Images are incredibly useful when it comes to marketing your business or content online. Even Facebook’s come out and said that companies should strive to put an image in every post on its site. Still, it’s possible to get carried away.
Just because you have a picture — and Facebook and other social sites say you should use lots of photos — doesn’t mean it’s going to help your business.
There are a lot of mistakes companies are making when it comes to posting photos on their websites, blogs and social media pages. But if you follow these rules, you’ll be able to avoid the vast majority of them:
Rule No. 1: Don’t post random images
Facebook is teeming with hilarious photos that you can share on your site, but you wouldn’t want to unless you can tie the subject matter back to your business somehow.
For example: By now you’ve probably seen images of the now-famous Grumpy Cat floating around the Internet. People love her, but posting her picture without putting it in the context of your company doesn’t make sense. You’ll start to lose fans if they feel they’re not getting connected with your company.
One way to make Grumpy Cat relevant to your customers: Say something like, “Our recent customer satisfaction rating would turn that frown upside down.”
Rule 2: If you’re thinking text, think tips
When it comes to putting text on images, being helpful is always better than being witty. Jokes can easily be misinterpreted.
If an image is begging for text, include a helpful tip that relates to the image.
Or better yet, try to come up with a handful of tips, and then find pictures that help showcase what you’re suggesting.
One idea: Write down 10 of your customers’ most frequently asked questions, then write short answers to them that you can include on 10 separate images.
Rule 3: Charts and graphs deserve infographics
The birth and popularity of infographics have killed the appeal of traditional pie and bar graph charts. If you want to showcase stats, combine them along with educational text to form an infographic.
Infographics (like the one below from Skava) are highly sharable and provide ways to turn mundane data into an appealing visual element.
