If you’re not taking advantage of using powerful visual marketing in your social media, you’re missing a huge opportunity for gaining a lot more engagement and potential sales from your social media efforts. The brain processes images 60,000x faster than text. You can’t deny human behavior.

In this article, you will learn 10 very simple ways you can add impact to the visuals you share in social media, adding more context to the images and photos you share, as you improve upon your brand’s visual storytelling ability. Get read to gain some momentum in sharing more visual content in your social media efforts.

I want to give a shout out to somebody that gave me a real inspiration to do thispodcast and blog post. There’s going to be a lot of content that’s going to be created from this content that I saw, on Social Media Examiner, 26 Ways to Use Visuals in Your Social Media Marketing. It was a post on 26 ways to use visuals in your social media marketing, by Debbie Hemley. She’s@dhemley on twitter, and I want to give her a total shoutout because she did a great job putting this all together with some great copy and some great visuals. There are 26 ways she lays out. Today I’m going to touch upon 10 ways that I personally use for social media and visual marketing..

1. Add context with text to your images.

If you want to get some usage out of the photos that you share, and some likes, beyond just sharing some context about what that photo really is, include a piece of text on it.

It could be a saying, or something that inspires you. one of the tools that I use to do that is Diptic, on my smartphone, I believe it’s also available for Android. I also use Instacollage. You can use it create collages, but you can also use it to just add text to one photo. It’s just a great tool.

It could be as simple as including a hashtag. If you want to include a beautiful image that you found, that you’ve taken and add context and storytelling ability to your photo, you can include a hashtag. Whatever it is, get creative. Think of some ideas. Then look for similar hashtags that are on Instagram. I have an app, Tagsforlikes, and it’ll show you some more hashtags that you can grab onto. This way you’re going to increase your reach even more, for people who are not just looking for photos, but are looking for some inspiration and all of us need some inspiration, whether it’s an inspirational quote or something else.

There’s some really compelling photos that you can get a hold of and just add a message. It’s going to more likely be shared by people if there’s some context added to that photo with text. Take a look and see what you can do because I’m telling you – it’s totally worth it. If you look for me on Instagram, I’m vickiesicnj, and you’ll see some of the simple text that I’ve added to images that made my photos shareable. I’ve added it to some of my own photography that I love.

Adding text, especially hashtags, will add more impact to your photos through increased engagement.

2. Create a collage.

If you have several images to share, why not make a collage?. It’ll give you a way to get some mileage out of some photos you’ve already shared because it’ll let people look at it in a different way.

You can totally use one of those tools that I gave you in the first tip – Instacollage or Diptic. There’s some other great tools that you can use as well. Look up “free collage making tools” on the web. Picmonkey will allow you to create a collage. They have some nice templates that you can use, too and that’s an online tool. It’ll allow you to really tell a story with your images rather than just create one image to share.

You can communicate through your images in a number of different ways. You can tell a story. Think about the different places that you’re on in social media, and think of some of the ways that collages will work great for you. I know that Facebook is an excellent place, and completely Instagram. Pinterest, as well, but I highly recommend you check out Instagram and create some interesting collages. You can create it very easily and then share it to Instagram and push it out to your other social media, your Facebook, Twitter, even share it on Google+. It’s a great way to get some extra mileage out of some beautiful photos that you’re already working to create and share.

Create a beautiful collage out of your photos to add another point of view.

3. Use a photo editor for pop.

I believe that you get one chance to make a first impression. If you have an “ok” image and you want to share it in social media, think if there’s something that you want to edit out of the image, especially if you’re taking a product photo, or you want the main subject of the photograph to be more in your face and more prevalent – you might just want to take it into your photo editor.

Think of your photos before you share them. Look at some desktop photo editors, and any kind of photo editors. It could be on your desktop, it could bePicmonkey or your native camera photo editor on your smartphone. A lot of times I will take my photos on my smartphone into an editor called Snapseed. It’s really a great tool. There are a lot of ways that you can adjust contrast. You can put some filters on it, too. Especially if you’re going to be sharing photos for your business. You really want to put on your best impression.

See if you can find a way to edit your photos. Even if it’s just as subtle as just popping up your exposure a little bit and making it a little brighter. You’re going to have your images have so much more impact to break through the clutter. Now you can use photo editing tools to really make your images pop.

Make your photos have more pop before you share them with photo editors like Snapseed.

4. Social Media Cover Photos

Take the opportunity, especially your Facebook photos, to demonstrate what your brand is all about. Facebook gives you a cover photo that’s 851×315. I’ve done posts on how you can use Canva’s social media tools to automatically create a Facebook cover (here is the video). It gives you a great template to use – you don’t have to reinvent and start from the ground up.

Dunkin Donuts is a leader in engaging fans with their Facebook social media cover photos by celebrating fans.

You can collect different types of photos and put them neatly into albums. I’m going to give you an example here. Check out Dunkin Donuts. This is a great example of how they use their Facebook fans who share their own images as fans of the week. They have a template that they pop into. Every week they share a different image of a fan and something that they shared about Dunkin Donuts. Now it’s in an album. You can look at their Facebook album. Also Starbucks does a great job of including different images that they could swap out with their cover photo. It’s a great idea if you just want to refresh your pages on Google+ to just give people something new to look at. Every time you refresh a cover image that does pop into the newsfeed. It will say that so and so brand changed their cover photo. So guess what, it scrolls back into the newsfeed and is refreshed. You can take something old and make it new again.

Don’t be afraid to change your image from time to time, you can have a multitude of images, maybe even templates that you can choose from. Don’t think you have to have just one image. Even your profile photo you can change up from time to time. Maybe your logo, maybe your company image, your corporate office, whatever it is. But definitely take inventory of all of your different cover photos and make sure that you rotate them from time to time.

5. Use Infographics

Infographics are fun and engaging versions of data that people actually read. The content is summarized with graphical representations, keywords, and concise data, making infographics easy to consume and fun to share.

Infographics as a concept is not new. It first appeared in the 1600s when a book was published by Christoph Scheiner with diagrams to demonstrate the rotation of the sun. More recently, infographics have evolved and have become quite the rage for many, especially online marketers.

Let’s talk about infographics as a marketing tool. Infographics focus on visuals to spread information. Businesses have made good use of the power of infographics in their branding.

I totally love infographics. I have a collection of infographics you can check on Pinterest. If you follow me on Pinterest, you can definitely peek into my infographics folder and I collect infographics that I find on Pinterest as well. I use my iPhone app all the time. Take a look at different infographics out there on Pinterest. I have my Pin it tool on my desktop and I also have it on my smartphone. It’s also on my iPad but I use my iPhone so much more.

Whenever I find a great infographic, I grab onto it and put it into my infographics folder. If I want to create a new infographic, I can get some ideas from what’s been done before. Don’t think that you have to reinvent. These infographics are really great visual representations of information – data, knowledge or something that’s complex. There are many different format of infographics. You can have numbered versions. I’ve seen ones with percentages and stats and stuff, so there’s a lot of ways that you can tweak your infographics to be totally personalized and branded.

There are some tools that you can use to create free infographics. I know that Debbie Hemley put in some tools for creating your own infographics, in that article,26 Ways to Include Visuals. For myself, I’m going to be creating some infographics in the very near future. I haven’t gotten there yet, but I know that there are totally tools out there to make people rockstars .

You can look on Fiverr, and look up vendors that create infographics. I was very tempted to use a vendor who created infographics with a style I loved, and you can just pop into it. They used male little caricatures and I wanted female, for a more feminine audience, and I asked him if they could use feminine caricatures on the infographic and they said yes. But at that time, I just wasn’t ready to create the infographic. There are many ways that you can create the infographic.

Visual.ly is a tool for those of you who don’t want to create infographics from the ground up. It’s always easy to work on creating new stuff that’s personalized when you see some really great things that you can do. Just get some great ideas and be inspired.

Infographic by Curata – 14 Expert Content Marketing Insights for Your Brand

6. Facts and stats

Drive home an interesting fact or stat with an image.

Text can be part of a photo, an image, if you create it to drive home a fact. Maybe you want a chart that you’ve taken from something.

Think of a visual that you can create. I’ve done this before, I’m going to share an example with you. Get a stat on your industry. I’m going to give you an example. I love visual marketing. I’m going to try to get people to be hot on it even more. So, I’ve created a graphic just with the stat that visuals are absorbed 60,000 times faster than text by the brain. Simple fact, and I made it really pretty. I used Canva to create it and then I just shared it out there on Instagram. It’s a way to create a visual with a fact. You don’t always have to have something to take a photograph of, or share an image of your product or you at work, totally stats will work, too.

I know that there are a lot of marketing charts out there that can be used. It’s definitely something that I highly recommend. Especially if you want to be an authority in a particular area, then you just should just get a visual representation of that information.

I like charts, illustrations, percentages. It’s just going to give you a better idea than just a photo, and what the photo means. Put it in the text of the post. Put it in the image and just include that one fact.

7. Pinnable images

Pin-it icons will make your images more shareable for a more powerful impact in social media.

If you really want to make your blog posts have an impact that will multiply, make sure that you have a pinnable image in your blog posts. So that when somebody pins it, they’re going to see the links to the article.

Make sure that viewers can pin at least one image in every blog post to Pinterest. A lot of times there will be text blog posts, very textualized. There will be a ton of information and a lot of people don’t just want to sit there and read that information. Most of us are attracted to great visuals, like on Social Media Examiner. I’m always looking for great information and some great ways of doing things, particularly in social media.

Social Media Examiner always has multiple images in their posts. If you look at my website, http://saywowmarketing.com, and you go to my blog, you will see images, a ton of them, and you will be able to choose which image you want to pin. If you only have one image, you’re only going to be able to give your visitor the option of one image up at the top. People do this with the pin bookmarklet. on my iPhone, I have a little Pin it bookmarklet that I downloaded, it’s very easy. Just go tohttp://pinterest.com, grab onto the bookmarklet, it just makes sharing images incredibly easy. People want one stop shopping. People don’t want to have to do multiple things to have one effect.

8. Reviews

Create a photograph out of a review or an accomplishment for added visual impact.

Why not take a screen shot of some review that you’ve gotten. Make that an image to include. I’ll give you an example. When I first launched this podcast, and I jumped to new and noteworthy right in the beginning, I grabbed a screen shot and I used that as an image to share in social media. It’s completely very doable. I believe very necessary so that people continue to see you building your authority and wanting to do business with you. It’s going to be a no-brainer because they see that other people believe in you. We know Yelp, their success exists because people love to see reviews. So why not make your review an image.

If everybody else is just putting reviews the text status updates or they’re just sharing it without an image, it’s going to get lost in the clutter. So those positive reviews are going to go a long way.

9. SEO Your Images.

Make sure that your images are optimized. For more information on how to SEO your images, see my YouTube video: How to SEO Images.

In this post, of course I had to include this tip, because it goes along with your content and your social media marketing. You don’t optimize your images then they’re not going to have that much of an impact because they’re not going to reach as many people. Take a look at my post, on social media images and how to optimize them. I give you a few ways to do that. Including image size, making sure that people can download it without taking too long and also make sure that the color is right, make sure that your title tags are right and that you have some captions added as well. So take a look at that post.

Make your visual’s file name a good description. The reason is that Google needs to see that there is a lot of information in your image. They can’t see images, it’s like a black box. So if you have a descriptive file name, it’s going to allow you to have that file name associate that with your image. They’ll index your file name associated with that image. You’re going to improve your SEO but also it’s going to use the file name in the snippet. In the search engine results page when you come up in the search, you’re also going to have a description of your file name in that. It’s all about being searchable but it takes a little extra time. You went through the trouble of finding the image, maybe even creating the photo. Why not take a second and improve your file name so that you can get as much information in it as you can.

Maybe you want to include your location, your brand name, whatever it is.

I’ll give you another reason. When you pin an image, it’s going to look at your title, but it’s going to look at your file name if you don’t have a title. So if you have a file name like seashell, or something that totally means nothing, you want to make sure that there’s as much rich information in there so that when someone pins that image, you do it right up front. Do it now, less work later.

10. Your Great Moments.

Here's a shot I used of me at an engagement on the topic of social media. Fitting that I would use it in social media.

Share your great moments. Be proud of all of the accomplishments that you make. Show the stuff you’ve got. It’s awards that you’re winning, if you’re speaking at an engagement, especially if there’s a brand name behind you, or something that you could put on a chalkboard, like a hashtag, whatever it is, stage your photos. It’s really going to be very compelling.

I hope these tips really help you. Don’t just follow the crowd, but be a leader in social media and add more visual impact to your brand by engaging your fans.

If you want to share with me what you would like to learn more about in social media or visual marketing, post one question for me athttp://saywowmarketing.com/question and that would be so great. I would love to hear from you.

RESOURCES:

Debbie Haley – http://twitter.com/dhemley
Social Media Examiner – http://socialmediaexaminer.com

Apps
Tags for Likes – http://www.tagsforlikes.com/
Diptic – http://dipticapp.com
Instacollage – https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/instacollage-pro-pic-frame/id530957474?mt=8
Snapseed – https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/snapseed/id439438619?mt=8
Instaquote – https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/instaquote-add-text-captions/id551012097?mt=8
BrainyQuotes - http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/iphone.html
Instaquote - https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/instaquote-add-text-captions/id551012097?mt=8

Online Tools:
Picmonkey – http://picmonkey.com
Canva – http:///canva.com
Fiverr – http://fiverr.com
Pin It Tool – http://pinterest.com
Visually – http://visual.ly
Quotes with Quizio – http://quizio.com

Videos:

How to Create Amazing Graphics for FREE with Design Templates Canva Tutorial
http://youtu.be/IbicR8XFk5Y

How to SEO images – Search Engine Optimization
http://youtu.be/VNvUs__ehAA

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