How to Increase User Engagement With Video, Photo Content

When it comes to any marketing strategy, the goal will most likely always revolve around getting more leads, securing more sales, and getting more loyal customers. And when we’re talking about converting leads and securing sales, the key component here to consider is our magic word: engagement.

With great engagement comes great interaction, and the more interactions we get in our brands, the likelier we are to get loyal followers and more sales.

How can we get ourselves more engagement, when bigger brands already made a mark in the industry? It’s with this question that we bring out our secret weapons, in that we can actually increase engagement with effective video, photo, and multimedia content.

That’s right – brands use a lot of video and photo content to the point of aggression not because they want to be annoying to customers. Rather, they want to find out the most “useful” ways of using their multimedia assets to generate appeal from their potential clients. And if they can do it, you sure can do it, too! Cover photo by Kristin Hardwick from StockSnap.

Here are quick tips on how to leverage your brand’s multimedia content for better user engagement:

Use your multimedia resources to share stories with your audiences. When we consider the reality that customers see an average of 5,000 ads a day, we really can’t blame them for wanting to use ad blockers. So, to avoid being a victim of such an occurrence, we need to make sure images and videos we use to “interact” with our readers are actually content they’re interested in seeing.

One of the best ways to do this is to tell a story to your audiences – and it’s better if the story is actually something that’s entertaining or compelling enough to help them stick until the end.

Add a quirky story. Like it or hate it, Raid: Shadow Legends has quite the interesting series of ads. The (in?)famous mobile game is a simple turn-based fantasy title, where players choose a roster of characters to fight an opponent. What makes Raid a bit unpopular with the gaming community is its aggressive sponsorship thrust, and it’s something other games often make fun of. In the example above (left), this unique Raid ad pokes fun of usual mobile game conventions, such as discarding characters in exchange for new ones, and transforms these into videos that are relatable to audiences. As a result, we have Raid ads that have “characters” (in CGI!) complaining to staff of Raid regarding their abilities and features. This makes Raid very recognizable in its own community – and honestly, being known wins you half the battle.

Insert a compelling sales ad into a fun tune. A crowdfunded project might be the last thing we want to see in the case of engaging ads, but Foldeat has such an interesting approach to its ad that makes it worthy of mention. Conventional ads and multimedia content often have narration in “generic” music. In the case of Foldeat, it uses a sales pitch that matches the tune of its background music – Cherry (by Chair Model). Foldeat, in itself, is simply a foldable lunchbox. With accessories. This, added with a nicely-timed video, created an ad you’d want to finish – for the narration, the video, and the music. A lot of the comments actually say the same thing. You’d watch it, want a Foldeat, and stay for the funky tunes.

Source: Grammarly

Show your brand’s strengths, and don’t just tell. When making advertisements and multimedia content, it can be very tempting to just use “fancy visuals,” inserting your product, and then ending everything there. But even if you have a powerful copy or a caption, your post or content won’t be able to engage audiences… because, well, your main piece of content (the multimedia portion of the post) didn’t really “reach” them in the way we want it to. If you want your audiences to know your strengths as a brand or a service, actually show them what your product or service can do.

This has a lot to do with properly presenting features, facts, and statistics in a way that isn’t super overwhelming. We want to tap into our ability to generate visual impact, as it can happen almost instantaneously (around 100 milliseconds) whenever our content appears to our viewers.

Grammarly has a great way of doing this in their new series of advertisements. Whereas typical web services usually just “share” features in their multimedia content, Grammarly actually shows their features live. When they present their hypothetical “work” and “school” situations in their videos, the characters “use” Grammarly in the way normal users would, and the visuals used throughout the video perfectly show this.

If possible, try to demonstrate features your product and service has from a “practical” and user-focused standpoint. This sets up the expectation of readers as to what they’ll find with the service you want to feature. For instance, in the case of the ad above, Grammarly showed the features it can do in a quick and concise manner, and shows viewers how useful it could be for them to have the app.

Actually use those products and services in real-life situations. If you’re hoping to make an image, a video, or a multimedia content piece for your brand, you’ll likely be going to feature a brand or a service. Instead of going for a generic “ad with a caption,” why not make a piece of content that actually shows how products are used in real life? This kind of method capitalizes on the ability of the visual media to establish a connection between your product and the audience. That’s because people who watch your multimedia content will correlate your product to the “use” they’ve seen in the content, and this can definitely attract audiences facing the same “problem” your content solves. This adds a “real life” factor that can make your product and service unique from others out there.

In the above example, we’re using Tasty and Cookat, both food-related media organizations that often feature various products. In their examples, we have Tasty with a Spam video, and Cookat with an M&Ms video. While they most likely just used these two products without a sponsorship deal, you have to aim for your product to have this kind of exposure. If you’re Spam, you’d want chefs to not just cook with any ordinary luncheon meat, they’ve got to use Spam because it generates a different kind of appeal and quality, as the video above showcased. When making videos and multimedia content, the way you use your products and services must show this as well – what makes you different?

When making multimedia content, make sure your visuals are spot on! Studies show that 67-percent of customers say product images are very important when purchasing a product. As such, when showing a product or a service in real life, make sure important branding elements such as logos and colors remain very apparent, so the theme and tone will remain consistent throughout your content. When you use appealing visuals for your multimedia content, the likelier it is for audiences to interact and engage with your content.

Build links with multimedia content that naturally connects to viewers. If you’re relying on website content to showcase your product and service, you need to be smarter with presenting them. Aside from relying on typical visuals and video content, make sure the images you use actually help emphasize your product and service. This not only lets you create compelling multimedia pieces, but this also helps you build better links with your audience. If part of your SEO approach relies heavily upon link building, multimedia content can be a natural way of helping get your content out there.

In the case of OrganicLinkBuilders, their website not just talks about their link building services and their SEO expertise. Rather, they also show relevant data, statistics, and even testimonies from clients. This adds a lot of personality to the way their team presented their website, and this makes sure the multimedia adds natural and organic value to the page as a whole. If you apply the same strategy, search engines that crawl on your website can take note of these relevant imagery and boost your social score.

Using this element also happens on a case-by-case basis, and usually depending on your niche. In the case of the above marketing team, their expertise and niche lies on link building and digital marketing. As such, it’s natural for the content they use – even in images – are heavily focused on link building. If you have an ecommerce store or another service, your multimedia should focus on them as well. In the case of the above, their multimedia approach is spot-on as they took advantage of their digital marketing niche to present natural and organic content that can actually promote link building.

Increase Engagement with Multimedia: It’s in the Appeal of Colors, Shapes!

With the above tips in mind, it’s important to remember that a lot of successful engagement has to do with generating appeal from your readers. And multimedia content puts you in the best position to get the attention of your audience, as great visuals can definitely make your brand more compelling and more entertaining. As with great stories, your multimedia content has to pique your audiences’ interest by asking them questions they may not have thought of before, generating reactions with statements that can be surprising, and to motivate them to do an action related to your branding. Hopefully, the above tips have given you a head start as to how you can approach this in the best way for your brand.

If you have some more quick tips and tricks for other digital marketers, please do feel free to share them in the comments! And if you have some great examples of engaging multimedia content, feel free to share them below for everyone to see!

Author Bio: John Gonzales

John Gonzales loves two things the most in the world – technology and pizza. As a writer by trade, he spends a lot of time writing about food, travel, and the latest in tech developments. John is your guy when it comes to writing pieces on gadgets and consoles, games, health and medicine, and even marketing. As a techie himself, John wants to make sure his pieces aren’t just informative, but also very personal and tailored to reader needs.

 

 

 

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