Visual Content: A Powerful Weapon For Attracting Attention

Close to two decades ago, search engines knew no other way of conveying information to their searchers besides the plain-text format. That was during a time when consumers of online content were limited to using desktop browsers, the online competition was minimal, and computers hadn’t become the household gadgets that they are now. Technology then wasn’t too smart either.

Fast forward to today when most browsers are mobile gadgets – phones, tablets, and laptops – whose screens are relatively small. Today’s economy is also faster than it was in 2000 and people have grown more impatient. Research shows that the modern consumer gets immediately disinterested in a website if they cannot scan through it and understand its content within seconds. These changes have necessitated the adoption of visualized content – imagery and videos – by Google and other search engines.

Visual content complements text in conveying lengthy information to searchers. It basically highlights bulky information in a catchy, attention-grabbing format and then motivates searchers to read the text for a more relevant, richer understanding. Google, in particular, has spiced things up in the recent past by introducing  AMP stories which are making its content fun, engaging, and easy to find. Google Images and featured videos, on the other hand, are now getting priority over plain text in the searches and have become the key to finding plain text information on the web.

How Important Is Visualized Content For Online Marketing? What Do The Facts Tell Us?

As we have deduced earlier in this article, visual content complements text in delivering information in a more interesting format. But are there other compelling reasons for you to add visual content to your website? Let’s consider the facts:

Content Must Be Easy To Consume

The social media is, without a doubt, the greatest marketing platform ever. It goes without saying that every business owner or online marketer must create content that’s easily consumable on as many social media channels as possible. That being said, visual content is having a field day on social media as compared to plain text content that has been on a constant decline recently in terms of viewership.

Video & Image Engagement Is Increasing

Market studies reveal that videos and images get twice the attention plain text gets on Facebook and nearly triple the retweets on Twitter. As for the engagements- likes, comments, and shares on Instagram and Twitter, images and videos have an engagement rate of 70%, text only has 25%, and remaining 15% goes to embedded links.

Visuals Persuade

A study by the Wharton School of Business found that for any business presentation, verbal communications without visuals persuade one out of every two people in the audience. Add visuals to the presentation and the number grows to two people for every three participants.

You Have To Move Fast

The average engagement time for online content falls below 28 seconds. There are over 1.5 billion units of new content on the web every day. These two stats tell you that if you don’t engage your target audience fast enough, there are billion other options for them to run to. Visual content is the surest way of engaging them.

How Do You Leverage Visual Content Fully?

Creating visual content for your web audience is one thing, leveraging it is another. You need a workable strategy to come up with content that people will actually like and that will give you an edge over competitors. Here are a few tips that will help you to create the best visual content:

#1 Get To Know Your Audience

Before creating your content, first study your target audience and understand what appeals to them most; what communicates directly to their souls. It would be efforts in futility if you create a video whose content is unpopular among the audience, regardless of how relevant you find it to be.

Outsource to Europe mentions “Well-written content helps your business sell more, and at the end of the day, that is what matters the most. Your content is not just an arrangement of words, it rather is a manifestation of your core values and what you actually want to convey to your visitors & potential customers”.

#2 Make It Relateable

Always center your visual content on your products or services and then back it up with a relatable background story. The visuals should draw people to the story. Not the other way round.

#3 Make It Shareable

Make your content as share-worthy on social media as possible. If your existing audience can share your content with their friends on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, you stand a better chance of covering new grounds faster.

#4 Keep True To Yourself

Don’t dilute your brand with substandard, inconsistent, and vague content. Remember that as you target new customers, you equally need to retain the existing ones. Be guided by the standards that you’ve already established for your brand.

#5 Make Them Want More

Your visual content should spark instant curiosity in everyone who sets eyes on it. Make people hunger for more because that’s the only way they will come browsing through your website. No matter how entertaining a video is, it will never generate new business leads if it doesn’t motivate the viewers to engage with your pages further.

Visual content is inarguably the most powerful weapon for attracting attention on the web today. That’s why you need to always get it right when creating visuals for your audience. If you ever need help, there are companies, who offer tools for AMP Story creations, among other visuals. These companies have invested in the best technology and personnel available who will make your visual content trendy at all times for optimal results.

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