Marketo recenty published a blog post that included a video with the insights of 8 thought leaders on visual content – along with where they think it’s going. Here’s what they had to say:
Tim Ash, CEO at SiteTuners
Visual content is like what synthesizer music was in the early 1970s – everyone does it. Don’t autoplay videos or put sliders on your page with rotating ads that distract from your calls-to-action. If you do, our reptilian brains will take over and we will flee from information overload.
Matt Heinz, President at Heinz Marketing
Right now, you’ve got memes and great infographics. We’ll continue to evolve and visuals will get richer in content. We are lazy – we want something short. Infographics work well for that reason – they’re short and easy to digest. I think infographics will get shorter and even become series.
Jason Keath, CEO at SocialFresh
Memes are based on images, Facebook timeline is based on images, Pinterest is huge, and so is Instagram. Words are less important, so search is harder and monitoring who is talking about you is harder.
Nichole Kelly, President at Social Media Explorer
It is engaging, people like it, they share it. But does visual content drive revenue? That is what we’re trying to figure out.
Marcus Nelson, CEO and Founder of Addvocate
Content is king; it always has been. You need to decide where it is going to live and then direct everyone to one place so you have a central depository of content. Good content creates thought leadership and positive first impressions, and you can control it.
Jeremiah Owyang, Partner and Industry Analyst at Altimeter Group
Visual content is a response to the amount of data out there. Visual is an easy way to share information, but it doesn’t tell the whole story – so don’t take everything at face value.
Craig Rosenberg, Funnelholic
Visual content is going to be huge. Right now, in B2B, it’s terrible. We are still just getting used to writing thought leadership content. Most videos are awful and boring right now. What is interesting is taking those same core content marketing ideas and putting them in a new medium. Using video for demos or product training has done great.
Jeff Widman, Cofounder at PageLever
Visual content tells a story better than static text. Facebook uses an algorithm that promotes photos, so photos perform much better in the news feed. MTV found that their photo posts reached 6x more fans than text and generated 13x more clicks.
I don’t know about you, but I’m going to start adding as many photos as I can to my Facebook posts! What is your favorite takeaway from these thought leaders?
Image courtesy of fightitoutlblog.com
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Tags: content marketing, Craig Rosenberg, Jason Keath, Jeff Widman, Jeremiah Owyang, Marcus Nelson, Marketing, Matt Heinz, Nichole Kelly, Thought Leadership, Tim Ash, visual content
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