When you’ve written fantastic blog content, it makes sense to promote your blog posts visually. Visual marketing – the use of videos, infographics, memes, and more- is a powerful way to generate attention online. Visual marketing is one of the fastest growing types of content marketing; relying, I believe, on the idea that a picture is worth 1000 words.
Yet, when I speak with business owners who blog, there is sometimes a bit of confusion as far as how to turn written blog posts into eye-catching visuals. Mostly, this is a process of practice. As you start to think about your ideas in various formats, it becomes easier to think of how you might turn a written blog post into compelling visual graphics that attract visitors.
And to help that process along, here are a few ideas for you:
*How To – This is one of the most obvious types of visual marketing. Use screen shots to demonstrate what you’re teaching in the “how to” post, and share each image separately with a link back to the entire blog post. So, if the how to post has seven steps, you should have seven images to share on your visual marketing networks to help you get more traffic for that post. Try to brand these images similarly, and use the blog title on each.
* Case Studies – You can use the information in a case study with various quotes, stats, information pulled from the case study and overlaid on a relevant image. You can potentially pull ten quotes from one case study (or more) that you overlay on various images to share that link back to the full blog post. People love case studies, especially tied with how- to.
* Infographics – Use any data-centric post to create an infographic that puts all the data into one easy-to-view collection of images. You can then share that infographic freely everywhere with a link back to the full post. Infographics are one of the most shareable types of visual content, especially if they are well done.
* Lists – With any list type post, you can have an image for each point in the list post. So if you have a post called “9 Tips for Successful Business Growth” now you can take each of those tips, overlay a shortened version of the tip on a related image, and you’ll end up with nine separate images that you can promote. Of course, link back to your blog post from each image you share.
* Interviews – When you interview people, they’ll say things that make you think. You can take quotes from the interview and then overlay on the image of the person saying it (with permission) and share widely, inviting viewers to read the entire interview. This works great for those of you who podcast.
* Slideshows – When you create a slideshow you automatically have images that you can use to share on various visual marketing sites like Pinterest and Instagram. Just turn the slide into an image file and you’re done. Share, and invite your audience to learn more by watching the entire slide show on your blog.
* Videos – When you use video on your blog, you have almost unlimited shots you can take from the video, overlay it with a quote from the video, and invite your audience to watch the entire video on your blog.
* Trending Topics – If you pay attention to industry news, and you’re able to generate trending content quickly, you can use trending information to capture interest before it wanes. Write a blog post about the industry news, create an image with a quote that you found telling from the news you chose to share, and link it back to your blog post about the trending topics.This is one way to quickly turn your blog post into very timely visual content.
If you use these ideas as a starting point, you’ll see that any blog post can be turned into multiple visual marketing components. You can use sites like Canva.com or Piktochart to generate your visuals, and can obtain high quality stock photos from any of the numerous sites on the internet. I wrote this post with a few sites you might look into: Royalty Free Photos
Try turning your next blog post into visual marketing content! You’ll be able to engage more people, more easily.
