Dos and Don’ts of Using Visual Media in Your Brand Building Content Strategy
Visual media, such as pictures and videos, are powerful brand building content. Without images and videos, a content strategy is incomplete. It arouses the senses with color, texture, and sound. In all of its forms, visual media are like little nuggets of gold; Each makes your brand shine and stand out. By carefully selecting the images and videos, they become priceless to your brand and business. Visual media has a place in every content marketing strategy.
1. Do illustrate your brand with images.
A picture is worth a 1,000 words. Each image adds character and builds your brand. Ultimately, you want to attract readers, who want to buy your product. So, you choose images that best reflect and portrays your brand’s image.
2. Do use a variety of visual images.
Pictures, videos, and photos aren’t the only types of images you can use to build your brand. Other visual images, like sketches, charts and graphs, add variety and favor to your efforts. Each type adds strength and impact to your brand.
3. Do consider all aspects of each picture.
Although this is number three, it’s one of the most important rule of building brands through visual media. From the smile on the subject’s face to the background, every aspect of a picture adds to the image of the brand in the potential customer’s head. And this rule counts with videos, too. Scrutinize each piece before using it in your brand building efforts.
4. Do use a picture or video as a conversation piece to encourage comments.
Pictures and video are fantastic centerpieces to spark a conversion between readers and encourage silent readers to comment for the first time. You can ask your followers to create a tag line for an image or ask a question about something related to the image to start a debate. For example, a travel agency might select a picture of an airplane and ask followers what they like most about traveling by plane.
5. Don’t overuse.
Think of pictures as icing. Laying on too much icing overpowers the cake and turns it cloyingly sweet. On the other hand, too little icing has the opposite effect. Avoid using visual media as the only type of content. Remember it’s the icing, not the cake.
6. Don’t rely solely on picture mills.
Picture mills are an asset to your content efforts, but often lack originality. Creating images, photos, sketches and graphs will help a business build their brand and ensure that the company is the only source of those images or videos. In a world where penguins and pandas rule, business need to control everything about their web presence, including the quality and quantity of images. If you must use a picture mill, choose relevant images with the least amount of downloads.
7. Don’t select long videos.
Visual media builds brands, but only if you select the right ones. Long videos don’t work well for two reasons. First, potential customers have limited time and attention span. They are more likely to watch a short video from start to finish. Secondly, you would need to watch and scrutinize the video in its entirety to ensure that it matches your brand’s image. You have limited time, too.
Using visual media will turn your ordinary content strategy into a stronger, complete brand building technique, which helps to develop brand loyalty. And it’s all thanks to a little eye candy in your content strategy.
Where do you find your images and videos? Do you make your own or hire a photographer?
About Yi Yun
