a complete guide to visual content
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A Complete Guide to Visual Content: The Science, Tools andStrategy of Creating Killer Images
Posted on Tuesday, May 27th, 2014
Written byKevan Lee
2.8KFlares Filament.io 2.8KFlares
We lovesetting goals for improvement here at the Buffer blog,and one of our most recentchallenges has been this: Every post gets an original image.
This might not sound like such a tall task until you consider that Courtney and I are journalism majors whose skills lie in painting pictures
with words and not so much in painting pictures with Photoshop. We try our best, in the name of visual content.
Youve perhaps heard of visual content? The term seems to be everywhere these days. We come across it all the timeas were curatingcontent,and it seems thatsocial media strategiesnow consider visuals as required elements.
As visual content on social networks has grown, so too has the emphasis on storytelling with pictures. Indelible, craveable, relatable
images have become a high currency in the world of content marketing, and the push for visual content seems to only be gettingstronger.
So what are you to do with this new focus on visuals? Im happyto share with you some of our favorite ideas, tips, and tools.
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First off: Why visual content is so importantHere are some telling stats on just how big visual content has become and how its changing the way we all approach marketing.
Sixty-three percent of social media is made up of images.That meansnearly two-thirds of the updates you see on social media arevisual content,according to a Citrix report from January.
Nearly half of all Internet users have reposted a photo or video they have found online.An equally intriguing stat from the same2013Pew Research Studyis that 54 percent of all Internet users have posted an original photo or video that they personally have created.
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Content with relevant images gets 94 percent more views than content without. This oft-cited visual content stat is evidence thatvisuals have been vital to online success for some time.The original study from content platform Skywordcame out in 2011.
Ninety-four percent equates to almost double the views, and the boost is noticed across all topics and categories.
Tweets with images receive 150 percent more retweets. We ran the numbers on this ourselves,comparing tweets from our Buffer
accountto see exactly what difference images made. The results are striking! Retweets, replies, and clicks all benefit from images. We firstran this analysis back in November, and we continue to see these stats bear out in our tweets today.
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Images are the No. 1 most important factor in optimal social media content.This according toan ongoing research surveyconductedbySoftware AdviceandAdobe.More than 80 percent of survey respondents pointed to images being Very Important or Important for
their marketing optimization on social. The runners up in terms of importance were hashtags and usernames.
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The brain processes visuals 60,000 times faster than it does text. We are wired to take in visual contentfaster and more effectivelythan we are words.Ninety percent of the information sent to our brains is visual;weve been trained to consume visual content as quickly
as we can.
To recap, many of the big, important stats on visual content are summed up nicely inthis infographic from Matters Studio-C.The statsbelow paint a strong picture of how vital visuals are for marketers.
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4 lessons on the psychology and science of visual contentWe love breaking down topics into the origins ofwhy something works(or doesnt work), and these deep divesoften lead us into
psychology and science.I found the same to be true for visual content. Theres a lot of neat psychological and scientific explanations forwhy visuals can be so powerful and what goes into creating an awesome image. Here are four of my favorite learnings.
1. Visceral reactions to visual content
Have you ever fallen in love with a design but couldnt explain why?
These visceral reactions are some of the strongest connections we can make to visual content . When we feel a visceral reaction,
we are responding from the part of the brain responsible for survival instincts and fight-or-flight responses. The response is subconscious. Itoriginates from the central nervous system whenever were stimulated by vital factors l ikefood, shelter, danger, or reproduction. We mightnot be able to explain why we love a beautiful design because our conscious thought hasnt yet caught up with our subconscious.
The trick with making visceral reactions work in visual content is being aware of the feelings that your images and video evoke. If you canelicit a survival-type responsepictures that hint at safety by showing a home or a field, for instanceyou may be able to tap into avisceral reaction.
Heres a photo that earned a visceral reaction from me, possibly due to the feeling of security with a key and the calming colors.
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2. Rule of Thirds
The Rule of Thirds is a method for composing the elements of an image to be visually pleasing and to be in sync with the way our eyesprefer to scan an image. Photographers know the Rule of Thirds well; it is a foundational piece of photography.
The way it works is by dividing an image into a grid of thirds both horizontally and vertically. Basically, put a tic-tac-toe board on an image.
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The tic-tac-toe board creates intersections of lines, and according to Rule of Thirds, these intersections are where the eye is most likely tobe drawn.
The design lesson here is toplace your key elements along these intersections.Avoid placing a key element right in the center.
3. Golden Ratio
The Golden Ratio is where the ratio of a smaller segment to a larger segment is the same as the ratio of a larger segment to the sum ofboth. Confusing? Its quite a bit easier to see this oneexplained in a graphic,like this one from Vanseo Design:
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This ratio could appear in terms of width and height of an image or in the way that a blog page is composed with the main content andsidebar. (Theres even a handy tool for figuring outthe Golden Ratio for web typography.)
For images, this ratio creates a Golden Rectangle. The Golden Rectangle, when you dissect it into smaller and smaller Golden Rectangles,
forms a spiral shape that is often present in nature, architecture, and art.
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To find the Golden Ratio for an image youre creating, you canapply a little algebra to the height and width.For example, if you know thatthe height of your image will be 400 pixels, you can multiply 400 x 1.618 to find the width: 647 pixels.
To check if your image is golden, you can divide the width by the height. Depending on how you divide, the golden answer will be either1.618 or 0.618.
4. Fibonacci Sequence
The Fibonacci Sequence is a series of numbers where the next number in the series is the sum of the previous two numbers. Heres howthe sequence starts:
0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144
These numbers are found commonly in classical creative works and in nature, and they have a neat tie-in with the Golden Ratio. Dividing
any number in the Fibonacci Sequence by the previous number will result in an approximation of the golden number 1.618the basis forthe Golden Ratio.
The grid below is shows the marriage between Golden Rectangles and Fibonacci Sequence numbers.
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Ross Johnson of 3.7 Designshas a lot of neat tips on how science can inform design. Heres his take on the Fibonacci Sequenece:
Patterns based on the sequence are intrinsically aesthetic and therefore should be used in the composition of our designs. This sequence
can be used to create visual patterns, create shapes, organic figures, build grids or dictate sizing and ratios.
9 major types of visual contentWhat are we specifically talking about when we talk about visual content? I sometimes lose track of this myself. There will eventually be anend product to a visual content strategy. Here are the most common ways that marketers create visual content.
Eye-catching, creative photographythink stock photos or Instagram pics
VideoYouTube, Vimeo, or Wistia embedded right into a post or shared directly to social media
Screenshotshelpful images of your product or workflow
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Infographicsvisual information, either super long and meaty or bite-sized and informative
Data visualizationstandalone charts and graphs (example)
Comicsrelevant comic strips or cartoons (example)
Memespopular memes customized to fit the context of your post or update (example)
Visual note-takingcasually-designed layout of ideas, typically text-heavy (example)
Miscellaneous graphicsimages that complement the content, e.g. the images in the above section on Golden Ratio and Fibonacci
Sequence
While thinking about the ways to fulfill a visual content strategy, youll also want to beware some of the common pitfalls of visual content.Kathryn Aragon does a great job summarizing the trouble spotsto an unfocused visual strategy.
Images should notbe:
Inserted willy-nilly, just to have an image.
Trite or overused stock photos.
Thought of only as share-bait.
Boring or irrelevant.
It may also be helpful to keep in mind how your visual content will be displayed across various social networks. Take Twitters inline images
for instance. The default viewable portion of an inline image is 440 pixels wide by 220 pixels tall. Images outside this 2:1 ratio will riskgetting cropped at inopportune places, like this example the St. Louis Cardinals timeline.
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Media Bistro has a great collection ofall the sizes you need to know for visuals on all the major networks:Twitter, Facebook, Google+,
LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, and YouTube. Heres a peek at what they suggest for a Facebook sponsored post. (Click through foracomplete viewof all the helpful image dimensions for all networks.)
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6 best tools for creating visual contentCanva
As a non-designer, I am quite dependent on the amazing tools atCanvato get a lot of my design work done. The setup with Canva is supereasy. You can choose from a number of premade templates or design your own from scratch. The drag-and-drop interface makes it quite
intuitive to add different elements, and each of the elements has advanced options for editing as well.
One of my favorite features is that the elements align to grids automatically. You can line up a series of elements with relative ease.
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Bonus tip: For super fast image adjustments like cropping or scaling, Ive foundBeFunkyto be an indispensable tool. You can upload, edit,and save an image without even signing in.
PowerPoint
A go-to tool for many amateur designers is presentation software like PowerPoint. If you think of slides as images, its easy to see how thistool could be useful for building out visual content. You can set images as backgrounds, add text and typography, and place icons andgraphics.
When you save in PowerPoint,choose to save as an image,and youll be set.
Bonus tip: For a cloud version of PowerPoint, you might be interested to try Googles Presentation tool found in Google Drive.
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Skitch
Screenshots are perhaps the easiest way of adding visual content, provided you have a reliable screenshot tool. We useSkitch,a productof Evernote, for our screengrabs. Skitch has some helpful annotation features that look good and are easy to implement.
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Bonus tip: If youd rather run things lean, you canuse keyboard shortcutsto do simple screengrabs:
Windows: Print Screen places a screengrab onto your clipboard
Windows: Print Screen+Windows key saves a screengrab into a photo folder
Mac: Command+Shift+4 lets you choose the area youd like to grab for your screenshot
Mac: The above command followed by Spacebar lets you take a screenshot of an active window
Photoshop
Of course I couldnt help but mention the most popular image creation tool out there:Photoshop.If you have the time, skills, and resources
to use Photoshop for your visual content, then youre likely to find a lot of helpful features and tools to building pretty much anything youcould want.
Bonus tip: If youre after a free version, you might want to tryGimp,which has a lot of similar features and tools but is completely free.
Infogr.am
If youre interested in creating infographics or interactive visual content,Infogramsfree web app might be what youre after. Theirinteractive layouts allow you to embed charts, videos, photos, maps, and more.
Place It
WithPlace It,you can create some really striking visuals for promotional content of new tools and services. You can add your products
screenshots right into awesome-looking stock photos and even interactive backgrounds. Heres what the Buffer Blog would look like when
added to a Place It graphic:
Tips on making visual content that people will loveIve come to rely on a lot of little tips for making visual content for Buffer blog posts. Its great to have a few tricks inyour pocket when itcomes to design. Here are a few of my favorites.
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Design with grids
The Rule of Thirds highlights the importance of grids when it comes to framing a photo. Grids can also play a big role in creating images
that look great. In this sense, you could look at creating a collage with many images in a grid or placing a frame around a photo.Gridtechniques give order and professionalism to your images.
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Bonus tip: Its much easier to overlay text onto a grid of images. The text really pops when it rests ontop of solid lines.
Find a good photo filter and use it consistently
Why might a filter come in handy? When youre pulling images from a wide variety of sources for your blog, filters can provide a sense of
consistency across the visuals. A consistent filter could evenmake your posts more recognizable in social media,which becomesespecially important as timelines fill with visuals.
Take a look at the following two pictures, before filter and after filter:
Before:
After:
http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2012/05/how-to-maintain-a-consistent-social-persona/http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2012/05/how-to-maintain-a-consistent-social-persona/http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2012/05/how-to-maintain-a-consistent-social-persona/http://bufferblog.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Screen-Shot-2014-05-22-at-2.41.29-PM.pnghttp://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2012/05/how-to-maintain-a-consistent-social-persona/ -
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Set a color palette and determine your brand fonts
If your brand doesnt have a set palette of colors or two to three go-to fonts, then now might be the time to find some. Consider how thecolors and fonts that you chooseportray your brand.One thing to keep in mind might be the psychology of color:Colors trigger different
feelings for us.This imagefrom PowerTextshows how different colors (and different logos) tend to make us feel.
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Bonus tip: When youre designing with color, keep in mindthe concept of semantic resonance.This basically means that, when possible,use colors that fit the topic youre talking about. In infographics, this would mean displaying data about Google+ with a red bar and data
about Twitter with light blue.
Choose a striking stock photo
Weve come acrossa huge number of free stock photo sitesin our search for visuals for the blog. Its often difficult to decide what exactlymakes for a good photo. When were searching at Buffer, we tend to think abstract: If were doing a post on Facebook followers, we might
try a search for l ines or queues rather than a search for the Facebook logo. When choosing the right picture, you can keep in mind many
of the lessons relayed from the psychology and science of visuals: Search for visceral reactions, go with bright bold colors, look forthe Rule of Thirds and the Golden Ratio.
Bonus tip: Social media agency Laundry Service found that Instagram photos make formore effective advertising imagery than stockphotos.Might be worth experimenting with for your next campaign.
Build a helpful, humorous infographicWriting on the Harvard Business Review blog,Gareth Cook of The Best American Infographicsmentioned a few key areas of the mostsuccessful infographics. Cook believes that the key is to distill lots of information into an easy-to-read, intuitive layout:
Give people a sense of all the data thats out there, and enough context, without overwhelming them.
And being humorous doesnt hurt either. Some of his favorite infographics areheavy on the whimsy. Heres an example:
http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/04/the-right-colors-make-data-easier-to-read/http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/04/the-right-colors-make-data-easier-to-read/http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/04/the-right-colors-make-data-easier-to-read/http://blog.bufferapp.com/free-image-sources-listhttp://blog.bufferapp.com/free-image-sources-listhttp://blog.bufferapp.com/free-image-sources-listhttp://adage.com/article/digital/effective-ad-creative-instagram-photo/292906/http://adage.com/article/digital/effective-ad-creative-instagram-photo/292906/http://adage.com/article/digital/effective-ad-creative-instagram-photo/292906/http://adage.com/article/digital/effective-ad-creative-instagram-photo/292906/http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/04/what-makes-the-best-infographics-so-convincing/?utm_content=bufferfced7&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=bufferhttp://blogs.hbr.org/2014/04/what-makes-the-best-infographics-so-convincing/?utm_content=bufferfced7&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=bufferhttp://blogs.hbr.org/2014/04/what-makes-the-best-infographics-so-convincing/?utm_content=bufferfced7&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=bufferhttp://adage.com/article/digital/effective-ad-creative-instagram-photo/292906/http://adage.com/article/digital/effective-ad-creative-instagram-photo/292906/http://blog.bufferapp.com/free-image-sources-listhttp://blogs.hbr.org/2014/04/the-right-colors-make-data-easier-to-read/ -
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What is most important for you when creating visual content?As weve pushed forward with visual content for the Buffer blog, weve learned a lot and continue to experiment with new tipsand
tools. Wed love to hear what youve discovered, too!
What types of visual content do you most enjoy? Which are the ones that work best for you? Itd be awesome to hear yourthoughts on the topic. Share any and all ideas here in the comments.
P.S. If you liked this post, you might enjoy ourBuffer Blog newsletter.Receive each new post delivered right to your inbox, plus our cant-miss weekly email of the Internets best reads.Sign up here.
Image credits:Dave Chapman,3.7 Designs,Pew,Skyword,Crazy Egg,The Next Web,Vanseo Design,Hong Kiat,Dan Farrelly,Wikipedia,PowerText,Chang-JJ,Mighty Hive,Death to the Stock Photo.
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