Visual Marketing on Twitter | A Match Made in Social Media Heaven

The world has gone visual and the term ‘visual marketing’ has blown up!

But what does this mean for small businesses who want to do visual marketing on Twitter? Luckily we are going to tell you, and doubly-lucky…it is good news!

If you use Twitter, you will know it is fast paced. The amount of Tweets that come through our timeline on a minute by minute basis is crazy. Don’t get us wrong…we LOVE Twitter, but standing out in the wave of Tweets is a challenge you need to overcome.

This is where visual marketing on Twitter comes into play.

The principle of this isn’t hard to get your head around at all, it can be explained in 5 simple words

Visuals Stand Out on Twitter

In fact, Hubspot ran a study recently and found that tweets with images get 150% more retweets, 18% more clicks and 89% more favourites than those without.

The proof is there that we should all start using more visuals on Twitter. But there’s a problem right? We are lucky in that we are designers with a pretty visual brand. We can get away with having an image like this on our Twitter Feed:

However, any business can be doing visual marketing on Twitter, in 2 steps…

Step 1: Have the ability to easily make graphics.

Our inner designers don’t want you to know this but www.canva.com is a bloody brilliant tool for designing graphics…even if you aren’t a designer! There’s so many templates/graphics available for free or extremely cheap, and it has the correct dimensions for Twitter ready to go.

ACTION: As with anything, you’ll have to learn how to use Canva, but we know loads of people who have quickly gone from novice to pro. It just takes some practise. Go check it out…if it is your first time using it they have a great tutorial when you first start (if we remember correctly it has something to do with putting a hat on a monkey).

Step 2: What Visuals to Post

So now you know how to make visuals, you need to actually…you know…know what to make!

This is going to be different from company to company, so we are just going to give you some inspiration here…

ACTION: Look at your current Tweets over the past week and ask yourself how an image could have enhanced them.

ACTION: Go down this list and jot down some notes of what you could do.

Your Visual Marketing on Twitter Inspiration List: 

• Blog post titles as visuals. If you are doing any kind of content marketing or blogging create an eye catching visual with your great blog title as the main focus. Tweet this out with a link to your blog.
• Behind the scenes action. Instagram is a great place for these types of photos too, but don’t write off posting them to Twitter too. Add a bit of humanity to your feed with some real life shots.
• Quotes. Yes quotes can be a bit over done on Twitter, but in our experience they work. We have a range of image quotes branded up and loaded in Edgar ready to Tweet. We mixed in some humour to our quotes, as it fits our brand, so try finding some quotes that fit yours too.
• Events you attend. Our smart phone has made us all photographer. Snap some photos of events you are at, and tweet them out!
• Testimonials. Instead of boring text based testimonials, get a photo of the person who said the testimonial and layer over a short snippet of what they had to say. If your product/service can be shown in shot…even better. (e.g. a boutique fashion shot could snap photos of happy customers wearing the clothes with a quote of what they had to say).
• Action shots. In a similar vain to the testimonial, get some action shots of your product/service in action and SHOW not TELL your audience what you do.
• A photo of your website being used with a link to the same page. There is a great app called Place It that can help with this.
• Video. Don’t forget ‘moving images’. Interesting videos you’ve either created or curated go down great on Twitter.
• Response Videos. This is probably one of our favourites. Instead of replying to tweets the normal way, the Twitter App now allows you to record short videos, and post them natively to Twitter. This is a fantastic way to build up relationships with your audience.

We hope that has helped you get your head around Visual Marketing on Twitter. If you have any questions, or need some inspiration for yourself, just leave a comment below and we’ll get back to you…

atomic members: Check out the Graphic Design Cluster for some great top tips!

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