When you plan to use images in your online marketing, there are several things you need to consider. Images have become one of the most important aspects of online marketing because they can convey a great deal in an instant, and let your target audience know what your site or blog is all about. You can also offer information in an attractive form – one that is likely to be shared.
Marketing Your Business on Your Own Site
You need to offer an array of images at your site to demonstrate what your site is about. Your site’s visual images should include:
* Photographs
* Infographics
* Icons
* Charts
* Graphs
* Tables
* Diagrams
* Logos
* Banners
* Memes
All of these convey information, and some can build brand as well. For example, logos establish your brand and banners can help you promote your business on other sites. As for memes, they are a must for social media marketing on sites like:
* Facebook
* Twitter
* Pinterest
* Tumblr
* LinkedIn
* Google+
Facebook is claiming that most of their site will be meme- and video-based by 2020. Pinterest is an image-only site where people set up pinboards and save things they like. Women make up round 85% of the audience and at least 50% buy products as a result of what they see at the site.
Google+ will likely never be as big as Facebook, but it is very popular with visual niches like art and cooking. Tumblr is similar to Facebook, but has a very wide international audience of younger people if that is the audience you want to attract to your website.
In term of your own images related to your business that you will snap with your phone or a digital camera, great places to share them include:
* Instagram
* Snapchat
* Flickr
Since images are everywhere, it’s time to start paying more attention to them and consider creating them as an integrated part of any marketing strategy.
How to Optimize Your Images for Sharing:
Compress your images for the web so they don’t take up a lot of room.
Crop them as needed to get rid of empty space.
Use the alt and title tags to give keyword details about the image so it can be found on search engines as well, such as Google Images.
Keyword the name of your image too; don’t let all the photos you take with your camera be called 12345.jpg.
Tag the images with keywords as well, to make them easier to find when someone searches for them – for example, on your Flickr account.
Organize Your Photos Like the Valuable Asset They Are
Once you’ve uploaded your photos, take the time to organize them by topic or what the photo is of. For example, you can group them into “Business”, and within that you can group them into laptops, cell phones and so on. In this way, you can find what you need easily. You can also be certain you have the right to use the image, and don’t have to worry about legal issues, because you have taken the photos yourself.
In some cases, you might even wish to sell your images to a stock photo site, for an additional stream of revenue for your business.
If you are creating shareable images such as memes and infographics, be sure to add a URL at the bottom to help drive traffic to your site.
The key to using images is to create attractive images that serve a purpose- either to educate, inspire, entertain, and that have a call to action so that your business can benefit.
Do you have some questions about marketing your business online but don’t know who to ask? Why not ask me? I can help you with both strategy and implementation to make your business more profitable and more popular. We can do this together in 75 minutes; though my whiteboard session. Learn more about it!
