When it comes to influencer marketing, it’s all about the influencers’ ability to bring stories to life and inspire audience action. One surefire way to increase audience engagement is to include multiple photos. Linqia’s recent program with BISSELL® found that 83% of the posts with the highest engagement included four or more photos, which is unsurprising considering that content featuring relevant images gets 94% more views than imageless content.
Yes, photos are a great way to add life to a story and bump up engagement numbers. But photos aren’t the only type of visual content that grabs audience attention. Both influencers and marketers are seeing positive results from including other types of moving content – particularly GIFs and videos – into their programs.
As people become less receptive to traditional advertising methods and more weary of branded content, marketers are trying to find ways to creatively capture audience attention. Studies have found that people only remember 20% of the text they read if there are no visuals, proving that visual power is critical to success.
GIFs
A GIF is defined as an animated graphic or set of images. GIFs can come in a variety of forms – looping GIFs that continuously play with no end, cinemagraphs with only one or two areas subtle areas of motion, or technical GIFs that bring life to static images, graphs, and diagrams – and have become increasingly popular as a marketing tactic in the past couple of years. In fact, according to Twitter, people shared more than 100 million GIFs in 2015, a number that is not expected to dip by the end of 2016.
GIFs are are appealing because they are easy to consume, which makes them attractive to any brand trying to meet the never-ending demand for content (creating engaging content still ranks at the top of the list of challenges for both B2B and B2C marketers). In influencer marketing programs, GIFs are a great social media or email marketing tactic because they offer a quick and interesting way to share a new product with the audience.
Consider this GIF from our recent Nature Valley cereal program. Rather than only including images of the product in her post, From ABCs to ACTs took it one step further and created a GIF. By combining static images, she quickly created a simple, visually satisfying GIF of filling a bowl of cereal. The added bonus? It ends in a happy face of her favorite cereal additions. As a result, the influencer received nearly 30% more engagement than those whose posts only included images of the product.
Videos
Videos, though not a new marketing technique, go hand in hand with influencer marketing as many of the programs lend themselves to video content. Recipes and how-to tutorials are popular across all verticals, particularly for food, beauty, or DIY brands and products.
More brands are requesting video content in influencer programs, which is unsurprising considering mobile video consumption rises 100% every year and 80% of users recall a video ad they viewed in the past 30 days. Smart influencers are stepping up to the challenge. Linqia influencers, who are compensated based on how well their content performs, are especially keen to video as 92% of mobile video consumers share videos with others and 64% of users are more likely to buy a product online after watching a video. (Source: Hubspot)
Check out this video from a recent Hallmark program, where some influencers went the distance and filmed video tutorials on how to create DIY projects from recycled Hallmark musical cards. Videos are perfect for programs like this because they can take lengthy step-by-step projects and make them easier to consume with visual aids. While He Was Napping even created two versions of her video – a full-length step-by-step tutorial for those ready to follow along and a sped-up sneak peek at the final product for those still deciding if they want to participate (seen below). As a result, this influencer placed in the top three for program clicks.
https://youtu.be/j6UXDx26C0w
Brands currently involved in or considering influencer marketing programs should definitely give more thought to including moving content in addition to traditional photo visuals. Taking the best performing visual content and repurposing onto brand assets is an additional perk – including a video on a landing page can increase conversion rates by 80%.
