In March, the whole Agorapulse team traveled to San Diego on a mission to attend the best sessions at Social Media Marketing World, compile notes of the key takeaways and share them with you. We’ve created 20 blog posts from those notes, here’s one of them!
Session Title: How to Create Original Visual Content That People Love to Share
Speaker: Donna Moritz. Donna is a social media strategist and visual marketing specialist based in Queensland, Australia. She is passionate about word of mouth marketing and content strategy and loves visual social media. What lights her up is helping people like you learn how to use visual social media and content strategy to get results in your business. Donna’s blog Socially Sorted has been listed twice as a finalist for Social Media Examiner’s Top 10 Social Media Blogs in 2013 and 2014.
Why you should read this session’s transcript: As consumers and users we process images faster than any other content on the web. In this session Donna guides us through the three main stages of creating awesome content that people love to share. Even if you are not a graphic designer, Donna’s session is jam-packed full of examples and tools that you can use to start making an impact with your visual content.
Quote From the Session: “Zuckerberg wasn’t the first person to post on walls. It’s been happening for centuries”
Three steps to creating “awesome” visuals that people will share
#1 Create Original Visual Content
Do you ever see visuals on social media and think ‘Meh I’ve seen that before’? That’s what we want to avoid at all costs! Follow Donna’s simple steps to create images with dramatic visual impact. Make your visuals go “BOOM”
There are many ways you can use what’s happening in your day-to-day business to create great original content.
How To’s
Quotes
Tips
Checklists
It’s really important to be original. Donna recommends you develop and design images in batches to save you time. Connect an emotion with what you are saying where possible.
If you want to get more shares, you need to:-
Be consistent
Be snackable – provide information in bite size chunks
Use the same template, this will help build recognition.
Have the same underlying message
Post at the same time every day
Help & Inspire your community
Keep it sweet & simple
Be timely and act quickly to make a bigger impact
#2 Create Enticing Images
A great image should give people a preview to why they should click through. Calls to action need to be strong and encourage your community to take the action that you want them to, whether that is a comment, a sign up or a click.
Here are a few suggestions of effective calls to action. They are all very clear in what they are asking fans to do.
Want a sneak peak?
Ask for suggestions
Ask for feedback
Sign-up to get something special
Donna recommends you always use header images on blog posts, that way when your content is shared there will be an enticing visual to encourage people to read it.
Tell stories. Let fans know about what is happening in your business on a daily basis and let them get to know your staff and what they are up to. This is all part of letting fans into your business world and will go a long way to building trust.
#3 Inspire Advocacy
The third essential element to creating highly shareable content is to inspire advocacy. Having your fans share your content is much easier if they have a real reason to want to share. 88% of content shared on Pinterest is other people’s content. By making your visuals sharable on Pinterest you will get much more reach. Putting your fans in the driver seat is a great way to inspire advocacy.
If you have customers on-site, encourage them to click, share and post while they are experiencing something at your premises.
Key Takeaways
Use visuals to inspire your fans by sharing quirky quotes, simple tips, how to’s and checklists
Be timely and plan your content in advance. This will leave you free to engage and react. A great example of this was the Oreo advert in 2013
Batch your visuals so you can schedule them in advance
Make your visual content snackable & relevant. Your community are time poor and you want to make an impact
The Tools
Donna shared her favourite tools with us and we have listed them below with handy links for you to find them quickly
Canva
PicMonkey
Instagram
Snagit
Word Swag
Donna’s session was very informative; she really highlighted the importance of visual content. See the link below to connect with Donna and avail of her free training sessions.
Get Donna’s FREE Training
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