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Best Practices for Online Images and Videos

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We all know visual content draws attention online. Pay attention to composition, tone and content to make the most impact with your images and videos.

Graphics and videos that are helpful and meaningful have the most impact. With that said, small details in visuals can impact user interest as well as their perception of the content.

Get to the Point Quickly

People’s attention wavers quickly. While text allows users to read at their own pace, videos progress at a set speed and holding people’s attention for any length of time is difficult. Videos that provide information quickly and clearly do best. Research shows that under 30 seconds is a good goal.

Keep Out Distractions

Be sure your image or video doesn’t have any unnecessary details that distract from your message. That can be anything from something unidentifiable in the background to a loud pattern in someone’s clothes. Make sure nothing distracts from the intended focus.

Be Accurate

Make sure the image or video is accurate for the message you want to convey. If you are talking about electric cars, don’t use a visual of a car that people know has a regular engine. The visual has to be a proper illustration. Inaccuracies can kill your message.

Create Brand Consistency

Make sure your images and videos share a consistent tone, coloring, etc. that make them clearly from the same source. Look at the social posts for major brands and you will see a consistency that unites all of their visuals no matter the specific topic or message. This is subtle but has an important impact on your viewer.

Instagram Ideas for Your Brand

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Instagram offers a lot of features. If you haven’t looked to see what’s new there in a while, here are some things to consider for your marketing approach on Instagram.

Instagram Stories

It is estimated that just half of businesses on Instagram use stories. Those that do, get great results. One-third of the most viewed stories are posted by businesses.

Instagram Stories disappear after just 24 hours. Followers expect them to be more real and raw than your curated Instagram feed. They provide a great opportunity to connect with followers and build relationships.

You can create highlight albums in your profile to preserve your top Stories content, so it doesn’t disappear after 24 hours. Your highlight albums appear right under your bio, and you can create custom covers for each.

Instagram Shopping

Business accounts get access to Instagram Shopping. This feature, which is not available for personal accounts, allows you to sell products directly from Instagram posts and stories.

Influencer Partnerships

Working with an influencer can help to build your credibility while exposing your brand to a new audience. Invite an influencer to take over your Instagram account for a set period of time, like a weekend, or for a special event.

Instagram Ads

The surest way to get your content in front of a new audience is to run an Instagram ad. You can advertise in the Instagram feed or in stories. You can target your ads based on:

  • Location: State, province, city, country
  • Demographics: Age, gender, and language
  • Interests, such as other accounts people follow and apps they use
  • Behaviors, both on and off Instagram

Instagram Insights

You may get a sense of what works for you on Instagram, but there’s nothing like data to prove out your hunches. The best way to improve your results is to learn from what you’ve already done. Study the information available in Instagram Insights and adjust based on what the data tells you.

Pikwizard Offers New Free Stock Photo Options

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Most of my clients don’t have a large marketing budget. One of the ways I maximize is by using quality free stock images. I have written in the past about some great stock photo options and want to share a new one – Pikwizard.

According to Pikwizard, the site offers more than 100,000 completely free images and more than 20,000 of those are exclusive. They are adding new images to the library daily and the ultimate goal is to get to more than 1 million images. Images not marked as “premium” are free to use without attribution.

The fact that they have many images that are not on other sites is worthy of mention, and here’s another: there are many pictures of people, which tend to be rare in free stock photo sites. Check out the site search for “office” or “meeting” and you’ll see plenty of people.