How to Use Images to Improve Content Engagement

It is a well-known fact that most people are image-oriented. People tend to see images before they see words, which is why an image should tell a story without saying a word.

So, how do you choose the perfect images for improving content engagement? There are many things to consider when it comes to choosing the best images for your marketing content. Let’s go over some of the key considerations:

Begin with an Image

Before your readers even get to any written content, they should see an image. This is going to grab their attention, and lead them to the content you want them to read. For instance, if your content is about dog grooming, have a photo of a dog being groomed directly under the heading, like Petco did. This is going to draw attention to the fact that your content is about this particular subject. You can choose to place the image below or beside the headline. Both are acceptable, although there are long-standing arguments as to which is the better method.

Place Images throughout Your Content

Most people tend to get bored if they are looking at nothing but written content. So, in order to keep their attention, you need to break it up with images. Ideally, images should be placed around every 350 words. So, if your content is 1,000 words long, there should be about three images. This gives readers a chance to take in what they have already read, and be ready to keep reading.

Use Images that Showcase Your Products

If you are selling a product, you obviously need to use the images that are going to show that product in the best light. A good camera is a good investment, and you need to take the time to really learn how to use it to your advantage, or hire someone else who can do it for you. Some sites really stand out when it comes to using the right images to showcase products. Check out Gadget Salvation with their “Sell My iPhone” page and see how they are doing it.

Set Your Own Visual Style

Your visual content style should play a large role in your strategy. When it comes to branding, the best way to get people to remember you is to be consistent and reliable. This way, people will see content, and automatically know it is from your company before they even have to read a single word. For instance, you may use a minimalist style, artistic, complex, etc. Whatever style you choose, try to be consistent and use this style throughout all of your content.

Add Main Subheadings to Images

A main subheading can go a long way when accompanied by a related image. This is something that is easy to do, and you can have headings ready in seconds. They should go along with what is in the story, and help really bring the image to life or stand out. A really great example of this can be found at Common Job Interview Questions guide by Uptowork. Notice that the heading is actually right on top of the image. It really helps to drive the message behind the image home, as well as the image behind the message.

Variety is the Spice of Life

Change things up, and use a variety of images that are going to keep visitors interested. Interesting content should include photos, graphs and charts, cartoons or comics, custom images, memes, screenshots, and any other type of images. A good example is CalifiaFarms. Don’t forget to include your logo in all of the custom images you publish. This is going to help cement your company in the minds of your visitors.

Alt Tag Your Images

Every image that you place in your content should have an alt tag. Search engines use alt tags to find images that are relevant to what people are searching for. When you are using the right alt tags, your images are more apt to show up in search results. Images aren’t just featured on image pages either. If they rank high, you will see them on the main search results pages as well. The better the alt tags you use, the higher your images will rank.

Use the Right Social Media for More Impact

There are three social media platforms that you should be taking full advantage of in order to really get the most visual impact. SlideShare is a platform that is completely visual, so you will be communicating exclusively with images. Instagram is another one that can generate more content engagement. You can use this platform to really create your visual style. Don’t forget about Pinterest as well. This is the ideal platform for e-commerce businesses. You can use it to really hone in on your visual approach and generate more leads.

In Conclusion

A picture truly can say a thousand words – – and you can use pictures to tell stories that will help to improve your content engagement and increase your conversion rate. I hope these tips will help you to improve your content and make it more sharable and engaging!

5 Skills Every Digital Marketer Needs to Have

People in the digital marketing field need to have a broad set of skills to be able to execute their position successfully. Employers today are hiring digital marketers that are a good personality fit for their organization. As a result, individuals of the digital marketing field need to focus not only on what they can do for the company, but on interpersonal skills that will help them connect with clients. Here are 5 of the most important skills that a digital marketer must have today to get hired in their field.

The Ability to Adapt

The world of digital marketing moves at lighting speed with updates and changes happening constantly. You need the ability to adapt and embrace these changes if you want to succeed. One example of this is how SEO has been changing in recent times. It was once a more technical job that has more recently began to include content building and the ability to build strong relationships. To be a success in a digital career, you need to be open to change and thrive on it. Your potential clients need employees that can keep up with the speed of the industry and are willing to adapt to all of the changes.

A Hunger to Learn

 Another one of the most valuable skills that define the success of your digital marketing career’s success is how hungry you are to learn continuously. 87% of the most successful digital marketers say the ability to quickly change their strategy has aided in their success. Your passion for keeping up to date and learning the newest trends is the only thing that can ensure you keep up to date with this constantly changing industry. In this world of digital marketing, it’s necessary that you find areas that you are passionate about to specialize in. Find the topics that you read about in your own time and would miss practicing if tomorrow you no longer had a job. Digital companies need individuals that are self-motivated and eager to practice their specialty. Leadership development is a necessity for keeping up to date with news and updates in the industry.

The Desire for Knowledge

When considering a career in the digital marketing field, you better have a curious nature. This curiosity will serve you well by supporting a creative desire to attempt new things and analyze how well your ideas work. A natural curiosity will improve your ability to realize new opportunities, solve complex problems, and make your more comfortable with taking risks. Digital companies need employees that are curious enough to conceive, try out, and analyze new ideas. This is an important set of skills for your success as a digital marketer.

Being a Team Player

 To be a successful digital marketer, it requires a broad knowledge of all the digital concepts and a specialty in one of those particular areas. To maximize the effectiveness of your work, you will need a team of digital marketers specializing in the other areas. You all work as a team and feed off of the knowledge that the others bring to the table. For example, a content marketer can ask an SEO specialist for advice on ranking higher on search engines. It is important in the digital marketing field that you like working with others. If the specialists can’t all get along, it will likely impact productivity.

Having a Positive Attitude

 The longevity of your digital marketing career is dependent on you having a positive attitude and strong personality. Your attitude affects everything that you do, including how productive you are and how well you work with other members of your team. Having a positive attitude that increases overall productivity should be a goal that you have as often as possible. Having content written with strong personality has been proven to help form loyal relationships with 73% of customers. A positive attitude and good personality can certainly help advance your digital marketing career.

Success in the world of digital marketing requires that you have a full skill set that includes not only the knowledge and ability but interpersonal skills as well. Having these five skills are essential to getting hired and having a long, successful career in the field.

10 Laws of a Converting Social Media Strategy

Using social media for your business can help to elevate your audience and customer base. With more than two billion people using Facebook and other platforms, you can achieve some serious exposure and therefore increase the chance to succeed.

Beginners in social media marketing often find the task of converting the audience daunting. Of course, there are numerous factors that influence the outcome of a social media strategy, such as experience. Lack of previous experience with social media audiences can result in some challenges.

This article is here to ensure that these challenges are eliminated even if you have little or zero experience with social media. It brings you ten laws that all effective social media strategies follow to provide the best possible outcomes.

Abiding by these laws will help you to build your brand on social media and create a foundation that will serve you well in the future. Let’s begin.

1. The Law of Accessibility

Social media users encounter hundreds of posts every day. For example, 55 percent of them watch video posts every day, according to BrandWatch. Along with other posts, this translates into gigabytes of information.

With so much content out there, you need to do your best to stand out. Don’t disappear after publishing some posts. Always be available. This involves a constant effort to publish and participate in conversations with other users.

2. The Law of Patience

The exact statistics are unknown but it’s safe to assume that the competition in social media is fierce. For brands, this means that immediate success is just impossible. There is no way you can become well-known and profitable overnight.

This law states that you have to commit to the long-term strategy instead of hoping for a quick success. You don’t want to get your heart broken, do you?

3. The Law of Focus

Surveys show that people trust the brands that concentrate on something specific instead of being an expert in everything. It’s just better to avoid positioning yourself as jack-of-all-trades because you will turn into a master of none.

The law of focus is important for your social media strategy because it teaches you to focus on building a strong brand that specializes in something specific.

4. The Law of Influence

Social media users now turn to influencers for information and entertainment more than ever. According to Influencer Orchestration Network, 86 percent of women use the experience of social influencers before making a purchase. The same source also suggests that 51 percent of social media marketers say that videos produce the best return on investment.

You’ve probably guessed what this law is all about. Use social media influencers to increase conversion.

5. The Law of Listening

The idea of this law is pretty simple: instead of always talking, listen to what your online audience is saying. A customer-centered social media strategy is more beneficial because it helps to identify the most attractive content for potential customers. By listening, we mean reading the content of social media users and joining discussions to add some value to them. As the result of meaningful discussions, a brand can gain a positive reputation and image.

6. The Law of Quality

People who are involved in discussions with the brand on a constant basis are quality followers who need to be kept close. They are the ones that keep the conversation going and build the image of the brand, so their importance should not be underestimated.

Even one quality follower is worth much more than a thousand people who don’t interact with the brand after the initial contact. Quality reigns supreme in this case.

7. The Law of Value

As mentioned above, social media is a highly competitive environment. Brands that don’t value the conversations of social media users will inevitably fail. Those that try their best to create quality useful content for their target audience survive.

This is the law of value: your social media strategy must include only helpful content for your target audience. No value = no interest.

8. The Law of Reciprocity

Converting social strategies involve taking interest in the content of social media users. Why? It would be unreasonable to expect them to take interest in your content if you don’t comment on and share their posts as well.

In simple words, a good relationship starts with a favor. The outcome is beneficial for both the brand and its followers.

9. The Law of Acknowledgment

Making as many connections as possible is one of the primary objectives of brands on social media. No person should be ignored if he or she tries to contact you. Acknowledge them and try to establish positive relationships from the day one.

Otherwise, contacting you again won’t be an option for an ignored person. That’s the law.

10. The Law of Compounding

This law is connected to the law of value reciprocity. If a brand produces interesting and helpful content for its followers, there is a good chance they will find it good enough to be shared on other social media platforms.

As the result, your content will provide more exposure, therefore better online presence for the brand.

Using Keywords to Define User Intent Online

Keywords are the basic foundation of any SEO strategy, and they are typically used as topical concepts to cover throughout your content. All too often, they’re simply used as guideposts that can help you outline your content’s topics of discussion.

To use keywords in such a way, is to waste their true potential. Instead, content creators and SEO professionals should be looking at the intent behind the keyword. What was the searcher’s purpose when they entered that phrase or topic into Google? Join us as we discuss finding intent and applying it to your strategies.

Understanding User Intent

Every single person that uses a search engine has some kind of intent behind their inquiry. They don’t just type in something because they feel like it. They have a reason behind their search. Google seeks to understand this intent and provide results in the SERPs that meet the needs of that search.

MOZ founder Rand Fishkin once described the main categories of search intent as such:

• Navigational – The searcher is looking for a specific website, but they don’t know the URL, or they’d rather do it this way.
• Informational – These are searches that result when people are looking for information or answers about a specific topic. A search like top 10 hosts, for example, would be informational in nature.
• Transactional – This is when someone is ready to purchase a product, find a local company, sign up for a subscription, etc. They have a specific product or type of product in mind, and they’re ready to buy.

Knowing this, you can use your analytics, your keyword research, and various queries around your brand or industry to better understand which type of intent your keywords have behind them.

Applying User Intent to your Keyword Strategy

Doing your own research into specific keywords or intent begins with understanding the meaning behind the concepts your customers are searching for. You should also target long-tail keyword variations, which reveal intent far more than a single word or concept.

For example, if I were to search for “roaches,” then most of the searches will incorporate something about extermination. From this, you could infer than people searching for “roaches” are most likely looking for a solution on how to get rid of them.

It’s also worth noting that searchers tend to go through these categories, one-by-one, when they are on the journey towards making a purchase. Knowing their intent can also give you an idea of where they stand in your sales funnel.

You can use this as an opportunity to modify your calls to action (CTAs),, and cater your pitch to the intent of the users on that page. This also extends to the language you use on your pages. Remember, you’ll get further by honing in on intent than you will by trying to just broadly target keywords.

Understanding your user’s search intent will give you power over your content in a way that simple metrics like search volume never could for your keywords. It will also apply to other aspects of your business, like social media. Remember to look for detailed and long phrases (long-tail keywords) as these will offer more insight into where the customer stands in their buyer journey.

Final Thoughts

User intent is the true power of keywords in today’s SEO world. You should look beyond things like search volume and instead seek to understand the meaning behind what your users are searching. This will give you the knowledge you need to create targeted content that fits their needs.

How to Build a Social Media Content Strategy Like a Pro: Here are the Biggest Secrets

Are you reaching the right prospects? Are you spreading the news about your business? If so, congratulations! You have a well-functioning social media marketing strategy. If the answer is negative, chances are that you haven’t mastered the science of social media content creation yet.

Building a social media content strategy is the key to reaching the right people and making the most of your online presence. The task may seem intimidating at first but if you learn from the experience of the pros in the field, you’ll soon get good results.

So, what does it take to build a solid strategy that’s professional and adequate for your respective field? Keep on reading to discover some of the biggest secrets that social media marketing experts keep to themselves.

Know Your Audience, Know Your Audience, Know Your Audience!

We can’t stress the important of knowing your audience enough. Once again – learn about your audience before attempting to do anything else.

Social media marketing is all about addressing a specific group of people. The more niche and relatable your content is, the better your online reputation will become. When you have a good idea about your audience’s profile, you’ll know how to choose the right channels and how to put together a solid content plan.

Social media audience research is a task that requires time and effort. For a start, you may want to determine your market position. Are you addressing a current need or creating a brand new desire in buyers? What types of people will benefit from the products and services you have to sell? Where are these people located? Are they employed? How much money do they earn?

Doing competition research will give you some idea about the types of people you should be addressing. The same applies to doing paid social media promotion and setting the right demographic criteria. In fact, this is one of the simplest options for populating your communities with the right people and seeing a high return on investment.

Base the Content Strategy on Each Individual Channel

Here’s another essential to keep in mind – you can’t use the same content on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and the other social media profiles that you maintain. Each of these platforms has its specific audience and communication tools. Thus, you should have a separate content strategy for each of the channels that you’re on.

Multiple social media profiles require constant monitoring. You may start with a few of those but sooner or later, you’ll find out that your efforts should be focused on only a couple of channels that deliver the highest level of engagement for your brand.

You’ll learn a bit more about the content that’s best for each channel through experience. In the beginning, however, you may rely on the following tips to boost the relevance of your content strategies:

• Facebook posts: short texts, videos and images tend to benefit from the highest level of engagement. This social network offers quite a lot of versatility when it comes to the content that delivers the best results.
• Twitter: very brief sentences, slogans and images are ideal for the purpose of Twitter promotion. You can also post links to your website with brief captions.
• LinkedIn: opt for longer texts, as well as longer captions that lead to relevant links. When using LinkedIn, keep in mind that you’ll usually get best results by engaging in B2B promotion.
• Instagram: obviously, this channel is the one to use for the publication of photo and video content. Keep the captions short and look for good hashtags.
• Google+: images and links to your website accompanied by brief captions tend to see the highest level of engagement.

Make the Content Itself Good

This tip may seem like an obvious one but many companies ignore the importance of professionally created social media content.

If you don’t have the needed experience and the skills to push out consistent, good content on a regular basis, you should get professionals to do it. TopAussieWriters is just one example of a possibility that you can rely on.

Good posts have a hook, something that gets the audience eager to undertake a certain course of action. You may want to promise an answer to a pressing question, something funny or something that few people know.

When making such promises, you have to deliver. Clickbaiting is a bad strategy because it fools people into believing that you’ll give them something you simply can’t. It may work the first time around but sooner or later, you’ll start losing some of your audience.

Good content is also about regular scheduling. A good social media content strategy schedules updates for regular publication. There’s no need to make multiple updates across channels several times per day. If you only update your profiles once per month, however, it will simply be impossible to keep the audience engaged and coming back for more.

The final thing to remember is that you should constantly keep on checking the performance of your content strategy. Social media provides a lot of analytical information about your top posts, their reach and their engagement level. Find out which types of content gets the best response and which ones miss the mark. You can adjust the strategy on the basis of this information. Social media marketing is a real-time approach. If you’re not getting the return on investment that you desire, you can always modify the campaign to boost its relevance and see better results in the future.

On Thursday, May 25th at 11am PST/2pm EST, Our Friends at PromoRepublic are Hosting a Webinar That You Won’t Want to Miss!

Hosted by PromoRebulic’s Alla Bogdan – Social Media Specialist, Consultant and Influencer

In this webinar, you’ll:

• Define your goals, target audience and content strategy
• Convert your content strategy into an actionable plan
• See examples of posts that drive traffic and conversions
• Create lead-generating posts based on holidays, events and trends

You’ll also receive:

• A live demo on content creation and posting automation
• Free social media templates
• And a special bonus!

RESERVE YOUR SPOT TODAY! We’re looking forward to ‘seeing’ you there!

-The Heyo Team

5 Types of Visual Content You Need to Use in Your Social Media Marketing, From our Friends at PromoRepublic

If you are considering adding online content marketing to your outreach strategy, there are a few things that you need to know in order to create growth and increase engagement. While the importance of text is still very significant, graphical material adds a dimension that simply can’t be expressed by words alone. As attention spans continually shorten, large blocks of text become more unbearable. Give your readers what they want!

In light of the data that 65% of people are visual learners and 90% of all information that we encounter every day is visual, graphical content seems a natural way to improve engagement with your audience. The other side of the coin is that low-quality content can potentially harm your chances of success. It is also crucial to ensure that you have the right to use any content that you did not create yourself, so make sure to give proper attribution for anything that you may borrow.

We’ve created a brief list of visual content strategies to increase the effectiveness of your content marketing.

1. IMAGES

Images are the simplest form of graphical content. These can take the form of photos, memes, screenshots, or animated gifs.

Use images to break up blocks of text, so the reader will have a chance to digest what they’ve read before going on. Content of this type is most effective when you produce it yourself or use an original piece, as this approach gives a personal feel to the material.

Quotes are easily the most shareable content. Just find some that will match your followers interests and place them in a stunning visual. Don’t forget to customize your posts with a logo.

Check out PromoRepublic’s Quotes Category for free. This social media content builder provides 50+ industries with pre-made visual posts templates for 6+ categories from engaging content to promotions, trends to local events and more.

Memes are images that contain some contextual meanings and propagate over time as they are shared and customized by the community. These should be used carefully, so consider your audience. When used effectively, they can add some humor to your posts and appeal to younger followers. The risk with memes is that they often have built-in contexts that can be misinterpreted or misunderstood by a broader readership. However, when used effectively memes can be more compelling that simple images and can inspire an added feeling of community through inside jokes or recurring themes.

Animated gifs can be used when a short piece of animation would be helpful. They offer a bit more depth than static images, and require significantly less time and bandwidth than watching a full video.

Screenshots are useful when providing instructions to your audience. When learning new techniques or how to use new software, selected screenshots can save them a lot of time searching for options. Most modern devices include a screenshot application, but online tools such as Skitch are also available.

2. VIDEOS
   

Videos can combine the capability of images, text, and audio. In this way, they can be quite flexible. They can be used to convey anything from instructions on how to perform a task to testimonials from satisfied customers. While this medium can be very time-consuming, and potentially costly, the impact of having a quality video in a post can be significant. After watching a video, 64% of customers were more likely to purchase a product.

Considering that the average lifespan of a video is about four years, this medium has significant staying power. It is important that any video that you invest your time and money into should be coherent with any other media that you may also post as well as your overall brand image. Moz recently published a study that claims that posts containing videos generate nearly 300% more inbound traffic.

3. INTERACTIVE CONTENT

Another approach to enhance reader engagement is to provide them with interactive content. Questions or quizzes can rapidly pull your readers in and get them invested in your brand. It is best to avoid ‘yes or no’ questions; instead focus on questions with greater depth to get your audience thinking.

Calls to action (CTAs) can also be a useful approach. These are short statements, often at the end of content pieces that are meant to inspire the audience to interact further. They can range from ‘follow us!’ to links to other content like ‘watch this clip!’ When used properly, CTAs should inspire urgency.

4. INFOGRAPHICS
   

Infographics combine images with data and statistics. This presentation method can be useful for expressing facts along with a relevant image or graphs. Your audience will then be more likely to make associations within the presented content where they might not with simple tables of numbers or individual graphs. This medium allows for non-experts to easily digest complicated facts.

There are many variables that will determine how effective an infographic is for your purposes. Things as mundane as choice of colors and fonts can significantly impact the reaction to an infographic.

High-quality infographics tend to be widely shared on social media, so this could be a vehicle for increasing brand awareness quickly. An effective approach when sharing infographics is to include a thumbnail and a hyperlink to your original content. This will avoid size restrictions as well as channeling traffic to your site.

5. PRESENTATIONS

While presentations function similarly to infographics, they are better suited for delivering information sequentially. Once part of the realm of stuffy overhead slideshows, presentations are no longer limited to in-person meetings. Slide-based presentations have become significantly more sophisticated than simple lists of bullet points. Services like SlideShare allow a much greater reach across various platforms.

Effective presentations should make good use of color and multimedia content. Inconsistency in a presentation can be seriously distracting, so try to make things as uniform as possible. When presenting data, it is best to cite the best sources so make sure to check their validity.

GETTING THE MOST OUT OF VISUAL CONTENT

Visual content engages your audience in ways that text cannot. These approaches may be just the thing you need to set your brand apart from your competitors. Well-designed content will deepen the engagement of the audience and provide a real connection between customers and products. There is always some risk involved in visual presentation, and that is mainly encountered when the content is poorly designed or boring. This type of content will at best take up page space, or worse, alienate potential customers. Substance will always drive any visual content, but presentation style is what sets ‘good’ apart from ‘great.’

CREATE GREAT VISUAL CONTENT WITH PROMOREPUBLIC

PromoRepublic has all the tools you need to create, in some cases, the posts themselves, and in other cases like video and presentations, the elements you need. With a library of images, pre-made professional templates and a drag-and-drop editor that’s native to the software, you can’t go wrong. If visual content is your priority, PromoRepublic is your resource. Plus, you can schedule posts on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram, view your analytics and more. Readers of this blog are encouraged to try PromoRepublic for free. Don’t let your visual game lag.