Social sharing must be built into every aspect of what we do today. Make it easier for others to interact with you on your site and in your social networking accounts. Above all, ensure it is obvious how they can share what you do. Creating a portfolio of compelling images to use multiplies your visibility on every social platform.
Why You Need an Image Portfolio
Is your brand visual enough? Between text being smaller and more difficult to read on mobile devices and people just preferring not to read, utilizing creative images is essential. Gathering these images into an online portfolio makes them more available to repurpose in videos, Slide Shares, blog posts, white pages, PowerPoint presentations and more.
Remember to keep updating. The most common mistake is to create a portfolio once and then never add to it. Not only does that cause a loss of opportunities, it can lead visitors to believe your business is not still active. Treat your online portfolio the way you do your social accounts. See these tips on how to make your portfolio even better.
By putting your portfolio online your team has instant access. Organize your images in a logical manner to trigger ideas for reuse. Ensuring every image can easily to shared will encourage them to add images more often to their updates on Facebook, Twitter, Tsu, LinkedIn and elsewhere.
Create images that illustrate the services you offer as well as products you sell. Optimize them for Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn. Getting the most out of each of these platforms requires a different type and size of image. Less time and effort is involved in creating multiple images of different sizes at the same time. By having a portfolio you can keep multiple image sizes organized.
Benefits of Image Portfolios
Most content gets published and shared once - and often not very well shared the first time. Organize your evergreen pillar content logically along with social media optimized images. That content deserves to be reshared regularly to social networks. Include it in future white papers and case studies. Images are essential for calling attention to what you share.
Make your portfolio public in a well organized manner. The more entertaining and colorful your images are, the more likely visitors will choose to add them to their own social timelines. Images can be more compelling than text for many people. They are more likely to be shared.
Maybe you have some seasonal content. Keeping track of when the optimum time to share it is can increase traffic and especially sales. Update, repin and reshare it during the optimum season. Or use it for ideas to create new, similar content for this season.
Pinning Your Images
Now that you have all your images collected where you can use them and associated with particular content links, share and pin one on your Twitter and Facebook accounts each day (or as often as you can make the time). Research done by BufferSocial found pinning an image on Twitter generated a 10x different in conversions.
The odds of your followers on any social network seeing what you share the first time are not good. Serious social media mavens share all of their content more than once. The key is to spread those shares out enough that they do not annoy your followers. How this is done depends upon the platform.
For example, on Twitter one method is to share your content 3 times 8 hours apart. For content you really want to promote, images are essential. Each time you share the image needs to be included in the tweet. The tweets should be pinned to your profile.
Timing matters, too. Friday evening through Sunday mornings are the quietest times on most social networks. They are when what you share is least likely to be seen - but also more likely to stay visible for longer. The exception is Pinterest which is hot on Saturday morning. If you're selling products or services, especially those of interest to women, you'll want to pin them on Saturday early morning in the time zone your target audience is in.
BuzzSumo analyzed 100 million articles to determine why content goes viral. Of the top ten recommendations, three relate to image use and a fourth has to do with resharing your content:
- Having at least one image in your post leads to more Facebook shares
- Having at least one image in your post leads to more Twitter shares
- People love to share lists and infographics
- Repromote your old content on a regular basis
Creating a really impressive image portfolio increases your odds of landing clients or your dream position. Some even recommend forsaking the resume for a portfolio. Organize it and make it available online so your team, customers, and visitors can all be sharing your content virally.