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Strong visual content can become a regular part of your campaign and brand work, helping to cultivate an integrated brand voice to connect deeper with customers and potential clients.
By Jamie Izaks
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Scientific studies have proved time and time again that our brains respond to visuals much faster — up to 60,000 times — than text. In fact, 90 percent of information transmitted to the brain is visual, and 70 percent of sensory receptors are in the eyes. Thus, it makes perfect sense that 40 percent of people respond better to visuals than text.
In addition to this information, visual elements can add a more tangible storytelling element to a campaign or piece of material, and lengthens the reach of any story. Good visual content increases engagement, explains and summarizes complex information, speeds up comprehension, motivates action and grows human connections on behalf of a person or brand.
As any PR pro knows, our relationships with journalists and the media are critical. We spend ample time fostering mutually beneficial relationships that allow a constant back-and-forth of quality information that results in media placements and increased brand awareness.
And as the journalism field shifts, so do the job requirements of writers everywhere. More online content creation is the norm, resulting from the tightening of newsroom staff — in short, journalists have twice as much work, half the time to produce it and are often tasked with taking their own photos, video and handling social media outreach and interaction by themselves. Providing the media with quality visual content to complement stories
and campaigns not only increases the probability that a story will run, but it helps grow those media relationships that we depend on. As you choose visual content for your clients, here are a few ways you can categorize quality content — this is what you’re striving for.
Personable
The brand voice should be evident in any visual material. Behind-the-scenes photos and pictures of people’s faces emoting trump over-edited graphics and stock photos any day. Stay away from anything that looks mass-produced, overtouched or simply irrelevant. For example, if you’re launching a campaign to promote the opening of a new pizza restaurant, it’s much better to post pictures of real families enjoying pizza at the restaurant, even if they’re less than perfect quality, rather than a perfect stock photo of a piece of pizza.
The same goes for video and audio. Consider your brand voice. Is it present in all of the multimedia collateral you’re producing or sharing for your clients? If not, find small ways to make it happen.
Tactical
It’s all but impossible to log on to Facebook and avoid those 30-second cooking videos. Why are they so ubiquitous? Because they’re visually compelling, easily shareable and give concrete instructions about how to complete a task. How-to’s, tips and tricks always perform well for this reason. Consider the expertise your client has to offer. Maybe it isn’t cooking, but it could be something equally as visually compelling. Even if it’s simply putting a well-known face of your brand in the spotlight to give some advice, it’s worth doing.
When creating tactical video content, bear in mind that many frequently viewed websites enlist auto-play, meaning that they will automatically play for anyone with a WiFi connection. Not everyone will click on an embedded video and watch it in its entirety, but it’s important to create captions or subtitles so that your message can be viewed briefly without customers taking the extra step to actually click.
Data-Driven and Mobile
There’s a reason infographics are so popular. It’s because statistics are a reliable way to quantify a brand message. And when you add beautifully designed graphics to compelling data (properly attributed, of course), you’ve cracked the code for a shareable piece of visual content. In fact, researchers found that colored visuals increase people’s willingness to read content by up to 80 percent — and when people hear information, they’re likely to remember only 10 percent of what is said, compared to a 65 percent retention rate if a relevant photo is included with the same information.
Make sure that infographics show up in a mobile-friendly format across multiple platforms. More than 80 percent of adults worldwide own a smartphone, and 50 percent own a tablet. It’s more important than ever that all visual content is adapted for mobile devices. Social media giant Facebook estimates that more than 65 percent of its videos are viewed on mobile. And if that isn’t compelling enough on its own, research has shown that infographics are liked and shared on social media three times more than any other type of content.
Social Media-Friendly
While it may seem obvious, it’s always smart to make sure that your visual content can be repurposed on social media. There are several small things you can do to make your content more shareable such as using a widget to pull tweetable quotes, and include social media share links on every piece of material produced. Keep in mind that content with relevant images gets 94 percent more views than content without images and visual content is 40 times more likely to be shared on social media over other types of content.
With some strategic planning, strong visual content can become a regular part of your campaign and brand work, helping to cultivate an integrated brand voice to connect deeper with customers and potential clients.
Jamie Izaks is the President and Co-Founder of All Points Public Relations, a Chicago-area agency focusing on the franchising industry. He also co-founded the Northern Illinois Franchise Association.