Increasing Online Engagement with the Right Graphic
Nowadays people are scrolling through social media in a slightly distracted way – sometimes for only a few minutes at a time. So, the saying, “a picture is worth a thousand words” has never been more accurate.
It’s true – our brains were built for visual information. In fact, humans recall information 55% more efficiently when it’s paired with a graphic. This means that, as marketers, we have the responsibility of creating graphics that drives engagements and brings brand awareness.
Here’s a quick guide to better understand the different types of social media graphics that can have a powerful impact on your brand and skyrocket membership engagements in your organization.
Nowadays people are scrolling through social media in a slightly distracted way – sometimes for only a few minutes at a time. So, the saying, “a picture is worth a thousand words” has never been more accurate.
It’s true – our brains were built for visual information. In fact, humans recall information 55% more efficiently when it’s paired with a graphic. This means that, as marketers, we have the responsibility of creating graphics that drives engagements and brings brand awareness.
Here’s a quick guide to better understand the different types of social media graphics that can have a powerful impact on your brand and skyrocket online engagements in your business.
GIFs
If you’re in marketing, you’re aware of the high social media engagements that GIFs produce. There are limitless creative avenues you can go down with them - they have a wide variety of uses. Here’s a list of possible GIF concepts that your brand name could benefit from:
Branded GIF
Show your product off! It’s an easy and graphic way to present what you have to offer.
Try creating a contest that challenges your customers to make a GIF of them using your product! Not only will you be creating both employee engagement and customer engagement, but you’ll also have some great content to share. Everyone will want to showcase their own creativity and potentially win!
Reaction GIF
Incorporate some excitement about your brand in a fun and recognizable way. Many reaction GIFs are short bits of videos that are looped together. These are typically used when commenting back to people – stray away from normal responses with emojis…people appreciate a good GIF response!
A fun and easy way to increase your social media presence is to ask a question to your community and ask them to respond with a GIF. Social media users are GIF crazy!
Cinemagraphs
Is there something special you want to show off about your business? This is a unique way to reveal specific qualities by using a still image with a section that continuously moves.
Video
It’s no surprise that video is the leading source to creating social media engagements. In fact, views of video content have increased 99% on YouTube and a whopping 258% on Facebook between 2016 and 2017. Twitter has also seen the benefits of video with video tweets being 6X more likely to be retweeted than photo tweets. While, when used correctly, photos and words can be great marketing tool, it’s clear that videos communicate feelings and messages most effectively.
In regards to video creation, make sure that you’re testing different types of marketing strategies when it comes to messaging. Do your customers engage with emotional videos or comical videos better? Maybe your followers prefer to watch testimonials. After you’ve figured out which type of content to produce, figure out how long the video should be. This depends on the platform you’re using. Here are the ideal video length times broken down:
Facebook: 1 minute
Instagram: 30 seconds
Twitter: 45 seconds
YouTube: 2 minutes
Another area to be aware of is that 85 percent of Facebook video is watched without sound. This could alter the route that you take with video creation. If you have a message that can’t exactly be given without words, we urge you to add subtitles. Platforms like Facebook and YouTube make it easy to add subtitles manually or upload and SRT file.
No matter which platform you’re utilizing or what message you’re trying to communicate, remember – putting time and resources into video content will drastically increase your business growth and bring great brand awareness. Having trouble knowing where to start? Read our blog about the marketing steps that you need to follow when creating your content.
Related Post: How to Use Video to Increase Online Engagement
Photos of team
It’s always welcoming to show visitors who you are as a company and give them an inside scoop to the office’s daily life. Helping your customer feel a part of your brand gives them an even better understanding of what the your company is all about. Not to mention, on Instagram, pictures with faces have a 32% higher chance than other photos to receive comments.
Try snapping pictures of employees during fun themed weeks to showcase your office culture or get employees in their natural habitat of working. Don’t forget to brand the image with your logo so that viewers correlate the laid-back atmosphere to your brand.
To really get your customers to engage with you, show them that you’re more than just a company trying to sell them something – you’re a team who is passionate about their work and culture!
Quotes
Graphically presenting a quote is a great way to back up your brand’s message without being too pushy. Using someone else’s words helps to switch up the typical verbiage, and ultimately reinforce the importance of your marketing message. After all, you want people to be engaging with your graphics, so really try to find quotes that emphasize the point you’re trying to make.
You’ll also want to stray away from long quotes – you want to get your brand’s message across as quickly as possible. Also - Including the author is a must, and if you use a quote from someone well-known, all the better! (Using a quote from a professional in your industry will get you major brownie points!)
At times, it can be confusing to know which colors, fonts, and visuals to add to content pieces like these. Thankfully, we made a blog post that helps you choose the perfect visual combinations!
Visual tips
Educating customers is one of the major aspects to marketing, so why not do it in a creative, graphical way? Giving tips on how to use your product or explain why your service is important is a great way to communicate with your community. If they find the tip or advice useful, they’ll share it with others which ends up bringing you even more brand awareness. Take a step back and think about your audiences’ pain points.
What are common questions that they seek answers to?
What are their core needs?
Giving small, graphic tips on your social media pages will help viewers remember your brand in an effective and creative way!
Infographics
https://visme.co/blog/best-infographic-examples/
Do you have an important point or statistic that you want to share on social media? Try using infographics to simply get a message across. They help break down information that is difficult to digest. Again, people remember what they saw more than what they read.
Not only are infographics attractive to look at, but they’re also shareable. The simplicity that they bring encourages viewers to share the information that is on it. Did you know that search engines prioritize infographics when displaying results? This is great news if you’re trying to make it on the first page of search engine results and increase brand awareness. Overall, the simpler, the better. People are more likely to engage with content that is quick and easy to understand.
Visual Statistics
In today’s world, numbers have a big influence on people. Creating and sharing a visual statistic is an effective way to get a point across. Is your company on an upward trend with sales? Show it graphically! Is there a statistic that emphasizes why your product is going to be useful for them? Create a simple chart, graph or table to display your facts! Customers are much more interactive with visuals than they are with words – developing eye-catching visual statistics will increase your brand’s engagements.
Series or Theme
Consistency is key. Have you ever considered making your posts a part of a theme or series? Unifying your content allows you to create excitement and generate momentum. Not to mention, viewers will start to easily recognize your association after seeing such consistent posts. Also, designing a template saves you time when it comes to content creation. (Score!) You could even try making a theme out of any of the graphic types that are listed above - get creative!
So, which content ideas are you going to try? Remember – give your testing a bit of time. If you’re testing your new content ideas as ads, let them run for at least 3-4 days. This way, you can gauge whether your audience are engaging in the right way. Also, look at your analytics to identify any trends occurring. Creating solid social media content and keeping an eye on what’s driving engagements will end with a successful content marketing strategy.
Download our guide to up your digital marketing strategy
Creating effective social media content to share with your target audience is a crucial part to your marketing strategy.
Using our expertise in content creation, we’ve created this guide to help you cultivate a more engaged audience and, ultimately, help you grow your business.
In this download, you’ll receive:
The steps you’ll need to follow in order to create social media engagement.
4 essential elements to add in every content piece.
Information on different types of graphics your business can post for brand awareness and engagement
Key strategies for lead generation
How to Increase Event Attendance with These 4 Key Marketing Tactics
Members join your association for one of two reasons: either for education or opportunities to build their network. There is no better chance for you to show the value your association provides to those members than your annual event, but do you know how to increase event attendance?
Let’s think of a couple traditional event promotion practices.
Monthly newsletter?
Email marketing?
Social media?
Sure, those are all great options to promote an event to increase attendance, but let’s look beyond the surface at how you can attract the crowd.
Members join your association for one of two reasons: either for education or opportunities to build their network. There is no better chance for you to show the value your association provides to those members than your annual event, but do you know how to increase event attendance?
Let’s think of a couple traditional event promotion practices.
Monthly newsletter?
Email marketing?
Social media?
Sure, those are all great options to promote an event to increase attendance, but let’s look beyond the surface at how you can attract the crowd.
Event Attendance Tip: Phone Outreach
For our clients, this has proven to be very successful means of communication to encourage members to attend meetings or events. Not only does it add a personal touch to the traditional marketing approach, but gives the member a chance to ask any specific questions they may have one on one. There can be so much clutter within the marketing channels listed above, but a phone call you can guarantee your intended message is heard.
Related Post: Why You Need to Be Calling Members Right Now
Event Attendance Tip: Maintain a Desirable Vendor Ratio
No one wants to attend an event just to be sold to the entire time, and as an association you don’t want that reputation. Your marketing efforts should follow the below guidelines:
Too many vendors: Focus your event promotion on member registration.
Not enough, or not the type of vendors that you would expect would add value to your event: Focus promoting the upcoming event on vendor registration.
Event Attendance Tip: Utilize Lookalike Audiences
Facebook has excellent tools to help with this, and if you aren’t familiar don’t be afraid to reach out to us for help. Through Facebook’s advertising platform you can upload files of your current members and their proprietary algorithm will be able to target similar organizations who share a lot of the same traits, AKA your target audience.
If you’re ahead of the game and have a decent list of potential prospects, you can upload that as well and Facebook will make sure your content is seen by those parties.
LinkedIn is also a great place to run your B2B campaign. In the past, LinkedIn had been quite clunky to manage campaigns, but there have been some awesome improvements recently! You can use these 3 tips when creating a hyper-targeted campaign to your members.
Event Attendance Tip: Geographical Targeting
Geographically targeting members applies to you especially if you’re a national association travelling to a regional hub city for your membership event. Create a list of potential prospects for the select city and reach out to them. Not only do you now have the chance to drive attendance, but also add to your association.
Consider the lifetime value of a member. Would offering a complimentary registration, or one day pass to an outsider pay dividends in the future? For some of our clients the answer is yes. In other instances you can offer a discounted rate, etc.
It’s not enough to just simply exist and expect your members to follow through. Budgets are limited, and in most cases organizations will be a part of multiple associations. You must actively market yourself and continue to provide value in order to show your worth & keep your seats full. Be on the forefront of your industry & continue to be the best association available to your members!
Do you know the best lead generation tactics to grow your association? Download our Lead Generation Best Practices Guide Now!
Using our experience in lead generation, we’ve compiled a list of the top 5 lead generation best practices you need to implement this year.
Simply fill out the form to the right to download your guide!
5 of the Best Ways to Increase Membership Organization Recruitment
We know that impacting and helping more members is one of the most important goals of your association. While retaining association members is essential, increasing membership organization recruitment rates is just as much of a priority.
Our InceptGrows team is highly knowledgeable in the membership niche. So, what better way to give you the best advice than to round up a few members of the team to share five of the best ways to increase membership organization recruitment?!
We know that impacting and helping more members is one of the most important goals of your association. While retaining association members is essential, increasing membership organization recruitment rates is just as much of a priority.
Our InceptGrows team is highly knowledgeable in the membership niche. So, what better way to give you the best advice than to round up a few members of the team to share five of the best ways to increase membership organization recruitment?!
Recruit More People That Look Like Your Best Members!
One of the best digital targeting tools is Facebook lookalike audiences. You can upload a custom audience of your best current members, website visitors, or marketing qualified leads and then use Facebook to create a new audience that has similar attributes.
Lookalike audiences have consistently been top performing ad sets for us for top-of-the-funnel campaigns on behalf of our association clients. – Sarah Nelson, Marketing Manager
Related Post: 4 Ways Social Media Helps to Recruit Association Members
Pick up the phone!
One of the quickest, and most cost effective, ways to target new members is through telephone recruitment. When used in combination with demographic and psychographic modeling you can build a profiled list of prospects who look and act like your current members.
Engaging them with a personalized phone call allows you to begin your new relationship in the channel we all use to communicate every day. – Lauren Gill, InceptGrows Senior Account Executive
Host a “Must Attend” Event!
Whether it’s annually or quarterly, most associations are known for their professional events. Focus on keeping your ideas fresh and innovative and allow members to bring a guest along to boost attendance and new member recruitment. – Ashley Bricker, Client Growth Specialist
Collect Feedback
Understand the content that appeals to your members. After all, they are your target audience! One of the easiest ways to do this is to simply offer a survey after your events. It can be written, emailed, or I encourage you to pick up the phone & give them a call!
“How was your experience?”
“What did you find most valuable?”
“Least valuable?”
Happy members will increase your retention rates and they will engage in the most effective form of marketing, word of mouth! – Cory Carney, Account Growth Specialist
Email marketing is crucial to growing your association today. When 99% of people check their email everyday and 59% of them say marketing emails influence their purchase decisions, why wouldn’t you utilize this platform?
Simply creating an email opt-in that your target members would want more information on will bring them into your funnel. This will help you engage with your email subscribers and show the value of your association and lead to more sign-ups! - Amanda Blakeman, Digital Growth Strategist
Download our Lead Generation Best Practices Guide Now!
Using our experience in lead generation, we’ve compiled a list of the top 5 lead generation best practices you need to implement this year.
Simply fill out the form to the right to download your guide!
4 Must-Haves to Boost Membership Engagement
Are you in the process of content creation? If you are, you know how frustrating it can be to make a well-rounded design that creates engagements with your members. We laid out four areas that, when done correctly, will make your content pieces create a lasting impact and increase membership engagement.
Are you in the process of content creation? If you are, you know how frustrating it can be to make a well-rounded design that creates engagement with your members. We laid out four areas that, when done correctly, will make your content pieces have a lasting impact and increase membership engagement.
1. Logo
First and foremost, you’ll need to include your logo in your graphic. After all, you want your members to associate it with your brand. Branding your graphic attracts viewers to your site – lack of branding in content makes your efforts unproductive.
Are you posting a fun picture of your team hard at work? Adding your logo to the picture will help viewers to remember that it’s your membership organization that has an enjoyable and lively work environment. Perhaps you’re posting a GIF that showcases the different products you offer. If you aren’t adding your logo, how will members associate the products with your organization? It’s a subtle way to make viewers correlate, for example, their favorite articles of clothing they’re seeing, or the unique restaurant they’re considering visiting, with your brand.
2. Colors
There are countless psychological factors behind color – make sure you’re choosing the color scheme (no more than 4 main colors) that will evoke the emotion you want to your organization to give off, and overall, help your members engage with the post. Here are some meanings behind color to help you choose the perfect color combination:
· Red: ambitious, bold, exciting, powerful and energetic.
· Pink: warmth, sensitivity, love, respect and possibilities.
· Blue: control, contentment, purpose and awareness.
· Orange & Yellow: optimism, freedom, spontaneity and motivation.
· Green: growth, clarity, safety, nature and balance.
· Purple: wealth, conventionalism, creativity, distinguished and compassionate.
Keep in mind who your target audience is. Which colors appeal best to them? Results show that 57% of men said that their favorite color is blue, with green coming in second at 14%. Similarly, 35% of women say that blue is their favorite color, while 23% of women say that purple is their favorite.
Also, make sure to include contrasting colors to make your graphic as eye catching as possible. Don’t be afraid to play with textures and patterns too! They make your social media graphic that more appealing!
3. Fonts
If you’re a designer, you know how quickly a font choice can make or break a composition. When choosing which font(s) to use in a piece of content, you must first determine the mood that you’re trying to convey. Is your brand fun and playful? Or are you an organization that communicates deep and powerful messaging? Remember – you can use more than one font! Just make sure that you’re selecting combinations that complement each other. Try using both serifs and sans serifs to create a sleek and interesting layout.
As in every aspect of design, contrast is an important area to consider. You always want content to be easy to read, right? Contrasting the size, placement and overall font choice will allow your members to easily read and understand your message. And of course, don’t pick a font that is illegible. While it’s great to be creative, you also need to communicate as efficiently and simplistically as possible.
4. Visuals
Since you’re going to be creating graphics on a small canvas, it’s easy for content to start to clutter up. Create a piece of content that encompasses all the principles of design: balance, emphasis, movement, pattern, repetition, proportion, rhythm, variety and unity. And, if you’re using imagery, make sure that the picture correlates to the marketing message you’re trying to communicate. Don’t make your association members think too much – make it easily digestible.
GIFs might be the content type you’re going to test out. Or, maybe you’re considering adding video to your social media pages. There are endless possibilities of types of content that you can produce. Regardless of which path you take, remember to make every design simple and easy to understand.
At the end of the day, you’re trying to create engagement with your members – so, communicate a message that they want to interact with. Always consider who your audience is, and what colors, text and format they will respond to best. You’ll also need to follow the correct marketing steps when designing a piece of content. If you consider and incorporate the various visual elements above, your social media page will be full of engaging members that are eager to learn more.
Related Post: How to Use Video to Increase Membership Engagement
Looking for a full guide that covers every aspect to content creation? We created a detailed guide that will help you on your member engagement journey!
Download our guide to up your digital marketing strategy
Creating effective social media content to share with your target audience is a crucial part to your marketing strategy.
Using our expertise in content creation, we’ve created this guide to help you cultivate a more engaged audience and, ultimately, help you grow your business.
In this download, you’ll receive:
The steps you’ll need to follow in order to create social media engagement.
4 essential elements to add in every content piece.
Information on different types of graphics your business can post for brand awareness and engagement
Key strategies for lead generation
4 Steps to Creating Social Media Engagement for Your Association
Every marketer knows how tedious the journey of creating high-preforming content can be. Did I choose the right graphic? Are the color and font choices showcasing the messaging behind our brand? Before you start to dive into the nitty-gritty details, have a plan that you can follow when you start to get off track.
Every marketer knows how tedious the journey of creating high-preforming content can be. Did I choose the right graphic? Are the color and font choices showcasing the messaging behind our brand? Before you start to dive into the nitty-gritty details, have a plan that you can follow when you start to get off track.
1. Goal
First and foremost, determine your end goal. Are you trying to build brand awareness? Increase website visits? Educate your members? Typically, there’s an 80/20 rule when sharing content online. This means that 80% of your posts should be increasing interest, informing association members and engaging with your audience. While the other 20% of shared posts should be direct selling of your product or service.
If your 80% includes informing members, consider sharing blog posts or quotes that drive your message. Choosing a goal will pave the way for the rest of your social media graphic creation.
2. Which Graphic?
Figure out which graphics will produce the most engagement. Maybe you’ve seen trends of your viewers engaging with GIFs more, or maybe you’ve noticed that themed posts drive social media engagements. Don’t be afraid to try new types of content as well! There are countless ways to communicate with your audience, so pick a graphic that will showcase your membership organization’s message and personality!
In the marketing world, it can quickly become overwhelming to keep up with the latest social media trends. We know how difficult it can be to pinpoint which graphics are creating the most member engagement. So, we created a guide that explains the multiple graphic types you could start posting!
3. Organize
Make sure that all of your content is well organized so that all marketing team members have access to it. It’s always a good idea to double-check that your content meets all the social media platform’s expectations as well. Check the amount of text you have on your graphics, as well as the length of any videos.
It is super beneficial to create a social media calendar as well. If you’re getting caught up in the business of being a marketer, having a social media calendar to refer to can be a life saver!
4. Design and Share!
Whether you’re using free sites that give you templates to help during the creation process, or you’re using Photoshop to construct eye-catching designs – let the creative juices flow! Once you’ve got a solid design, share away!
If you follow these strategic content creation steps, you’ll be on your way to increasing association membership engagements and overall brand awareness.
Download our guide to up your digital marketing strategy
Creating effective social media content to share with your target audience is a crucial part to your marketing strategy.
Using our expertise in content creation, we’ve created this guide to help you cultivate a more engaged audience and, ultimately, help you grow your business.
In this download, you’ll receive:
The steps you’ll need to follow in order to create social media engagement.
4 essential elements to add in every content piece.
Information on different types of graphics your business can post for brand awareness and engagement
Key strategies for lead generation