Tips And Tools For Creating Extraordinary Visual Content For Your Site

Creating visual content for your website is an essential part of running your site smoothly. After all, the visuals are usually the first ones that catch the eye of your site visitors. Here are some tips and tools for creating extraordinary visual content for your site.

Tips And Tools For Creating Extraordinary Visual Content For Your Site

1. Visuals Should Correspond to Text

Many marketers forget about this simple rule, but if you really ignore it, it could actually cost you a lot. The thing is that your visuals should correspond to your text so that your content marketing campaign and your overall advertising campaign is consistent. If there is a dissonance between the content you create, then your audience might be quite confused. What you need to do is coordinate your content creation in a way that will make your content consistent. If you are talking about a certain holiday sale in your illustration, then you need to talk about the sale in the description under the illustration too.

2. Show Emotions

Another very important aspect of great visual content is making either show emotions or create emotions in the person looking at the content. In other words, it needs to interact with the audience in some way instead of being static, lifeless, or even robot-like. One way to make your visual content full of emotions is by talking about topics that are inevitably connected to emotions. However, you need to remember that what you show in your visual content should be genuine and must come from the heart. Otherwise, it will look like you are simply exploiting the topic for your corporate needs.

3. Create Authenticity

With so much content being created every day, the majority of Internet users will not always be able to set apart what is good content and what isn’t. This means that a lot of great visual content is constantly lost or ignored. As a result, authenticity is valued quite a lot because it is nearly the only thing that can help you stand out from the crowd. As many experts say, you need to either talk about a specific topic or find a unique approach to a common matter. For example, there is a very slim chance that anybody would talk about how to make ice cream from vegetables. If you are connected to culinary, finding a way how to make such ice cream could be perfect for finding your own audience.

4. Tailor to the Right Platforms

A mistake some marketers still make is not optimizing your content properly. This means that it is not tailored to the right platforms, so a piece initially written for Facebook could look quite strange on Instagram. To avoid such confusion, use these tips to tailor your content to the right platforms:

• Check how long your posts can be on each of the platforms and shorten your pieces when you need to.
• Use hashtags only on the platforms that support them. Otherwise, they can look strange.
• Adjust your visuals by resizing or cropping them.

5. Find the Right Balance

There is a certain line that shouldn’t be crossed when it comes to visual content. Having too much of it just as having too little of it will negatively influence your marketing campaign. This is why it is crucial for you to find the right balance between visual and text content. As mentioned earlier, your visual and text content should be consistent, but you should also remember that the two of them should be present in your marketing just in the right amount. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the amount should be equal, but make sure that it is balanced in some way.

6. Visuals Are Also A Part of Branding

Branding is a way to make your brand distinguishable. It is a process that requires thorough planning and will help your company form an image for itself that will be recognizable for your target audience. An important thing to remember is that visuals are also a part of branding – it’s not just the text. This is why the previously mentioned consistency is so essential for your visual content to perform well.

7. Find Out What Others Are Doing

While it’s nice to know that you are doing great and your marketing campaign is effective with your visual content performing well, it is still crucial that you find out what other brands and businesses are doing. Do some research and check what kind of techniques they use and what content marketing trends they follow. If their actions lead to their success, then you could follow their example and do something similar to yourself.

8. Repurpose User-Generated Content

User-generated content or UGC has long been established as a very easy way to decrease the workload of your content creators while also establishing better bonds and connections with your audience. If you start repurposing or curating user-generated content, you will see that there are more people engaging with it, it is received better because of its “personal” aspect, and it also minimizes the amount of content you should create as a brand.

9. Avoid Using Generic Stock Photography

Stock photography has been at the center of discussion for many years now. Not only has it been criticized for being too widespread yet lacking value, but it was also praised as an easy way for companies to have high-quality visuals in their marketing. The best way to approach stock photography is, of course, by being more careful with it. Don’t use generic pictures and instead look for hidden gems that show genuine emotions and don’t look staged.

10. Maintain High-Quality Consistently

While it was mentioned earlier that original content can help you stand out from the crowd, maintaining the high quality of your content consistently is also essential. With text, you can do this by hiring professional writers from Online Writers Rating, but with visual content, there are some guidelines you should follow:

• Only use high-quality stock photography.
• If you have your own photographer, make sure you pay them well, so they create good photos.
• Use professional editing programs and apps or practice with non-professional tools to perfect your craft.

11. Value and Originality Go Hand-In-Hand

There’s originality, then there’s quality, and finally, there’s value. These three factors are the ones that will ensure that all of your visual content is used appropriately and doesn’t simply float online uselessly. This is why providing your audience with value through your content will help you to guarantee that your visuals are just as useful as your text. Be informative, educational, entertaining – each of these orienteers will be a great guide for you.

12. Find Out What Your Audience Wants

After you check what your competitors are up to, it is a good idea to also find out what your audience wants. After all, they are the ones you are doing all of this for which is why their interests should be your top priority. You could read what they post online, or you could ask them for feedback directly. You can also put out surveys with several questions that will help you pinpoint exactly what their opinion is.

13. Always Remember About Tools

Tools are there for a reason. Imagine this: you took an amazing photo, but something needs to be altered or improved. What you do next is use a program to work on that detail, and the same goes for any other time you work with visuals. Even if you feel that there is nothing you can make better about whatever piece of visual content you are working with, there is probably still something you can do if you really work on it.

14. Test, Test, and Test

Lastly, always test your content as much as you can before putting it out for everyone to see. Of course, you will not always have the opportunity to do this, but testing content at least from time to time can still be useful. You can have focus groups viewing it or you can consult experts who will give you some feedback on it. Whatever the case, make sure that the testing is done according to preset rules and is as accurate as possible.

15. Infogram

Now that we’ve talked about the best practices, there are some great tools that can also help you to create extraordinary visual content. Infogram for instance is one of the most popular tools for creating engaging visual content. It has tons of templates that you can use to create an embeddable graphic that you can then use on your site, blog, or social media. You will have to select a template and then insert your information such as data, links, images, and branding. You can then publish and share the graphic. Some premium options can also help you to take this to a new level in case you want it to be even more professional.

16. Canva

Perhaps the most popular app for graphic design is Canva. It is extremely user-friendly and has nearly all the options you could think of. That being said, Canva largely relies on templates which is both an advantage and a disadvantage. On one hand, templates mean that you don’t need to think much to design something and can do it only in a few actions. On the other hand, when you don’t use templates, you will most likely have fewer features that you can use for editing your images.

17. PicsArt

When it comes to a popular, user-friendly app that does not rely on templates like Canva, PicsArt is an obvious leader. It boasts a variety of features that will help you edit images in a way similar to Photoshop, but on a less proficient level. For instance, you could take one photo and cut out a person from it. Then, take another photo and crop it, add the cutout, and apply a filter to the finished product. Lastly, you could add some text or even stickers – and these are just several of the available features.

18. Palette Creator

For brands that heavily rely on real-life photography, putting the accent on how beautiful this photography is might be a very effective way to promote their brand. This is why palette creators can help you so much. Of course, there are so many tools available for this that it would be improper to list here only one of them (besides, none of them is better than the other at the moment). If you do use a lot of photography, consider trying out some color palette generators.

19. Quozio

As for visuals with text, quotes are now quite popular. While scrolling through your social media feed, you probably saw at least several such posts. They are in-demand, so creating some images with quotes could help your campaign, and Quozio is one of the best tools for this. All you need to do is choose an image – a photo or illustration – and then insert the text into it with the help of the tool. There is a variety of fonts you can choose from, so it’s easy to adjust the edit to your liking.

20. Adobe Illustrator

For those who prefer to have everything done one the highest professional level and possess the necessary skills or resources for it, Adobe Illustrator or Adobe Photoshop could be a great choice. This is by far the most well-known program for working with images, so you can be sure that you will find everything you need in this software. That being said, if you are only starting out with editing, then you will need to spend some time learning how to use Adobe.

Final Thoughts

To sum up, using these tips and tools can be extremely helpful to anyone who wants to make their visual content better. Try out different apps and then decide which ones you like more, but definitely combine all the tips from this article for a better effect. Author’s Bio: Tiffany Porter has been working as a Chief Writer at Online Writers Rating reviewing a variety of writing services websites. She is a professional writing expert on such topics as digital marketing, blogging, design.  She also likes traveling and speaks German and French.