Summer brings up so many great memories and adventures for each of us. We remember our childhoods spent out of school, going to the pool and our summer vacations. As adults, we still embrace that unique feeling of all the fun summer can bring, which can translate into the way companies engage with their audience. By keeping the easy, fun feelings of summer in mind, marketers can create some great promotions.
Based on the popularity of specific visual marketing trends in the last year, here are a few areas where videos, gifs, images, and other media can help marketers create engaging campaigns that keep audience interest.
Videos Still Get More Engagement
Studies have shown that video gets shown more in Facebook newsfeeds, thus increasing the likelihood that they will be engaged with more overall. According to a study recap from Buzzsumo, “The average video post in April 2017 reached 12.05% of the total page audience, just ahead of photos at 11.63%, links at 7.81%, and status updates at only 4.56%.”
This means that a regular post with no media at all reaches less than 40% of a page’s Facebook audience than a video post does.
Uploading video on your Facebook page has been directly correlated to increased engagement as well. Users are much more likely to share a video or a photo than a regular text post, and many marketers believe that Facebook tends to favor native media uploaded to their site versus links to media on sites like YouTube. This correlates with data reported by Forbes that found that native videos on Facebook get shared 10 times as much as links to YouTube videos.
This increase in visibility and engagement means that summer may be the ideal time to try video, especially if you’re running exclusive campaigns or events. If you want to promote your content creation with video, try tools like Ripl or PowerPoint + screen record.
Utilize Live Video
In addition to uploading native video onto social media, live video is continuing to help marketers grow their online communities, especially because it inspires audiences to be more engaged. The aforementioned Buzzsumo study found “that Facebook Live videos attract a much higher number of comments relative to overall interactions. Around 25% of the interactions were comments.”
You can currently do live video on Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and Periscope. Try starting it with your biggest audience, and then saving your live stream from that platform and republishing it as a native video on your other social platforms. That way you get the benefit of trying live video and also creating a native video you can share elsewhere.
Try Boomerang if You Haven’t Already
Another method of video that has continued to grow in popularity is Boomerang videos, which was just launched by Instagram in 2015. This standalone app makes mini-videos that are 1-2 seconds long and can be replayed in a loop forward or backward.
Originally created to be shared on Instagram (and that’s still the most prevalent place you will see them), the Boomerang app now lets you save and share videos on Facebook, Twitter, and other social platforms.
The Boomerang videos loop automatically on Instagram, but the settings may be different on other social media platforms, so keep that in mind as you share videos.
If you’re looking to create longer videos than 1-2 seconds, you can also try other social media platform’s different video options, which let you upload videos instantly, directly from their app. Twitter and Facebook allow this, as well as YouTube.
Make Your Own Gifs
Another way to use video is to make your own gifs out of video clips. This is something a few big brands have started doing, especially with promoted posts on sites like Buzzfeed and Imgur.
This type of sponsored content usually gets a lot of engagement because it is targeting millennials and Gen X with a type of media that media that they regularly use to communicate with others. Some people even prefer using gifs and emojis to convey their feelings instead of text.
This example of a promoted post on Imgur showcases how they created a TV commercial that’s already being run on regular network TV, creating a cross-platform opportunity for users to see this commercial content they created.
Gifs can be used for summer promotions by repurposing video that’s already been created or to add relevance or panache to a regular social media update. Facebook and Twitter both now support gif animation.
If you don’t have video editing software available (or just want something fast), Giphy and Imgflip both have online gif makers that can be used to create gifs. However, it should be noted that using an online tool versus a piece of professional software might affect the quality, resulting in pixelation.
Try Photo Styling
Finally, though the majority of the tips in this post have dealt with “moving” media in the form of regular or looped video, photos should still be a very relevant part of your summer visual marketing strategy.
We are seeing more creativity with images; especially since most social media platforms now allow the addition of custom filters and frames for images. Brands should consider experimenting with filters and frames that add more visual creativity to their images.
Facebook also allows brands to tag products in photos on Facebook and Instagram, so you can tag your own offerings in the photos you are sharing.
No matter how you decide to style your images, you can expect to see a bigger lift in engagement from photos that have other media styles applied to them, as opposed to “regular” photos. The key is to not overdo it!
Visual media trends in marketing continue to evolve, and by utilizing the fun and creativity of summer to try new content, you can see what works and what doesn’t. This will help you figure out your strategy in the coming seasons.
Besides visual content, you can also try giveaways this summer! Woobox allows anyone to create quizzes or giveaway campaigns for free. You only pay when it’s time to publish. Try Woobox for free now.