We all love visual content. In fact, we love it so much that startups like Pinterest, Snapchat, Whatsapp & Instagram have reached billion dollar valuations faster than any other business in a whole man kind.

All of the above startups have one thing common: visual content. Each one is full of users who are sucker for visual content.

This wave has brought a great opportunity for content marketers and social media marketers to increase the reach of the content they create by creating relevant visual content. This was the reason we rolled up our sleeves and published popular posts: 33 apps for creating stunning visual content and 58 places to promote that visual content.

At the same time, we realised that lot of us are in dilemma over what type of visual content we can create and how we can embed it in our regular blogs.

So, in this blog, we have tried to cover the most important types of visual content you can embed in your blog posts. Also, such content is equally easy and helpful to share across different social networks and submission sites.

1. Header image

You can pique visitor’s interest instantly with header images. Getting visitor’s attention is important because most of the visitors have a very short attention span. And we process visuals 60,000 faster than text. Good compelling header image can build the curiosity about the content.

Such images also acts as a thumbnail for the blog post at a lot of news and bookmarking sites like Delicious, Digg, etc. where you will submit the content. You can even use such images when you share the blog over social networks like Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin.

Do refer to our blog post 33 apps for creating stunning visual content to find out tools for creating such header images.

2. Free stock images

No, I am not referring to the photos of people in business suits when I say free stock images. Instead, you can go for images which are relevant to the content you create. Using right kind of images set proper emotional tone when visitor is reading your content and helps him focus on the content.

To give you an example, check this post: The Day I Almost Got Fired for Saving Somone’s Life. The author, Carolyn, used following image:

The image was extremely relevant to the title and somehow assured me that the article is going to be quite interesting read.

We have featured lots of sites which provide free photos in the post I mentioned. Do check them out.

3. Screen shots

If you can show something, show it instead of just telling. There might be a time when you want to talk about an awesome product or the amazing website or the great feedback your received on Twitter. And even the very interesting email your received. This is where screen shot comes very handy. E.g. instead of just talking about how great particular website is, you can show the screen shot of it. It is far more effective way to make your point.

In my previous blog post, when I wanted to mention how much people on Entrepreneur sub-reddit loved our previous blog post, I showed the screen shot of the blog post instead of just writing that people loved it.

Such visual proofs helps to generate the trust about your blog among readers as well.

4. Charts and Graphs

If you have been putting too many numbers and statistics in your content, it’s a good idea to put the content in the form of charts and graphs. People tend to remember such graphs more often than the text. Like this one:

Resource: Buffer blog

Another advantage of putting such graphs is people would refer to such graphs and mention your blog post in their content. Just the way I did for Buffer blog. This helps you to get more traffic and also improve search ranking for your content.

5. Mini Infographics

There is no denying that Infographics are effective. But they are hard to embed in your blog and expensive to create. So, you can go for mini Infographic like this one:

Resource: TheNextWeb

Such Infographics have the advantage of getting far more mention on other blogs. Plus such Infographics are much more welcomed on lot of communities we mentioned in our blog 58 places to promote visual content for free

6. Gifs

Gifs are powerful to get your message to the audience. Salesforce has been really good at creating Gifs like this:

7. Meme and comics

Light hearted fun through content is always good. Memes and comic has every ingredient to do that. Oatmeal has built an empire of its own by creating visual content in the form of comic. You can do that too at a small level. Of course, only if you think your potential audience have penchant for such content.

Moz did an amazing job with memes. When they raised $18million dollars, instead of doing a traditional PR news, they created funny memes like below which went viral in a startup community.

It’s pretty clear that visual content is super useful to multiply the reach of your content. I hope this post gave you enough ideas to incorporate interesting visual content in your blogs. You can even refer to 8 success stories of visual content marketing to get some inspiration.

Also to help you create engaging visual content, we have created a checklist before you hit ‘Publish’ . Hope it helps you to create engaging visual content.

If you have great experience with any kind of visual content, do share those in comments. We would love to learn from your experiences.

Posts from partners