and they are everywhere today (even earning themselves a spot on Forbes’s “marketing trends most likely to dominate in 2016” list!).
 

Ensuring Your Visual Content Displays To Your Advantage

So now that you have a list of the hands-down most compelling types of visual content to use on your website and in your marketing campaigns, the last step is to ensure your visuals display properly for all sets of eyes.

Mobile Optimization.
The most important fact to remember about selecting any visual content to place anywhere is to be sure your website, your social tools, your blog, your e-commerce store and any other online tools you use are optimized for viewing on small screens.

If you are not sure, navigate over to this free Google Mobile-Friendly Test tool to find out how your site scores.

Optimize According to Platform.
Each social network is like its own self-contained little image universe. As such, visual content parameters are likely to differ a little (or sometimes a lot) from platform to platform. So be sure to check the parameters and optimize accordingly.

Less Can Be More Effective.
Finally, resist the temptation towards clutter. One single well-designed, stunning and relevant image can do more for your brand than 10 blinking gifs or video screenshots.

Learning how to use visual content most effectively for your brand can take time, trial and error and a willingness to try and try again until you see the clicks starting to rise accordingly. But when you find the strategy that works best for your brand, you can look forward to more well-deserved marketing success for your hard work and time!