Using Visual Media to Leverage Content on Social Media

Ways to improve your businesses' profile

​Wandsworth is a mecca for SMEs and Startups. It has some of the highest concentrations of SMEs in London and the initiatives that Wandsworth Chamber and the Council are involved in such as “Beermat Monday”, Wandsworth Digitech and of course the regular business breakfasts help new businesses find their feet.

Social Media marketing is essential these days. It is an area where creating content can raise a businesses profile and it is cheap, compared to advertising or employing a PR company.

Tweets with images have more views and retweets than tweets without. Blogger Dan Zarella analysed 400K tweets and found this “Tweets with images uploaded to pic.Twitter.com were nearly twice as likely to be retweeted while the use of Twitpic increased the odds by just over 60%. On the other hand Tweets that used Facebook or Instagram links were less likely to be retweeted. In all four of cases, I found a 99% confidence interval assuring us of the reliability of these results.”

This goes for facebook, LinkedIn, and of course the image primacy social media: Pinterest, Instagram, and Snapchat. This means that you should make visual images an important part of your social media postings. Preferably by using unique content, rather than generic microstock images from a provider like Shutterstock.

Use Infographics

Creating a simple infographic which will be shared is a good way to use visuals. They are quick and cheap to create, versatile and can be shared widely. Ask those who share your infographic to link the image back to your site. Note: ensure that you have your own website url prominent on the graphic – otherwise people might not come to your site when the graphic is shared.

Video is even bigger than stills

Video has high levels of engagement. YouTube and Vimeo are the leading sites for this but you can easily upload vids to facebook and other social media sites. Perhaps the most important tips are to keep a video short and engaging, make sure it will work on a mobile platform, and have a Call to Action at the end. For example, have a website landing page with a special offer or a report to download, something to capture the viewer's details.

Overall, visual media are some of the most important tools you can utilise to create engaging and shareable content.

Author: This article was written by Julian Jackson, Wandsworth Chamber of Commerce's resident blogger and copywriter - www.julianjackson.co.ukhttps://julianj.journoportfolio.com