Visual content in the form of photos, slideshows, videos, and data visualization have the potential to engage with your audience more effectively, but this isn’t a guarantee. Human beings are wired to appreciate visual information, since we can process it quickly and intuitively – but the wrong combination of visuals, or the use of visuals in the wrong context can instantly negate these benefits.
What steps can you take to make your visual content more engaging?
Make Use of Digital Signage Software
If you plan on using visual content in a physical environment, one of your best assets is going to be digital signage software. With the help of digital signage software, you can consolidate and display your best visual content across any number of digital screens, throughout any physical space – and even on your website.
Whether you’re attempting to motivate your employees, provide directions and schedules to event attendees, or just communicate with a mass audience, digital signage software can help you ensure your messaging is easy to see, easy to understand, and consistent across mediums.
Know Your Audience
Next, understand your audience. Different types of demographics interpret visual content in different ways. They have different perspectives, different preferences, and different ways of thinking about the world.
Accordingly, you wouldn’t want to use the same piece of visual content for a teenage girl that you use for a middle-aged man; you also wouldn’t use the same content visuals for a seasoned veteran in a given field to teach an amateur who’s never heard about this topic before.
A little bit of market research goes a long way. Proactively understanding who’s going to be seeing your visuals can help you sculpt those visuals in a way that makes them more engaging to this specific audience. It’s also important to gather feedback after your audience consumes your visual content; how did they receive this? And what can you do to improve reception in the future?
Avoid Stock Images, Common Tropes, and Clichés
People just getting started in the visual content creation space often try to mimic what other people have done in the past. They utilize common tropes and clichés, and they have no problem tapping into stock images and videos.
This isn’t necessarily a terrible thing; sometimes, having any visual content is better than having none. But if you want to make a better impact and make your visual content more engaging, you have to do something unique.
Strive to create all your content visuals from scratch, and try to create them in a way that differentiates you from your competition. This will make your visuals much more noticeable, memorable, and engaging.
Hire Professionals for Visual Content Creation
Thanks to the abundance of free and inexpensive online tools available, it’s possible for anyone to create content visuals. However, if you want to make the greatest impact and improve engagement further, it’s important to hire professionals who can handle your visual content creation.
Photographers, graphic designers, videographers, and other visual content experts can do a much better job of putting together compelling, interesting visuals. This requires an extra investment, but it’s usually worth it, especially if it’s critically important to grab your audience’s attention.
Employ Minimalism
White space is your friend. Too many newcomers in the visual content creation space attempt to cram in as much information as possible into a single image or video. Their visual pieces of content are extremely busy and hard for viewers to parse.
Generally, it’s better to employ minimalism. Use a single photo with plenty of white space or use a muted background with a single message at the forefront of it. This will draw your viewer’s attention to the most important part of the visual and improve its aesthetic value.
Find a Signature Style
Your visual content style should be readily definable; ideally, you’ll have a distinctive, signature touch that all your employees, fans, or followers can recognize. This can be as complex or as simple as you want it to be, as long as you have some way to distinguish yourself.
Pay Attention to the Latest Trends – and Keep Evolving!
Finally, pay attention to the latest trends in visual content development and keep evolving. The more you learn about visual content, and the more you stay up-to-date with relevant, thriving trends, the more engaging your work is going to become.
Depending on your goals, visual content could be a way to keep your employees engaged, a way to sell more products to your target audience, or a way to make your event more informative and interactive.
But no matter what, your visuals are only going to be effective if they’re adequately engaging. These strategies should help you close that gap.
