Human beings have evolved to be very visually driven creatures. Think about having a phone call with a stranger versus a Skype chat? It’s uncomfortable, right? Because you’re missing out on vital visual cues, those subtle tics and other types of body language we use to communicate every single day. I would venture to guess that our ability to visually decipher information—our brains processes visual cues 60,000 times faster than text—is a huge part of what’s kept us alive and thriving over the past few hundred thousand years. Which takes us to content marketing (nice segue, right?) In content marketing, the use of images and other visual content plays a huge role.
Over the past few years, we’ve seen the top three social media big boys become more and more image driven. Facebook, LinkedIn, even “140 characters only” Twitter have all made changes that include a bigger emphasis on visual content. According to Hubspot, when Socialbakers.com took a look at the top 10 percent of posts made by more than 30,000 Facebook brand pages, they came back with some impressive results. Posts with photos saw the most engagement—accounting for a whopping 87 percent of total interactions. Twitter fared well also, with tweets with images garnering 18 percent more clicks, 89 percent more favorites, and 150 percent more retweets. And other super successful visual content platforms have grown up around the big boys, like Pinterest, Instagram, Snapchat and Slideshare. Today, it would be difficult to argue the fact that social media audiences engage more with rich media content.
Now, don’t despair yet for the written word. We still like to read (as long as it’s quality!) and for most brands and marketers one key strategy employed to attract new customers is telling their brand stories through content marketing. But with so much content being posted and time being limited, this can be a challenge.
Researching and experimenting with different tools is what we do best here at V3Broadsuite. One tool we have found really interesting is SlideBatch. The feature I like most about this tool is that you can easily curate ideas and thoughts around topics that are interesting to you, your clients, and your audiences.
Easy To Use
With SlideBatch, you’re able to collect all the information you need in one place. You can easily drag and drop media files from a variety of sources (including images, SlideShare, news and other blogs, video files from YouTube, Vimeo, etc.,) as well as your own original content like infographics and photographs you have taken. You can then select from a wide range of templates and designs and presto – you’ve created your batch.
You can view any of the content created with SlideBatch on any device – they’re not slouches and are fully mobile friendly.
Sharing Made Easy
You can opt to share your batches by making them fully public, or keep them private and share only with the people on your team. And there are myriad ways to share with SlideBatch:
- Embed your batch onto your website or blog
- Configure your batch’s RSS feed to a reader
- Upgrade to the private label version and share batches and items from your own URL
- Share to different social media sites like Facebook and Twitter
Since launching their beta product about a year ago, SlideBatch recently started a crowdfunding campaign on crowdfunder.com in order to take their offerings to the next level. Great news for content marketers everywhere.
“We are at an exciting stage with SlideBatch”, said Paul Shirer (CEO/Founder). “We have spent the past six months learning from customers and the market and refining our features and product positioning. Our next challenge is to drive revenue through software-as-a-service (SaaS) upgrades to our free version and through SlideBatch publishing channels.”
If you want to try it out, check out their free version—the paid plan starts at $45 a month—or watch this short video on what SlideBatch is all about. Or both!
SlideBatch Introduces New Marketing Tool for Content Marketers and PR Professionals
Here’s an example of what we have created that showcases some of the content we created during the #IBMAmplify summit we attended recently.
If you do decide to create your own content using this tool, please let me know what you think. I would love to see what you have created.
Additional Resources:
SlideBatch Introduces New Marketing Tool for Content Marketers and PR Professionals
Native Video Views Skyrocket on Facebook: Marketers Take Note
Experts Share Visual Content Mistakes to Avoid
Photo Credit: sifatsiddique via Compfight cc
Shelly Kramer is a Principal Analyst and Founding Partner at Futurum Research. A serial entrepreneur with a technology centric focus, she has worked alongside some of the world’s largest brands to embrace disruption and spur innovation, understand and address the realities of the connected customer, and help navigate the process of digital transformation. She brings 20 years’ experience as a brand strategist to her work at Futurum, and has deep experience helping global companies with marketing challenges, GTM strategies, messaging develoment, and driving strategy and digital transformation for B2B brands across multiple verticals. Shelly’s coverage areas include Collaboration/CX/SaaS, platforms, ESG, and Cybersecurity, as well as topics and trends related to the Future of Work, the transformation of the workplace and how people and technology are driving that transformation. A transplanted New Yorker, she has learned to love life in the Midwest, and has firsthand experience that some of the most innovative minds and most successful companies in the world also happen to live in “flyover country.”