Pairing the right visual content with your copy is a sure-fire way to leave a lasting impression on your audience. We’ve come up with four tips and tricks to help you choose images that will make your content shine.
1. Think about your brand
The visual content you choose is a way to reinforce who you are to your audience. When selecting images for your written content, be sure to consider whether they’re consistent with the personality, style and tone of voice of your brand.
For example, if you’re creating content for early childhood education, you could consider choosing images that are bright and colourful, showing engaged and happy looking children.
When we’re selecting visual content for Shuttle Rocket, we like to choose images and graphics that reflect how nerdy we are about copywriting and strategy. That means lots of faces, colours and notebooks!
Your visual identity is part of how your audience views your brand; if the visual content you include is affecting for them, they’ll associate this with you.
2. Relate to your audience
As humans, we’re at our most empathic when we’re responding to something that we’re looking at. By choosing an image that relates to the experience of your audience, it’ll be memorable for them.
Another way to connect with your audience is to use different types of visual content, such as GIFs or illustrations. They have the potential to appeal to a wider audience than if you’re using one type of content alone.
Avoid images that are dark – both in tone or in content. Unless you’re writing about something or for a brand that requires it, sharing images that have a darker tone may have a negative effect on your audience’s mood. If you’re looking for visual content to illustrate your travel blog, you won’t want to select images of grey storm clouds or rain to reflect that you’ve been spending time on a beach in Fiji. However, if you’re promoting a brand that runs ghost tours, delving into creepy or gloomy imagery could be relevant for you.
3. Leave the cheese for your cheese jokes
What does cheese say to itself in the mirror? Haloumi! (Hello me.)
We don’t need to see more content with cheesy images. This doesn’t mean you need to leave the stock images behind, but it is a good idea to be more considered in the way you select them. You won’t necessarily need to be obvious about your choice of image – if choosing an image that’s more conceptual or poetic will appeal to your audience, use it.
As an example, we shared this image on Instagram to illustrate a post about blog topics to make a business sparkle. The quality of light conveys whimsy, while the caption reveals our sense of humour to show other aspects of the Shuttle Rocket brand.
4. Make use of your skills
Visual social media platforms, like Instagram and Snapchat, are ubiquitous now. It’s fair to say that if you’ve used a smartphone to take a photograph, you’ll probably be visually literate and have a sense of the basic compositional rules of photography. So why not put those skills to good use? If, for example, you’re creating content that relates to the people you’re working with every day, you could consider creating the imagery yourself.
One more thing: make sure you’re using images that you’re allowed to use under copyright and intellectual property legislation. Often photographers and image creators will share their work for free under certain conditions, and you can share their work as long as you provide credit, where necessary.
Keep these tips and tricks in mind and you’ll be choosing the right images to ensure your content shines before you know it. And, if you need help ensuring your content shines of its own accord, reach out to our expert team of Melbourne copywriters.