I believe the time has come to replace 'Content is king' with 'Visual content is king'. Nevertheless, landing the perfect image on your social profiles is hard. Social media image marketing is definitely not just about taking advertisements or pictures of happy customers and posting them as images on your social profiles. There's a lot more to it.
Modern-day technology users continuously use their mobile phones to take pictures on the go and social media feeds are filled with them. Then why shouldn't brands follow this trend? Of course, brands can't just share any image they want. They have to put some effort into finding the perfect image for social media.
How exactly can brands offer a complete visual experience to increase engagement?
If you apply proper image marketing, make sure you can tick off at least one of these requirements:
1. Engage with your community
2. Improve branding
3. Drive traffic to your landing page
4. Promote upcoming events
5. Demonstrate a lifestyle advantage associated with your product
6. Make a statement
Bear in mind that whenever you upload an image to your social profiles, you do so to meet (at least) one of these goals. Have a look at the tweet from Starbucks below, which improves branding and links their brand to a certain lifestyle. 2 goals met in one single picture!
Here's what you should consider to score the perfect image with your own brand:
1. Always put image quality first
The first thing you have watch out for, is the quality of the picture you want to send out. There's no need to hire expensive professional photographers, just make basic quality check ups. If you find a compelling photo, but the actual picture is rather blurry, think about how unprofessional this will make you look.
2. Make a statement to get clicks
Getting clicks to your landing page, is of course the ultimate goal of social media image marketing. If your image isn't bold enough and doesn't make you stand out, why would you go through the effort of publishing it?
3. Simple and powerful images are key
There's no need to use complex pictures. If you scroll down in your social feeds, you'll be more likely to stop for an image that covers these two crucial items: simple and powerful.
4. Share your big moment
Don't be afraid to spread the word on an accomplishment your company is proud of. Share pictures of an important conference, a corporate event or an award you just won. Use them on all your social profiles to boost your company's image because visual brand storytelling really works!
5. Try new types of visual social media content
A type of content everyone is fond about are infographics. There are several advantages to infographics: not only can you incorporate images, you'll also be able to integrate statistics, logos, icons, etc. The possibilities are endless. Good infographics have a very high shareability!
In short, you don't have to be a creative genius to score the perfect image. Just play by the rules, implement a good strategy and always make sure you go for a solid execution.