The average attention span of a humble goldfish is nine second – more than that of an intelligent human! Ever since the mobile revolution, humans face an information overload more often than not. While the ability to multitask has increased in humans, the attention span has come down drastically.
This is a very valuable piece of information for people who want to top SERPs – you have to write content and design a page that will capture your visitor’s attention in less than nine seconds! The more time that an user spends on your site, the more positive vibes Google will get about your site! So, how do you get the visitor’s attention as soon as the land on your page?
When people hear information, they’re likely to remember only 10% of that information three days later. However, if a relevant image is paired with that same information, people retained 65% of the information three days later.
Just text on your webpage will not help you retain your visitors, you must make your content fun and interesting for your visitors. Whether we like it or not, we are living in an age of visuals. Research indicate that people enjoy visuals more than text and that might explain why apps like Instagram are famous and why Facebook posts with no image perform poorly.
But, visual content marketing is not difficult. You should try to incorporate different visual content types like infographics, videos, images and presentations. Here’s a short guide to how you create and market visual content for your local business.
Decide on the Type of Visual Content that you want to Create
Content marketing is a big investment when compared to other traditional marketing methods. So, it is important that your efforts don’t go waste. Always spend some time researching about the type of visual content that is suited for your local business. These tips will help you decide the type of visual content that is suitable for your audience.
- Create a Buyer Persona. Decide on age groups of your customer and their other interests. For example, if you own an organic beauty store, your customer demographic might look something similar to this –
Men – 30% Women – 70%, Mean Age Group – 18 years to 30 years, Other interests of customers – beauty and fitness
Customer jobs – fitness experts, gym instructors, entrepreneurs, young moms’, IT professionals, interior decorators, fashion consultants
These details will help you create the right type of visual content and also decide on the most suitable visual content marketing channels.
- Find out the Popular Topics around your Business. You can use tools like BuzzSumo, SocialMention, Google AdWords Planner and even Twitter to come up with topics.
- Your visual content can be either a video, a GIF, an image, an infographic or a slideshow. Depending on your buyer persona and the topic, also decide on a suitable medium to market your content. For the same example of an organic beauty store, you could create images or infographics as they interest young audiences. Also, because majority of the customers are women, you can start marketing on Pinterest and Facebook.
Tools for Designing your Visual Content
Are you worried if designing your visual content will take up a huge chunk of your marketing budget? Nay. There are lots of free online design tools that will help you create appealing visual content. Here are some resources to help you kick start your visual content project –
Free Infographic Templates – Canva, PlaceIt, Inforgr.am
Free Font Tools – Google Fonts, Font Squirrel
Free Annotation Tools – Awesome Screenshot Browser Extension
Free Stock Photos – Unsplash, Pixabay, Compfight
Free Editing Tools – PicMonkey, BeFunky
If you are running short on time, you can try finding freelance designers online who will get your visual content ready for you.
Optimizing your Visual Content for Local SEO
Before you start marketing your content, you must optimize it for better results. This 5-point checklist will help you optimize your visual content.
- Google wants high-quality images that load quickly. Your visual content must also confine to the dimension requirements.
- Label the image appropriately. Using the alt tags, title tags and image names properly will ensure that your visual content pops up in the image search as well.
- Use relevant images that are also unique. Just using images will not yield the desired results. The search engine must be able to link the visual to a particular context.
- Use schema markups to highlight images. This will ensure that the search engines display the images in rich snippets wherever relevant.
- If you are using videos, make sure you have a video sitemap. You might also want to try grouping all your videos together and creating a resource center on your website.
Marketing your Visual Content
Your creativity is the limit when it comes to marketing your visual content! Use the buyer persona to decide on the best mediums to market your content. Here are some visual content marketing examples –
- Discount coupons & E-mails – Images of discount vouchers are attention-grabbers and they appeal to all audience types. There are also a lot of sites that allow you to add discount coupons. You can also add images of promotional flyers and discount vouchers to your Google My Business profile which will show up in the search results.
- Image Sharing & Instagram – Contests on social media increases engagement and creates conversations online. Photo contests on social media will help you keep loyal customers engaged while also getting you the attention of potential customers.
- Product Videos & YouTube – Visual media can create demand by educating audiences about new uses for your product.
- Quotes & Pinterest – Because quotes have the ability to inform and inspire, a lot of people share quotes. The “Quotes” section on Pinterest has xyz followers and brands like Adidas & Nike have leveraged this to their advantage.
- Comic Elements & Facebook – A lot of businesses have made use of web comics on Facebook to take their product/idea to the audience. This type of content works well on Facebook because it is easy to share.
If you want to make your local business stand for something, you must make it visual. With every visual tweet, Pinterest pin and Instagram upload, you are advancing your visual content marketing strategy.
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