In an increasingly noisy and crowded digital landscape, marketers have to use visuals to stand out from the immense competition.

Blogs were the first form of networking online where people/companies/brands would post content in order to be found. The world then moved onto Facebook, where our content became shorter. Then microblogs like Twitter came along, and our content became even shorter to 140 characters.

Now we are skipping text altogether with the rise of visual social networks like Instagram and Pinterest, which allow marketers to show their creative prowess.

Images

Creating different images for each social network is the way to go. This is due to differences in dimension — an image that may be shown on Tumblr may get cut on Facebook — and the uniqueness of each platform, audience-wise.

Images need to showcase the message you want to pass. A little bit of branding in images is also a good idea in terms of a bit of consistency.

Videos/animations

The rise of video-centric social networks like Vine and Instagram (videos) have proven that short videos are the new favorite of audiences.

A video does not even need to be professionally shot for it to connect with audiences. Marketers need to ensure each video tells a story and passes the relevant message in a few seconds/minutes.

Brands can use videos wisely by allowing their audiences to share their own creativity and tell their own stories via videos. This is a genuine and engaging way for brands to connect with audiences and vice-versa.

Infographics

Everyone is looking for data in a presentable and easy-to-digest format, rather than plain and boring paragraphs of text.

Infographics summarize and highlight the most important pieces of data on a topic, in a visually stimulating way, making it more shareable and viral in nature. Pinterest and Slideshare are the primary social networks for marketing using infographics.

Here is a personal collection of my favorite infographics.

Presentations

Over the past few years, SlideShare has become a hugely popular social network, primarily for B2B marketing using presentations. A well-done, visual presentation showcases the knowledge, expertise and creativity of not just a marketer for a brand, but also when it comes to personal branding.

With Slideshare also enabling infographics, this platform is becoming more visual and a lot more important for marketing.

More ideas

  • Have visual recordings of important talks
  • Get a subscription to use stock images
  • Create a visual summary of published content
  • Create a presentation of notes from talks
  • Inspire your audience to share images and videos that you can use