I’m going to give you 5 more visual content strategies to work with today. Remember, our goal is to increase followers and engagement, right? Right. So HOW do we do that? HOW do we get it all done and by what means?
Productivity is key in any of my online strategies and within my home because if it’s going to take me hours just to do one thing, it’s just not worth it to me. So staying productive while carrying out my strategy is essential, and I’m going to assume you want to be as productive as possible, as well.
Visual Content Marketing Strategy Style
The moment you create a visual content strategy and you know what type of fonts, colors, textures, what kind of visuals and what kind of size you can use on your distribution channel, it will be more easy for you to get the work done. In this sense, you’re not only honing in on your brand (staying on-brand) but you’re also cutting down the amount of time you’re spending choosing and selecting everything.
If you already know what you’re going to use and where, you’ve achieved half the battle of composing a great visual content strategy and carrying out the action tasks associated with it.
Consistency in Visuals
Part of developing a great visual content strategy is consistency. Consistency helps you build brand awareness and also establish credibility. People will trust you when you show up when you promise them.
Scheduling Consistency
So if part of your strategy is to be present – to convince your followers that you’re the account to follow and person to buy from – you need to show up. And by showing up, you need to be visually present.
When starting out or doing a complete overhaul / refresh, it’s important to stick with a schedule you can actually manage. (Check out my own simple schedule below in the next section). Most people lack consistency when things are getting too overwhelming, and then they just stop altogether. I have experienced this first-hand because I, too, have gotten overwhelmed with life behind the scenes.
Branding Consistency
Part of your visual strategy needs to include staying on-brand and consistent with your fonts, colors, tone, and style of your brand. Staying consistent with your brand messaging will result in less confusion and more focus on your offers.
Keep your fonts the same; change only so often if there’s a font you start falling in love with more for your brand. But try not to use 50-some different fonts on your posts, Instagram, and
I recommend Instagramming an image or two occasionally of your behind the scenes. Remember – you can’t have a brand if you are not consistent with the graphic element of your product design.
Types of Visual Content
There are a lot of visual content pieces you can create. Starting from videos (documentary, weekly series, short stories on Instagram or Snapchat, video ads, step-by-step guides, how to do’s and others), photos, graphic elements, data visualization, memes, funny .gifs, infographics, gifographics, cinemagraphs, slideshows, icons, motion graphics, ebooks, whitepapers and others.
Here’s a basic schedule I try to follow:
Monday – Instagram and Pinterest
Tuesday – Blog Post and Facebook
Wednesday – Twitter (scheduling and updating posts)
Thursday – Pinterest and Instagram
Friday – Blog Images and Facebook
By following this super basic schedule, I still
HOW will you entertain your followers? How will you convince the new viewers to stick around and click that subscribe button or follow button? Try using a variety of different visuals and incorporate them into your strategy.
How to Execute Your Visual Content Strategy
4. Execution plan – maybe this is one of the hardest thing to do but it’s one of the most relevant. How will you execute the visual content? Who will create those visual contents? Here it’s not about ideas and creativity, here is about execution and you need a plan for this.
Will you use a scheduler? I have been using SEMRush as a scheduler, and for the most part, absent Pinterest, it has been a good choice for me, because it allows me to audit my website and check stats, brand mentions, and other Google-search-related issues all at the same time.
Or perhaps, maybe you’ll tend to post on a fly by night pantster route (not recommended)? Will you hire some of the visual content out to a virtual assistant so you can be more present? Those are some things to consider as part of your strategy.
Instagram Patterns and Designs
Try a pattern or design for your Instagram. I have seen some pretty snazzy diagonals, stripes and checkerboard designs out there. If you’re into Instagram, try out some color patterns that create a bigger image. Personally, I would avoid using Instagram as a puzzle – where it takes 6 pictures to come up with the full picture.
I’ve seen some accounts do that and it Just. Doesn’t. Work. You’d have to post anywhere between 3-9 pictures at a time for your viewers to see the whole graphic. From a short-term interest perspective, anyway. Cool in ideal, but lacks in short-term appeal. For Pinterest, in order to convince your viewers to follow you, get organized and clean up your boards and establish a theme for your VIEWERS – not for you. This is something I teach in my Pinterest course.
Visual Content Productivity
Now for the productivity part. Part of your strategy might involve “convincing viewers to follow and engage by producing content in the most productive way possible”. At least, it is for me.
If you’re smart, you’ll batch everything together. It’s much easier batching your graphics together once you’ve established your theme and your planned blog posts for the month or week. In fact, you should be able to kick an entire month’s worth of image and writing content out in about 8 hours (that’s one day of work) if you really zone in and get it done.
By becoming productive as part of your strategy, you’ll be able to spend more time interacting with your audience and produce more materials like freebies and content upgrades for them to enjoy. That is, if you want to convince them to follow you and hand over their email address.
Parting Thoughts
My best advice is, stick to what you know works for your brand, be consistent, stay productive, show up to “work”, and focus on your audience and your content production. Creativity is a big deal for your online business – get back to it!
Whenever you’re hoping to execute a visual content marketing strategy, you’re going to have some hiccups and shortcomings every once in a while. “Oh, I could have done that better.” “So-and-so has such a better strategy than I do–I should just copy them so I can be successful, too.” Don’t try to pit yourself against someone else. Everything could look shiny and wonderful on the front, but in the back, you don’t know if it’s even working for them.
My hope for you is that you’ll find a schedule that works for you so you can commit to a social media visual content marketing strategy that doesn’t overwhelm you. Rather, you’ll find a schedule or plan that you actually look forward to sticking to.