In this blog we will be discussing the importance of using visuals on social media in a variety of ways to connect with your audience. We will look at two twitter accounts who are apart of the same field and how they use visuals to enhance their social media content. We will also dig deeper and explain why visuals are effective and what type of visuals you should use to achieve specific goals. I will also explain why media managers should be aware of these visuals and how to utilise them in the best way.
I would like to start by outlining the different types of visuals that are commonly seen on social media. They are images, infographics, short videos, long videos, live streams, and gifs. All of these are useful tools that a content creator needs to be aware of and understand to a great depth. Images and infographics are a great way to visually represent information or convey a message to the audience. Short videos are a very good way of delivering a visual message in an easy to watch/bingeable form. Long videos are good for sharing larger amounts of information to an audience which they can consume at their own pace and time. Live Streams are some of the best ways to connect with your true ‘fans’ or ‘promoters’ as it gives them the opportunity to connect with the creator in real time. Asking questions about the content that is being delivered and influencing decision making during the stream. Finally, gifs are an extremely short visual generally used to show the evolution of a product or service, or to create moving logos that are more engaging for the audience.
Before looking at our examples I would like to draw your attention to two quotes which I think are at the heart of this discussion.
‘Consider how the image will make their target audience feel’
(Johnston & Rowney 2018)
‘Effective images evoke responses from viewers. That’s the goal.’
(Fizz & Hatch 2013)
We can take these quotes and slightly adapt them to suit what we are discussing by changing the word image to visual content therefore encompassing all forms of visual content. Now the question you should pose to yourself when creating and selecting visual content is what form of content will evoke the strongest response from viewers as well as what actual content should be displayed within the selected form. These decisions are essential to create strong effective content on any social platform.
Now we will compare two examples of twitter accounts held by games in the horror genre. The first is Dead by Daylight (DBD). DBD uses a variety of visual content on Twitter to connect with and inform their followers. These include images, short videos, live streams, and gifs. All which serve specific purposes as we mentioned earlier. Today we will focus on just their short form video content. DBD use this style of visual content to tease followers with new gaming content. This creates high levels of engagement through share ability and excitement from the player base. As seen in the example below.
If we now look at Hunt Showdown they utilise a similar suite of visual content forms however they excel at cinematic videos. This approach is more like that of creating a film rather than just a short video of something upcoming. This creates a different emotional response in the audience than that of a DBD short video. Rather than pure excitement Hunt Showdown try and make viewers feel in awe of the beauty of their game. This can be seen in the example below produced by Hunt Showdown.
It is clear from the explanation and examples that having a deep understanding of visual content forms is essential to be successful as a media manager or content creator. Allowing you to effectively create content that will connect with your target market and evoke a strong response which is the true goal of any social media account.
References
Dead by Daylight 2022, “Dead by Daylight”, Twitter, retrieved 26 January 2022, <https://twitter.com/DeadByBHVR ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor>.
Hunt Showdown 2022, “Hunt Showdown”, Twitter, retrieved 26 January 2022, <https://twitter.com/HuntShowdown?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor>.
Johnston, J. and Rowney K., 2018 Media strategies: managing content, platforms and relationships Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, Sydney, ch 1.
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