Wouldn’t you like to make your Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook followers stop scrolling, engage with your content, and convert into paying customers? Sure you would, but how? The answer is two-fold. You must use powerful visuals to captivate attention and great storytelling to keep users coming back for more on visual social media platforms.
The social media world is noisy and crowded. It’s difficult to stand out and be noticed. Because of the massive amount of content and promotion of products, services, or content on social media, users are challenging to reach.
Take a look at these two important statistics according to HubSpot:
- In early 2017, 37% of marketers said visual marketing was the most important form of content for their businesses, second only to blogging at 38%.
- And in 2018, visual content is more than 40 times more likely to get shared on social media than other types of content.
It used to be as simple as placing images in front of your audience, expecting them to know what it was and why it was there. Now you must tell your audience to stop, read, and engage with your content in order to promote your business products, services, or content.
How to Captivate the Attention of Your Followers on Visual Social Media Platforms
1. Use Awe-inspiring Images and Videos
First, your images must be high quality, colorful, and when possible, unique. They must be awe-inspiring and portray a “wow” factor to captivate attention and make your followers stop scrolling. Your images should make the visual social media user stop and wonder where they are or who this is. Awe-inspiring and “wow” images make the user want more information. They make the visual social media user escape their current location and situation.
Second, videos. Awe-inspiring images make the user stop and desire more, but don’t limit yourself to static images only. Video content is important in your visual social media content marketing strategy.
And since Facebook and Instagram video platforms auto-play on users’ newsfeeds, videos are viewed without sound. To overcome this boundary and get your message across, create video that doesn’t need sound. Tell your story or engage your audience with an interactive 360 video, VR and AR, and/or standard videos. If you don’t have the content to create an engaging 360 video and stay with standard video creations, you must use subtitles in order to tell your stories.
2. Use Gripping First Sentences
But awe-inspiring images aren’t enough. Your images have about only eight seconds to captivate attention. Captivate your visual social media follower with gripping first-line sentences. Content that goes viral meets human needs. It is interesting, unusual, shocking, or emotional. If the first sentence is interesting, unusual, shocking, or emotional, it grabs attention and causes the user to want to know more. All four of these visual social media elements must be part of your social content strategy.
3. Use Great Storytelling
It is the art of great storytelling that engages users and keeps them coming back for more.
Nadine Heggie, VP of Brand Partnership, says the key to success on visual social media platforms is by “Staying true to your brand, being timely with content, using the power of wow and wonder, and embracing new technologies to tell stories.”
Now that you’ve captivated your visual social media follower’s attention with an awe-inspiring image and an interesting, emotional, shocking or interesting first sentence, you need to keep the user there reading your content.
Give a detailed story (150 words) about the contents of your image and let the text paint the picture for you. Make the content more personal and less promotional. Concentrate on creating a human connection with your followers. If you make the mistake of being over promotional, you may put your audience off and lose their interest.
Convert Your Visual Social Media Followers into Paying Customers
Create and offer free and interesting content. Instill a desire to want to know more. Deliver incredible storytelling. Then, give a bold call to action (CTA). Tell your followers what you want them to do.
Captivating attention and converting your visual social media followers into paying customers takes strategic planning. You need to know who your audience is, where they are, and what story they want to know. And the power of telling your audience a great story cannot be overlooked. For it is the power of great storytelling that engages your users with your content and brand and keeps them coming back for more.
Do you need help using visual social media platforms to captivate attention and provide great storytelling? Contact me at (800) 398-1080 or email hello@storyselling.biz today. Learn how to keep your users coming back for more!