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September 13, 2021 Content Chat Recap: How To Create Memorable, One-of-a-Kind Visual Content

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Visual content is an essential part of any content marketing strategy, but many marketers struggle with sourcing or creating unique and effective visuals for their campaigns.

In this #ContentChat, we’re joined by Amy Balliett (@AmyBalliett), CEO and founder of Killer Visual Strategies, to discuss how marketers can create one-of-a-kind visuals to elevate their content marketing. Read the full recap below, where we explore why brands should invest in visual content, how to document a visual brand identity, where to find visuals for marketing, and more.

Q1: Why should brands invest in visual content as part of their marketing strategy?

Visual communication is an efficient way to share information. Audiences connect more easily with visuals, and some studies estimate that visuals reach the brain 60,000x faster than text.

Some of your community members prefer to consume visual content, and this content is more likely to stand out on social media.

A cohesive visual identity can reinforce your branding.

And most visual content can easily be repurposed to drive additional value across channels or formats.

Amy’s microsite further explains the power of visual communication for marketing:

Q2: How can a brand define its visual identity? What are the essential areas to document?

All companies, regardless of size, should have a documented brand style guide. This will accelerate your design projects and ensure consistency with your visual identity.

A brand book/brand style guide should include an overview of your company, its mission, your brand colors (in the appropriate color code), approved fonts, acceptable ways to use the brand logo, and a list of all product names and brand trademarks.

Consult a professional designer to ensure your brand style guide appropriately complements your ideal brand and goals.

Q3: What are the common types of visual content that brands can create, and how do the objectives they serve differ?

There are 14 different types of visual content that marketers can create.

For each campaign and piece of content, define a clear goal to determine what visual(s) will best support this goal.

Amy and the community break down common uses for videos, infographics, ebooks, and interactive content below.

Repurpose your content in visual form for easy sharing on social media, or for other advertising opportunities like billboards or sponsored ads.

Q4: How can marketers source visuals for their content creation?

Custom-created visuals are ideal for brands, especially considering that many free-to-use image sites like Unsplash are frequented by marketers.

Tools like Canva, Visme, and PicMonkey (among many others) are all viable options to support custom visual creation.

You can easily capture visuals anywhere with your smartphone. Or, encourage your audience to create user-generated content that you can use.

Remember that any visual content you create has more than one application. With the right investment in quality, you can boost your ROI across channels.

Q5: Why does quality matter when it comes to visual communication?

First impressions only happen once, and low-quality design leads to bad first impressions.

Everything a marketer creates will reinforce or detract from the company brand. A low-quality blog post will displease your community, and so will low-quality visuals.

You do not need to create extravagant visuals. Focus on the basics: what message will provide value to your community in visual form? What ideas or concepts are best illustrated, instead of described through text?

Q6: How can teams overcome the common hurdles associated with creating visual content?

Bake visual content into your content creation process from Day 1.

Document the 5 Ws to ensure your visual content will meet the needs of your audience.

And then follow these steps to create your visuals.

Q7: How can marketers learn more about best practices in visual communication?

Amy and the community share their go-to resources for visual communication below. Did we miss your favorite sites or tools? Let us know in the comments.

About Alek Irvin

Alek Irvin is a content marketing professional with a rich history in social media management, executive thought leadership development, and media relations. As a consultant at Erika Heald Marketing Consulting, he creates human-focused content and thought leadership platforms that help brand leaders connect and engage with their communities. Alek has worked with a range of startups and Fortune 500 companies across the B2B technology and consumer spaces, including IBM, Dell Technologies, Hitch Works, Emtrain, Integrate, and Frameable. Connect with him on Twitter @AlekIrvin.

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