Social media marketing has become an essential online marketing strategy for businesses of all sizes. Startups love it because it is free to get going, and multinationals love it because they can reach so many customers.
Facebook and Twitter are the two giants of social media. But a new breed of site has emerged in recent years, focusing more on visual social media. Here’s a look at how to use these in your marketing.
What Is Visual Social Media Marketing
Visual content has always played an important role in social media marketing. Images and videos capture attention, get more shares, and tend to create more engagement with users, as well as improving response rates. They are a valuable tool for marketers who want to increase their ROI, and SEO specialists like whitehat-seo.co.uk recommend social sharing as an important element of any SEO campaign.
But now some social platforms are dedicated entirely to visual content. Here is a look at three of the biggest social platforms for visual marketing.
1. Pinterest
Pinterest is one of the biggest social media success stories outside of Facebook and Twitter. Launching as recently as 2010 and only going fully public in 2012, it has since become one of the biggest players in social media. In fact, Pinterest now has 100 million active users. It is especially popular with women, with 42% of the adult female US internet population using it.
It is based on a simple premise whereby users collect images from around the web and share them with their contacts. This is a useful way for many people to organize content, but it also provides a number of options for marketers.
You can get a free business account on Pinterest, and then you can take advantage of rich pins, where you can add information to your pins. With these, you could add written content to an image, which is a great way to share your blog articles. Your image is all that is displayed, but you can add the headline and description to get more clicks so users can read the article.
You can also use place pins to create an interactive map containing the location of each pin, and this could be ideal if you are a location-based business.
Product pins are also an option, and you can use these to get more sales from your store. These include info about your products, prices, and other useful details.
Promoted Pins are also an option now for businesses, whereby you can pay to get your pins seen by more people, helping to grow your followers and win more customers.
2. Snapchat
Snapchat became popular with younger cellphone users after it launched in 2011. The basic premise behind this app is to share photos that are not stored on the device but which self-destruct after a certain amount of time.
It’s a simple idea, and one that has taken off in a big way. 18% of social media users in the US use the platform, and it is still growing fast, especially with the uder-25s. It also has a lot of potential for marketing purposes.
For example, you could use the story feature to provide a sequence of photos or videos that stay visible for 24 hours, providing your targets with more time to view and engage with your content. You could use this to show them your products, introduce staff at your office, and provide them with facts. But you can also use it to share details of your latest sales or to send coupons.
While it may not be suitable for every business, it could be an option for your business if you can think of a creative way to make use of it, and if you want to target younger people.
3. Instagram
Launched in 2010, Instagram is now owned by Facebook. It is a social site dedicated to photos and short videos, and it has hundreds of millions of active users. That clearly makes it attractive to marketers, and there are a number of ways you can use the platform.
For a start, you could experiment with giveaways. For example, you can use a photo to announce your prize, and then get users to repost it to increase buzz.
Photo competitions are also popular on the platform, and these are a great way to engage your audience and reach more people.
Testimonials in the form of photos and videos can be another good use of the site, especially if you can get testimonials of people actually using your products.
Take Advantage of the Power of Visual Marketing
These are just a few of the biggest platforms for using visual social media marketing, so these are a good place to start. However, these really are just the start. Not only are there other platforms like Vine, but you can also use visual content on Facebook, Twitter and other platforms that are not exclusively visual.
Visual content like images and videos are a great way to get more interaction and engagement on social media, so start experimenting and see what you can do.
Author
Clwyd Probert, CEO and founder of Whitehat, has many years of international experience in both the technological and marketing side of the industry. Having been based in New York, and now London, he has worked in the competitive markets of hedge funds and investment banks. As an entrepreneur, he has built and developed several different companies over the years.
In addition to his commitments to the White-hat Inbound Agency, Clwyd is also heavily focused on delivering practical advice to businesses and entrepreneurs at seminars. For instance, he recently ran marketing seminars for attendees at The Business Show, held in Olympia, and has arranged a small seminar for a group of highly talented female entrepreneurs.
All of this a big plus for us, as it helps keep us one step ahead of the competition when it comes to the fast-changing world of inbound marketing in London and all over the United Kingdom. As if that’s not enough, in his spare time Clwyd is also a highly respected international photographer, working with and supporting animal charities at home and abroad. As a patron of Hope4Apes, and The Battersea Cats and Dogs Home and The Born Free Foundation, he has worked alongside Brian May and Sir David Attenborough and Virgina McKenna.
