Last year, Procter & Gamble (P&G) unveiled a poignant short film titled “The Look,” portraying the life of a Black man, how he experiences micro-aggressions and prejudiced looks throughout the day because of his skin color, ending with a scene in a courtroom, where the viewer is led to believe that he is in trouble, when in fact, he is the judge. In a little under two minutes, the video highlights how racial bias and stereotyping affects the way we look at the world. Nothing is spoken throughout the video, but the message was easily understood by viewers.

The pictures and videos you choose for your social media campaign tell your brand story or message in ways words cannot, and using high-resolution assets lets your potential customers know that you care about making a good first impression. Using high-resolution assets across your social media platforms builds a consistent brand identity, grabs the attention of your audience and helps them remember your message.

Consistent Brand Identity

Every image and video must contribute to your brand story in a cohesive manner, to avoid running the risk of muddling your brand’s identity to your existing and potential customers. When done correctly, your audience might even recognize your brand by its consistent visual elements. Additionally, visually striking content tends to rank higher on social media platforms like Instagram, so it is crucial to understand how the Instagram algorithm works and ensure that you are producing high-quality content.

Producing unique, eye-catching content is an arduous task, which sometimes leaves marketers browsing for stock images or video. If you’re going that route, we recommend searching for images that match your brand and aesthetic, peppering your own photography and assets or user-generated content in your feed, and choosing images that you can edit by adding quotes, overlays or resizing.

Strong Brand Recognition

As with any other form of marketing, social media marketing has to be strategic, and marketers have to consider the types of content that will help them capture the attention of their audience and keep them engaged. Visual assets are an important part of that, so brands cannot afford to neglect them. SocialMediaToday.com rounded up some key statistics in regarding to using visual content marketing, which include:

• Our brain only needs 1/10 of a second to understand an image. Reading 200-250 words takes an average of 60 seconds.
• People remember visual information 6x better than the information they have read or heard.
• Content with relevant images gets 94% more views than content without relevant images.
• Tweets with images receive 18% more clicks and 150% more retweets than tweets without images.
• Facebook posts with images get over 3.2x more engagement than those without images.
• LinkedIn posts with images generate a 98% higher comment rate.
• Video generates 80% more conversions.

John Medina, molecular biologist and author of “Brain Rules” said that, “when people hear information, they’re likely to remember only 10% of that information three days later. However, if a relevant image is paired with that same information, people retained 65% of the information three days later.” We like the sound of those odds!

How Can Your Business Take Better Pictures For Social Media

If you do not have the budget for hiring a professional photographer, an influencer and you’re coming up dry with user-generated content, your smartphone camera and some basic photography skills should work nicely. Follow along for some smartphone photography skills:

• Clean your camera lens. A smudged lens has the potential to ruin a good shot.
• Enable grid lines. This will help you establish the rule of thirds, a basic photography skill that will improve the composition of your pictures and create visually appealing content.
• Find symmetry. Some settings may not lend themselves well for the rule of thirds. In those instances, find symmetry. Hey, if it works for Wes Anderson, it works for you.
• Shoot from several angles. Play around with the camera and explore new perspectives.
• Don’t zoom in. Zooming reduces picture quality. Instead, take a picture and crop it.
• Embrace natural lighting, patterns, and frames.
• Level up. Use a smartphone tripod that’ll allow you to level your images.
• Have fun! Experiment with unconventional methods, and even go hands-free by setting a timer or using a remote control camera shutter.

Best Editing Apps

There are many free and inexpensive photo-editing apps available to help marketers edit their images on-the-go including:

Photo Editing

• VSCO is all about the filters, which give a vintage look to photos.
• VEED’s background remover takes out distracting backgrounds to make your images stand out.
• Snapseed, a Google-owned photo-editing application, enhances photos, applies existing filters, and allows users to create their own filters.
• Adobe Photoshop Express takes all of Photoshop’s features and packs them into your smartphone.
• Adobe Photoshop Fix is perfect for retouching images.
• Rather than for editing images, Canva can be used to create visuals, such as posters, images with text on them, and more.

Video Editing

• Animoto has the ability to not only create videos from presentations, but the videos created can also be formatted to be used on social media.
• Over, which can also be used for static images, allows users to add text over the video.
• Wave.Video allows users to combine video clips, crop and trim video, record voice overs, add music and color filters, change the aspect ratio of your video, and more.
• Biteable’s built-in asset library boasts more than 85,000 Shutterstock clips, and it’s user-friendly platform allows users to create videos within minutes.
• Promo’s most basic plan, starting at $39 per month offers licensed music for videos, among other high-level features.

Smart marketers looking to engage in relevant conversations on their social media channels with their target audience must embrace the use of attractive and consistent visual content. The use of high-resolution images and video will lead to higher web traffic and conversion numbers, which will turn into leads and customers.