written by : Michael Revenscot
Social media has gone visual. In fact, it’s been visual for a few years now, it’s just that there are still far too many content creators out there who have yet to catch up. As a social media marketer, you may think that the most important aspect of your job is to ensure that you are providing great written content for your dedicated audience. Now, while this is most certainly true, it’s not the end of the story.
Even if you’re the best blogger in the world, no one is going to realise that unless you ensure that you provide some captivating imagery to front up your blogs so that they are attractive and clickable on social media feeds. Indeed, without social media, then your blog would be largely missed these days – and you and me aren’t the only people who realise this.
No, every business worth its salt has a firm social media presence in 2015, which means that you do, and your competitors do too. So, in order to stand out from the pack, you need to make sure that you are appealing to the modern needs of the social media user.
Let’s face facts – there are a zillion different things that are popping up in news feeds around the world every day. Say you’ve got 3,000 likers on Facebook, and each of them has 200 friends, and are following the activities of around 20 businesses. That’s a lot of information that gets produced and shared on a daily basis. And so you need to make your content stand out amongst all the rest of it.
Images. Read more...
It should go without saying that your blog should always be accompanied by a strong, eye-catching header image, that will be attached to every link to it that you share across Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn and all the rest.
In reality, it is this image that your following will click on. Ok, if you’ve been blogging for some years and have managed to build up a 6 figure audience, then you will of course be doing something very special with your written content, and there will be people flocking to every single post that has your name attached to it.
But, until you establish yourself as such an authority and celebrity in your field, you’re going to have to rely on some great images and some great headlines to get your great writing noticed in the first place.
We’ll consider headlines in a future blog, however, as for now I just want us to focus on the images.
Online Tools and Resources
A lot of bloggers when first starting out often resort to covering the same subjects that have been flogged to death already by thousands of other bloggers that have come before them. What is worse, though, is that they will also use the very same images from the very same sources that those previous bloggers did as well.
If you’re just starting out on your content marketing journey right now in 2015, then what you’ve got to realise is that there have been lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of people like you that have been and gone before – and that your online audience will have seen the same old stuff hundreds of times.
Therefore it is imperative that you offer up something new for them if you ever want to get noticed. Now, this isn’t actually as hard as it may first appear, for there happens to be some great online tools and resources that you can turn to in order to create and source some beautiful, high-quality images that will give your blog the visual appearance of being as fresh as your written content is.
So let’s take a look at 3 of the best.
#1. Pixabay
If you’re after a source of high-quality images that are completely free to use, then you can do no better than beginning your search at Pixabay. With a catalogue that currently stands at over 440,000 free photos, you can be almost positive that you will find the right image for your blog.
But when choosing one, try to think outside of the box a little. Remember, your competition will be writing blogs on a regular basis as well, most likely on similar subjects, and will be fronting all of those with a featured image that they may well have sourced from Pixabay as well. So, always choose an image that relates metaphorically to your title rather than too literally. This way you will stand a better chance of picking something that rivals won’t – but don’t be too obscure, of course.
#2. Skitch
If you want to make sure that the image that you take from Pixabay (or anywhere else) is definitely 100% unique, then it will pay to edit it in some way. And the great news is that you no longer have to have a degree in Photoshop to be able to do it. Instead, you can head over to Skitch and make use of the very user-friendly tools that allow you to make all sorts of distortions and improvements from your screenshots and other images. You can overlay text, objects and shapes, blur out certain sections and a whole lot more. Perfect for creating something completely unique to accompany your blog.
#3. Canva
If it’s graphical rather than photographic imagery that you’re after, then you really should take a look at Canva (though it is of course possible to work with photography here too). Canva is the perfect image creation tool for the novice, being largely based on a drag and drop system that couldn’t be simpler. The image and text catalogue available is also extensive, meaning that you will be able to create something that’s truly original, just by utilising some of the thousands of possible combinations that there are out there.
What are your favourite online visual marketing tools? Let us know in the comments below.
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