The writer in me despairs that you’ll more than likely remember only 20% of what I’m about to write.
That’s because, more than the old adage, ‘a picture is worth 1000 words’, studies show that people will remember 80% of what they see and do, but only 20% of what they read and a paltry 10% of what they hear.
According to author, Paul Martin Lester, we are becoming a visually mediated society. “For many, understanding of the world is being accomplished, not through words, but by reading images.”
And here we sit churning out hundreds of words a day as travel content marketers in the hope that you will get past the headline and first paragraph and remember the travel brand we’re talking about. Where content used to be king, visuals are today’s royal flush.
With statistics like two billion photos being uploaded to social media every day, a year’s worth of YouTube videos being watched on Facebook every day and 93% of all communication being non-verbal, there seems to be a strong argument for introducing visuals into your content marketing strategy.
Those of you who are posting text-only updates on social media will find your content disappear into a sea of videos, carousels and photo albums. Where video once took an inordinate amount of resources to produce and even watch, technology has evolved to the point where almost anyone can produce their own video and viewers can watch a high-definition video on the go on their smartphone.
Compelling video and visuals are a no brainer when you’re trying to sell a destination and position a tourism experience in an immediately appealing way, as well as giving travellers that sense of place and assisting them in the inspiration and planning phase of their travel plans.
And you don’t need a massive budget or to have international expertise to introduce visuals into your marketing either. I’ve recently seen the use of Virtual Reality videos by Ibo Island Lodge giving a 360-degree travel experience on an island, in the ocean, on a catamaran; spectacular drone footage sweeping dramatically over Cape Town’s Atlantic Seaboard and Trafalgar using animated infographics to communicate a fixed rand rate of exchange story that would have been totally lost in text-only format.
360-degree views and live videos of waterholes have long been employed by travel marketers to evoke emotions and sell a destination in ways that words cannot. So what are you waiting for? Put on your Go-Pro and get filming.
This type of content not only gets more views, it also gets a lot more social shares. In fact, if you can get your guests or clients to generate that visual content for you to share, even better. Why not incentivise them to create the visual content you need for your marketing platforms? Assign a hashtag to your user-generated visual content campaign and see your brand go visual.
Gone are the days of writing a 500-word blogpost and throwing one image into the mix hoping that readers will consume the whole piece. The rule of thumb is that you should add images at regular intervals so that readers can ‘breathe’ as they read, and that these images should all have alt tags so that they assist with your SEO.
And then you should ensure you use a range of different types of images:
· Graphs and charts
· Cartoons
· Memes
· Screenshots
· Stock images
· Edited images
· Infographics (animated or static)
· Photo essays
Convinced? The good news is that even if you don’t have a graphic designer in-house, here are three easy-to-use and, better still (mostly free), online tools available to take your visual content to another level:
Create your own visuals with Canva, which offers a range of templates and stock photos for you to create the Facebook post, poster, flyer, blog graphic, etc. with loads of different backgrounds, layouts, fonts, colours and the ability to upload images. It’s very easy to use but there is a Design School that offers tips and tricks if you get stuck.
Share your story in a collage, gallery or show with Slidely by selecting your photos and preferred music. Slideshows can be created using Facebook, Instagram, Flickr, Pickplz, Picasa, Google images, photos from friends, or images from the user's own computer to mix with music and effects for dynamic slideshow/videos. The picture sequence may be rearranged via drag and drop and stories can be shared on social media.
If you have a lot of complicated text that would be better presented visually, infographics are a great way to present this information in an approachable way and are extremely popular on social media and blogs. With Piktochart you can select a template for an infographic, presentation, poster or even a report. You can edit text, fonts and colours, add photos, videos and even maps, and share your creation online or even print it.
We should all be experimenting with and exploring the opportunities that visual content brings our brands. It’s a blank canvas and it’s yours to fill today.
