A Quick Marketing Guide On How to Utilize Visual Content On Social Media

Fact:

People’s attention span is shorter than that of a goldfish.

We lose concentration in about 8 seconds and this is probably an effect of the mobile age and our digitalized lifestyle.

Because of this, it’s critical that you know how to promote your business using visual content on social media. Blogs and posts with images are up to 95% more likely to be viewed than those without.

Now, if you want to learn how to use images to promote your social media page and business, then check out the tips below.

Use High-Quality Images

Using high-quality images is one of the most important things you can do for your business. Having high-quality images can show that your brand or product is legit and is of high-quality as well. Most of the time, the quality of images you use is more valuable than the product descriptions you create.

So, be smart when choosing. Make sure that your photos resonate not only with your target audience’s interests but with your brand as well.

Don’t confuse quality with image size, too. You wouldn’t want your images to be too big since that may interfere with the load time of your page. It would be a good idea to downsize your images if they are more than 2000 pixels.

Where to Find Images for Your Content

pexels free images

High-quality and captivating images that attract attention are often too expensive to purchase. However, there are some amazing sites that offer free photos that are not only high-quality but attractive as well.

Here’s a list of the five sites that offer amazing free images that you can use for your social media pages

Create Your Own Images

If you want to add a more personal touch to your social media strategy, using original images is a good idea. You can edit and personalize them even more by using some of the many free editing tools you can find online, like Canva or PicMonkey.

If you don’t consider yourself to be a good photographer or graphic designer and have a small budget, you can always hire a freelancer who does small and quick projects. You can use freelancing sites like UpWork and JobRack to hire a photographer or a graphic designer. You could also use Fiverr.

By going this route, you can brand your images so they are easily recognizable. You can give the professional photographer/designer specific guidelines regarding the colors, fonts, and layouts you want.

Engage Your Audience

In order to promote your business alongside your social media page, you’ll need to get more engagement from your followers. Images are a great way to do that.

Encouraging your followers to be more active and involved with your page or site gives them a chance to contribute and share their ideas.

For example, you can post a funny photo and you can ask your followers to create a caption for it. You can also try asking your audience light-hearted questions like “What is your morning routine?” with a photo of you or your team doing something funny in the morning.

Encouraging discussions and answering your followers’ questions will make them feel acknowledged. This will increase engagement and promote your social media page.

If you sell a product, you can ask your followers to post photos of them with your product on your page. You can start a challenge or a game out of that. Just make sure to reward the photo that gathered the highest number of likes or shares in order to motivate your followers more.

Optimize Your Images for Social Media

As a business owner or a marketer, you are probably aware of the fact that adding SEO to your content could lead toward higher search rankings and more traffic.

But did you know that you can also optimize your images?

In fact, images have the power to improve your traffic through SEO. Here are a few tips on how you can do that:

  • Post interesting pictures that will catch your followers’ attention. More often than not, use images with warm colors since they attract more attention and are more likely to be liked or shared.
  • Make sure that the caption of your image conveys a certain message related to the image in question.
  • To ensure faster load time, keep your images small without sacrificing the quality. You can reduce the size of your images by using some free tools online.
  • Make sure that the filename of your image contains descriptive keywords that describe the image as well as its title or caption.
  • Post images that are relevant to your target audience.
  • Horizontal (4:3) and square images are more shareable than vertical ones.
  • Use different types of images to keep your audience interested, like stock photos, cell phone photos, animated gifs, infographics, pictures with text, memes, and so on.
  • Brand your images so that your brand is easily and instantly recognizable by using colors, fonts, and proper layout.
  • Optimize your images so they fit each social media platform.

See Also: Finding Out the Best Time for Posting on Social Media Sites

Use Instagram and Pinterest

instagram users

Visual social media platforms are taking the internet by storm. Instagram and Pinterest are the two most popular ones. Using these platforms can expand your brand’s presence, increase engagement with your followers, and connect you with other influencers from your industry.

Pinterest users are more likely to shop online than non-Pinterest users and the platform is used more for curating images rather than sharing personal ones. If you want to learn more about this platform, check out this amazing guide to Pinterest Marketing.

On the other hand, Instagram is more likely to be used for sharing personal images, making it a better choice if you want to give your followers a more authentic view of your brand.

If you still aren’t using these platforms, give at least one a go and make your business look more professional, creative, and exciting.

See Also: 5 Instagram Tools That Can Boost Brand Performance

Final Words

Social media pages are powerful tools that can immensely help promote your business. So, create your brand’s digital personality by using visual content on social media. Be original, post high-quality images, engage with your audience, and promote your brand to the best of your abilities.

About the Author:

Nate Gadzhibalaev is the founder of Amplifr, a service that assists individuals and businesses by automatically scheduling their social media posts, helping them to earn more money. With a background in product managing, business development, and international growth, he aims to help individuals and businesses by showing them how they can continue to grow their audience profitably and efficiently.

 

The post A Quick Marketing Guide On How to Utilize Visual Content On Social Media appeared first on Dumb Little Man.

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3 Deadly Myths You Need To Dismiss About Success

You’re reading 3 Deadly Myths You Need To Dismiss About Success, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’re enjoying this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.

success myths

success myths

Success for most people is equivalent to money, cars, luxury, and hot chicks.

Is this definition universal?

Nope, but it’s widely accepted because the notions above are the most widely accessible set of ideas of a ‘successful’ life.

Indeed, success is beyond materialism, lust for authority, or the ability to have worldly pleasures at your will. You can shatter the notion, reprogram your brain, and personalize the meaning of the term.

How?

You’ve to dig beneath the surface and behold your inner voice. Find work that you genuinely enjoy and put effort into your craft to ensure you stay relevant.

Besides its definition, today I want to present three myths that hold you back from reaching your potential. Check out if you’re clenching onto any of the myths.

Myth 1: Hard work guarantees success in any field you choose to pursue

Hard work is under your control. It’s internal.

But the outcome of your efforts is a worldly event.

You can pray, send out positive vibes to the universe, say aloud positive affirmations, or whatever floats your boat. These might be efficacious in soothing your nerves, but the external factors that determine your success can’t be discounted.

Maybe the person next in line to you got lucky. Perhaps his natural talent surpasses your fruit of labor. Else, it’s also possible that your timing wasn’t right.

The truth is, nobody can predict your chances of succeeding despite you giving your best shot (unless you’re into occult sciences).

We all use tools — believing in “karma” or the presence of an external force that determines our fate.

It’s essential because taking the blame on yourself for all your failures/successes won’t lead you anywhere. The inner emotional turmoil you will have to go through as a result isn’t simply worth it.

So don’t doubt your skills and talents – push through your impostor syndrome.

Go for your dream — all guns blazing! But don’t remain hopeful to stand out as the winner. Do it for the sheer love of your craft. Trust the process.

Ryan Holiday put it precisely in his book Ego is the Enemy, “Instead of pretending that we are living some great story, we must remain focused on the execution—and on executing with excellence. We must shun the false crown and continue working on what got us here.”

If you adopt the stoic way, you’ll cultivate the mental resilience to jump back from minor setbacks. And create more space for extraordinary moments in your life.

Myth 2: It’s a level playing field, and you can ‘make it’ merely by working on your core skill set

Look around in these fields: Entertainment. Business. Sports. Politics. Art. Education.

Nepotism is real. The powerful and influential have it better. Money, coaches, and resources are all tools that will facilitate your success.

Now, you can choose to complain about the unethical violation and waste your time. Else, satisfice your emotional pain by taking the smarter route and working smartly.

Analyze and understand the weaknesses that make you inferior to the people that you feel have it easy.

Do you have the meta-knowledge of how your career works?

Put work to find out information that can give you a competitive advantage in your industry.

Is there a sub-skill that you lack? If yes, then how can you cultivate it?
How can you get access to the influential insider network of your industry that puts you on the radar for promising opportunities?

I am not saying you’ll get all the answers, but having a solution-oriented mindset is the best you can do as an outsider.

Besides working on your core skills, it’s impertinent that you make yourself more marketable. In the digital era, visibility of your work online can reward you with enriching career opportunities.

For instance, many creative entrepreneurs making a living through YouTube while practicing music, drama, and art.

3. Reverse engineering mega-successful people will provide the ‘simple steps’ you need to take

Listen, mate:

We’re wired differently. We’re unique creatures with different capacities and inclinations.

I won’t further it into a “you’re special” self-serving slant.

Simply put, the accomplishment of desired results isn’t always definable in a template. The world is fast-moving, and none of the industries we work in are composed of static parts.

Even legitimate “make money online” courses that provide a blueprint for starting a successful business don’t make a 100% promise. Rather, they offer a 30 days money back guarantee (if you aren’t satisfied).

The wisdom shared in such courses is extraordinary, but only you can find out if the course works for you.

How?

By taking action.

Once you implement the lessons in these courses, you’ll start seeing the practical limitations of time, resources, and skills.

A retrospective analysis of success paints an inspiring picture. And the adrenaline is what our brains desire. But media houses conveniently ignore the subtle details of advantages and failure that make the narrative uninspiring. It’s called as the survivorship bias.

Sure, research on the mega-successful and derive inspiration. But you need not beat yourself if a plan doesn’t work as expected.

Success is a combination of various moving components (including you). If you can’t get up at 5 am every morning that doesn’t necessarily mean that you can’t achieve desired results.

If you even fail to put hard work consistently, don’t lose heart. Get back to the drawing board and analyze what worked and didn’t work well for you. Then come back and get that combination right the next time.

The arguments I make in this article might sound negative and could shatter the conventional wisdom that exists regarding personal development. Trust me, though, if you accept them, you can overpower them by looking for solutions (a few of whom I shared in the article).

Which myth about success was holding you back? Let me know in the comments.

You’ve read 3 Deadly Myths You Need To Dismiss About Success, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’ve enjoyed this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.

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You can only protect your liberties in this world by protecting the other man’s freedom. You can only be free if I am free.- Clarence Darrow

When Government Drew the Color Line

Government agencies used public housing to clear mixed neighborhoods and create segregated ones. Governments built highways as buffers to keep the races apart. They used federal mortgage insurance to usher in an era of suburbanization on the condition that developers keep blacks out. From New Dealers to county sheriffs, government agencies at every level helped impose segregation.

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💗 Love is in air 💗It seems like everywhere you look, you can see…

💗 Love is in air 💗

It seems like everywhere you look, you can see tender moments between couples – including in the animal kingdom. So this Valentine’s Day say, “Awww!” with sweet pics of animals showing affection: https://on.doi.gov/affectionateanimals.

 

Love, It’s What Makes ‘Suburra’

Suburra: Blood on Rome, an excellent new crime series from Netflix and RAI, manages to combine the pacing of a thriller with an almost sociological diorama of Roman society, a slicker, abbreviated version of The Wire’s portrait of Baltimore. Even amidst Rome’s gaudy beauty, the staccato bursts of violence, and the elaborately choreographed sex scenes—particularly the show’s opening orgy, which resembles a tangle of deviant, writhing Bernini sculptures—the surprising and ultimately tragic intimacy that develops between Aureliano and Spadino stands out as one of Suburra’s great pleasures, setting it apart from the plodding, grisly portentousness of contemporary prestige crime dramas such as Narcos.

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Wooo! This bald eagle at Crab Orchard National Wildlife Refuge…

 

Wooo! This bald eagle at Crab Orchard National Wildlife Refuge in Illinois is cheering on America in the Winter Olympics. You can easily spot the massive nests of eagles in the bare trees during winter at the refuge. They also make their presence known with daring dives, wide wing spans and screaming calls. We’re glad they’re on our team. Photo by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

 

“Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half.” -Gore Vidal

gore-vidal-533-470x3081-400x262

The Photographs I’ve Never Seen

Today, behind the computerized shutter-click of a smartphone camera, I still sometimes sense in myself and in others the impulse to remember something before it’s over—to make some use of an experience even as it’s still happening. Some might explain this as the artist’s instinct to capture and transform. From another perspective, it’s the intellectual’s urge to analyze, to further experience the experience. Or is it a kind of compulsion—in its most cynical form, the capitalist’s need to consume the moment, to own it? One thinks of the tourist too busy photographing to see the actual living that is occurring all around him. He forces a fleeting present more quickly into the realm of that-has-been, and the local passersby laugh at his shortsightedness.

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