Welcome to Social Media Hangout Time. I am here today with Lisa Saline.
Hello.
The other host of the show and she has Kimmy taking a break today but she’s in the background, of course. So Lisa and I are going to be talking today about images once again. We did another segment about 4 weeks ago approximately and talked about how to use images in your social media. And we’re going to do a part 2 of that today and talk about 10 additional images. But first we just want to go through a little bit of housekeeping. For those of you that are on iTunes and like our show and have been with our show before, we would love it if you would subscribe and write a review for us. We would love to hear your feedback. Also if you haven’t downloaded our guide, we have a social media content guide that you can find at socialmediahangouttime.com/guide and there’s tons of information to help you with your social media planning in that guide. So on with our show. We’re going to start with a book. We’re going to talk about a book. This book I just received in the mail and I have skimmed through it and it’s such an easy read. I love the book and it’s, I’m going to show you here, it is The Power of Visual Story Telling. I feel like I am in elementary school when you show the pictures.
That’s the teacher you knew, you know.
The teacher! How to use visuals, videos and social media to market your brand. The author, 2 authors actually, Ekatrina Walter. She’s the best selling author of Think, Like Zuck and Jessica, oh, her name is tough. G-I-O-G-L-I-O Gioglio or something like that. Sorry Jessica. But this book is incredible. What I want to do is read 5 different quotes from inside of it. It’s actually stat that talk about why you should be using visual marketing. So first stat is that 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual. And visuals are processed in the brain 60,000 times faster than text.
Wow!
Huge! That’s huge. Second one, 40% of people respond better to visual information than the plain text. Third one, studies have shown that the average modern adult attention span is somewhere between 2.8 and 8 seconds. Wow!
Holy cow!
And I think with the realm of social media I think people are marred than 2.8 also.
Yeah, you got it. Right now it’s got to be there.
It does. And point #4, the visual network Tumblr, Pinterest and Instagram all grew during 2012, dubbed the rise of the visual web by comScore.
I believe that.
And, I do , too. Yeah, I do too and made a big difference. Last one is 94% more total views on average are attracted by content containing compelling images than content without images. So that’s why we have been talking so much about images. So let’s get into the presentation. Lisa’s going to start with the first 5 tips on how to use images and we’re going to share the slides. So those of you just listening we will read each tip out loud but you can always find it at show notes which is the socialmediahangouttime.com/16 will be the show notes for this one.
And they can pick up those images there, as well, can’t they Janet?
We’re giving away the actual, we will put this in whoever downloads the guide will receive the
Full images.
Yep, exactly. socialmediahangouttime.com/guide. They’ll get the first set of images, the second set of images and all the presentations.
That’s terrific. So here we are on part 2. I’m Lisa Saline and we’re going to start of with our first image. We’re going to talk about asking your fans to share their photo moments. This is fun because anytime your out people love taking selfies and pictures of other people. Now if you give them the the permission to go ahead and post those photos on your Facebook walls as business, that adds tremendous value because a lot of people know that they’re only sharing their pictures with people that they know they can trust. The people on their Facebook walls. So asking them to post pictures while they’re using your product or attending your event is some real powerful tool. And Janet you’ve done that before, haven’t you?
Yeah, one of the things that came to my mind is we’re actually on of my orthodontics offices pages, they’re having people post picture of them out and about wearing their t-shirt.
Oh cool! That’s a great idea.
So you know, wearing or putting your logo out there your business’ logo out there is a great way to do it with the different things that they wear. Whatever you give-away, maybe a coffee mug, those kind of things, you’re just taking a selfie with that is a cool way to do it.
Well think of Starbucks. Starbucks does it all the time. They’re always encouraging them to take pictures of them and their lifestyle, fitting that photo in the lifestyle. But when you have their brand showing, that’s just one way to add your brand. So encouraging you fans to take those pictures is really important.
Yes, yes, I agree.
And then we have sharing a picture of management taking part of day to day operations. The company I’ve been working with now, we actually take pictures of our staff meetings, taking pictures of us preparing for, we call it a day at the university. We’re setting up and getting ready for our day to day, our trainings. And people like to see that because whenever you take a picture of what you’re doing on a day to day basis it really adds value to you page and builds up level of trust and integrity. People have fun with it and then when you go out to the community they already kind of know your personality and they know who you are, what your culture is like. So we always encourage people to take pictures within the office and let us see what kinds of things you’re doing. It’s also a great way when you’re connecting with senior management because it makes them more approachable, not so afraid to talk to a senior manager if they have images on Facebook.
Well you know the thing is everybody, they’re people, too, and they kind of breaks that wall down of you feel like you’re getting to know them when you see that day to day operation like Nathan with Heyo. Nathan Latka with Heyo, he’s very good and they do that a lot, too, with their company. Small businesses in there always doing fun things in the office and having fun with it and sharing. Now I do know, one thing I’ll say though is that there are some businesses that have a hard time with this. And it’s 2014, it is the time to get out of that hiding behind close door type of thing and just getting your personality out there as your brand.
Well and I think, too, is if people are so afraid under the umbrella of their company to do pictures of them as a management team is to start branding yourself. You are the person that they want to work with. So having your separate Twitter page and your separate Facebook page where you’re taking pictures of you even if it’s at work just to share that you’re a real person. It just definitely, I think of financial planners, I know sometimes there are tons of restrictions on that but people will find out who you are and where you are so give them something fun to look at. And something interesting to connect with you on.
Got it.
Cool. Alright our next slide is to offer a series of photographs. When you’re focusing on a specific subject or timeframe of something that’s going on, the audience likes to participate in that. And then they can anticipate this is going to happen. So your example here that we’ve got on are presentation is Fan Page Friday. People are looking for that opportunity to connect on Fridays. They know that. So now if you add a collection of images to go along with that, they’re going to come back to see what’s your next image is, as well, and then they’re going to share that. They have an expectation that Janet’s going to have fan page Friday on her page every Friday and there’s something to go along with that. Do you want to share something on that line, as well, Janet?
You know, there’s a lot of things you could do – Fan Page Friday is one. I did a series of photographs for 30-day period where I did image tips, some of these images are actually from that. Set the expectation. We also have a Twitter Tuesday, we have a Pinterest share day and all of those have different images, too, but even beyond that there’s other things you could do with these images but if you set the expectations with your audience ahead of time on what series you’re going to provide then they’ll be coming back for more which drives traffic to you social media.
Right, definitely. Then we’ve got share an image to celebrate a milestone for your business or organization. The image that Janet’s got up right now is a million likes. So that’s just a visual that says wow, that’s a lot of likes. But you could still use the same image or an image celebrating. Maybe you’re entrepreneur of the year or an image that celebrates the small business of the year for your community or the women business owner. Maybe you have celebrated that you got your first 500 likes because you have that many customers that came into your store. By taking a picture of your customers and sharing it with your community, that generates a lot of interest and a lot of community talk, there’s a lot of talk on that. So milestones care things that are often overlooked. When you look at a Facebook page they give you that opportunity to post milestones.
They do. And how many people don’t do it, including I’m guilty even. Putting that I just run an article about the milestones and how it can really ramp up you page. So you got to think about when you took on a new client, when you opened your office. Always different things, create an image around it and create a milestone on Facebook for all these different pieces along the way because milestones are very important in how your pages showing up to. And if I can find that article I’ll link to it. I have just literally lead that last week.
Even I think of one of our companies when you’re moving and expanding and showing pictures of your office before it’s even full and the picture of after. So you can consider that a milestone and incorporate that under 1 milestone so they can see before now pictures and they can watch your business grow along with you. So lots of opportunities to do that and every time you get new employees. Even if you did a milestone each month celebrating new employees, you know if you have significant amount of girls I think that would be fun, too. So that’s a great opportunity and then this one is yours, I believe.
Okay, yeah, I’ll take over. So word images aren’t made for paragraphs of text so edit the message and keep it to more than a sentence or two. And what this means is when you’re doing an image you don’t want too much text on there. Keep it to 1-2 sentences. We set it for one of my clients for a bunch of testimonials that were sent in. People wrote books but we only took 1-2 sentences, added an image and put those out on their social media as a testimonial. So you would want to cut it down. One sentence honestly is probably the best but you can do 1-2 sentences, at the most.
Well you know the image grabs you attention and then you pull out those trigger words that would make you want to click and link and maybe go to another page to find out more information. So that’s why I think the words are just very few and you’ll be selective with what you’re going to do.
I agree. Yep. This one is choose text color that contrasts with the background you’re going to place the text over. Now what this image is for those of you aren’t seeing it, there’s a royal blue background and we have white writing on it or we also have a light blue that’s a lot harder to see on the royal blue. And it’s just pretty obvious when you’re looking at this how much the one contrasting stands out. And then the other piece of this you want to think about when you’re doing it is to bring in pieces, the colors from your logo from your brand, too. So now contrasting, like for social media hangout time our main contrasting colors would be that light orange, kind of peach color, and then the hot pink is the contrasting. Those are kind of our main colors with this program and you want it to bring those in but maybe if it’s not contrasting enough and we look at this image we may just decide to do a hot pink background with the white lettering, that really does it boom and stand out. So colors are very important in your marketing when creating these images, too.
You know and it almost makes it 3D-like. So your eye is constantly attracted to that one image that the text that you want them to see. So sometimes that subconscious mind set is you want to see what’s behind it but yet because you have it popped it pulls it right through your conscious level.
And remember the stat we just said, 2.8 seconds.
Right, yeah.
Don’t forget that you know. We got to grab their attention immediately.
Yeah.
And we’re talking again, kind of in the same area – choose images with areas that lend themselves to having text added. So when you’re creating these images and I should share my little, I told you about this. This one, talking about this, this is making a lot of sense where if you have a person in the image, maybe pull them down and then have a large background above or vice versa, have it below but I have to bring up little off subject but not really – words swag. I’ve seen a lot of people using this now and it’s an app, and I’m sorry Lisa it’s only on iPhone at this point but
I think Perry Marshall was mentioning that.
Yeah, and Joel Comm was using it and I’ve seen a lot of people using it. So word swag – in order to us that properly you really have to have a good image that has some spacing in it to put the words.
So kind of like a skyline, it’s going to be visible to people. You can have some details on the bottom and skyline on the top where you can put your text.
You got it. Yeah. And if you’re doing a selfie and you want to be in the picture or something like that, you want to be to the left and the words to the right or something like that, just depends on how, what you’re doing and how you’re doing that but you want to make sure that there’s extra room for text.
Because you don’t want your text to over layer eyeballs or the primary focal point of your image.
Yeah, exactly.
Good.
Alright. Turn the answers to your FAQs into an image. And this kind of goes back to our what are your FAQs? What are the frequently asked questions, what are those answers. Turn those answers into images – as simple as that. If you have let’s say your asked a lot of questions by people on your social media, don’t forget everyone of those things can be turned into an image. The answers can be turned right into an image so this is a great way to get content. Anything you want to add?
Yeah and I also adding the image, you can expand on your FAQs in a blog post. So you take your images and then you link it to your blog post and now you’ve got an image on your blog.
Nice.
You could also use your FAQs and video. So there’s a lot of different ways to use them but the image really would be your foundation to start with that.
Yes. Yes, pretty simple tactic. And here is an infographic – teach a lesson using an inforgraphic. These have become so popular and so many people are doing them but they can tell so much more so fast. And people love the visual, I mean this is why infographics have become so popular. So you can tell a lesson, you could do it step by step. There’s so many different things you could do with the infographic that can make your brand stand out and build your authority.
Well, infographics are great for timeline so you could kind of go a long in history to see things that happen within your business. I think of the picture of evolution. Do you remember the caveman walking along and then all of a sudden you’ve got the guy that’s tweeting?
Yeah.
You know I’ve seen that infographic, that’s a very powerful visual that show the changes and the one that we have up now is how executives are using social media. Well it’s got relational graphics. So you’ve got pie charts. Pie charts speak executive. You’ve got bar graphs. Bar graphs speak to executive. You’ve got coffee mugs. So I mean you can really bring in the same type of, I consider it language, visual language to speak to the people that you want to get in front of by using your graphic.
Yes. And even though it’s 10 tips you can take and make separate images, let’s say, say you take 10 of your FAQs, break them down and put them into 1 specific infographic. There’s so many things you can do with infographics but re-using your content is very helpful and time saving.
Right.
Ah, this is a funny one. In order to trace word images back to your business, make sure that the last step you do when creating the image is to add a mention of your business somewhere on the image. And what this means is you can either put your logo, put your website. This example shows both but you want, if it’s your own, put something on there so that when people are sharing it, you’re getting recognition for creating this content. It’s a great way to get your brand stand out.
I see a lot of people put their Twitter url on there, the @ sign on their Twitter because a lot of times that’s the same extension to whatever social media channels they have so their searching just the @ and your name and you’re going to be found. But nope, I agree, there’s all kinds of different ways and it’s branding. Branding your images. So use your colors alongside of your url and your image, as well, your logo. That’s fun. Awesome! So that was it Janet.
Oh good, okay. That’s great. Well, let’s bring you back on and let’s talk about our two things that we really want to always end with the 2 specific items that the audience can do. We want you guys to take action. And what can you do in the next 24 hours from what you just learned. And I’m going to start with one tip and then Lisa has another tip. So my tip is something we talked about over and over again was coming up with a list of 10-20 frequently asked questions. Very, very important. Come up with those questions, come up with the answers and then figure out how you’re going to create an image out of those answers. So that’s something we want you to do in the next 24 hours.
Should be able to do that quite easily, too. That’s a great way to start, My tip is figure out what you want to put on those images regarding related to, is it going to be your domain name? Is it going to be your Twitter URL? Just have that ready to go so when you create your images you can just pop it right on, there. Just get it into the habit of adding that to all your images that are going out the door.
And if they’re doing it themselves, if they do, this may be a little techie for some, but if you do a png of that logo or png of that image for the Twitter account or your URL, you can just use Canva, using Canva, you can drag right that on to any image you want. It’s very very simple if you’re trying to do it yourself. So, alright, well let’s wrap it up then Lisa. So I think we covered a lot of information and reasons why to use images and how to use images. So I’ll let you wrap it up.
You bet and we are so thankful for you guys to be on the show today. If you want to go ahead and go to socialmediahangouttime.com/16. This is show 16 where you can find the transcripts of the video and link to our iTunes channel, as well. We will have the links in the graphics for you on the page. So it’s socialmediahangouttime/16. And then also remember to help share the love a little bit with our channel, socialmediahangouttime/love. Alright, thanks everyone. Have a great day!
Thanks!