Week 8 Part One: Getting Started With Visual Social Media

      Visual media plays an important role in the marketing of most products and services. Determining whether your business is one that would benefit from visual media is the first step in the process of building a successful visual social media campaign. Companies that offer services in person or sell consumer goods are clear candidates for visual media campaigns, but these are not the only kinds of companies that can benefit from a visual media campaign. My company being one that offers consumer goods that incorporates a recycling service, and has a target market of mostly IT savvy millennials, is a great example of a company that would benefit greatly from visual media marketing.

      The options for posting your visual media marketing campaign are numerous, so be sure to choose the optimal platforms for reaching your ideal target audience effectively. The top eight social media platforms for sharing visual media are Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, Pinterest, Google+, and Reddit. But just because these are the most widely used platforms does not mean that they are your ideal location for all visual media posts, as some niches may do better in more specialized forums, blogs, SM platforms, or websites. Considering my target audience, and the currently minimal resources of my company, the most effective social media platform to post my visual media is Instagram. While I would prefer to have a YouTube channel to promote my products and service, the fiscal and time commitment is too great. And without a finished product or a manufacturing facility within the US, consistently producing video content for a youtube channel would be impractical.

     While photos and video may be the first forms of social media that come to mind, there are other forms of visual media that may be more effective for your brand and may receive more engagement, especially in the form of shares. Some of these alternative forms of visual media include lists, infographics, charts, and quizzes. It has been shown that of all forms of visual media, quizzes are the most likely to be shared once created and have far less competition for consumer attention than photos and videos. This being considered, depending on your brand image, business model, and target audience, these alternative forms of  visual media may have a higher ROI than producing video or photographic content.