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In a Tenor survey, two-thirds of millennials said gifs did a far better job conveying emotions than text. It’s true. With gifs, brands can entertain and have interaction with their target audiences in a way plain text or static images just can’t.
How does this relate to marketing? How are you able to harness the facility of gifs to spice up your marketing strategy?
In this article, I’ll show you ways you'll find and use gifs throughout your marketing decide to increase engagement, make your brand relatable, and entertain your audience.
Find Gifs Through a Gif Program
A gif search engine is a repository of gifs you can search by using category, popularity, name, gif artist, and various search parameters, a lot similar to an image site.
Typically, you type during a word, short phrase, or quote, and results appear from most to least popular.
This is where gif search engines can most notably diverge from traditional ones: long-tail keywords can also extensively limit your results.
Giphy— is arguably the foremost popular gif program. Giphy is that the second-largest program online.
(However, it’s not the sole option. Other places to seek out gifs include Tenor, Tumblr, Reddit, and Imgur).
On Giphy, brands can create channels for his or her gifs, very similar to YouTube. Even the National Archives features a Giphy channel
What Do People Use Gifs For?
Gifs are now utilized in place of emojis and text in everyday online conversations. Marketers can hop on this train to urge our audience’s attention in their endless Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr feeds and have interaction with users across all of our marketing platforms.
Gifs are around since 1987, long before internet use was widespread.
In the youth of the commercial internet, gifs have been all over on websites — spinning icons, under construction signs, flashing CTA buttons & more.
Then, gifs evolved into dancing everything—the peanut-butter-jelly banana, and, of course, the dancing baby; probably the primary gif to achieve pop-culture status.
Gifs are often such a lot quite a tool for humor, though. Marketers can harness their popularity to market their brands in new ways. Gifs are often utilized in email marketing, social posts, and blogs—some blogs even create entire articles out of gifs!
Tips for Gif Engine Search Optimization (GEO)
Like other search engines, to use gifs most effectively, you would like to find out about gif engine search optimization (GEO).
If you don’t have one already, consider creating an account on a site like Giphy, especially if you’re thinking of making your gifs. It’s different to offer your brand visibility using gifs users can share through their social channels.
Remember, it’s not enough to upload your content—you need to optimize it. Here are some tips for optimizing your gifs.
Be Mindful of the aim of Your Message and Your Audience once you Use Gifs
Before you share or create a gif, ask yourself what you’re attempting to accomplish. What does one want your audience to try to do together with your gif? Some common goals for gifs include:
- Gaining likes and shares
- Sparking conversation to extend engagement
- Raising awareness a few product or service
- Increasing click-through rates
Now believe the sorts of gifs that are appropriate for your platform and your audience. What is going to respond to? If you’re employing a pop-culture reference, will they recognize it?
Additionally, confirm your gif truly speaks to your audience and not at them. It’s very easy to settle on a gif for its humor or popularity, but it’s also very easy to return off as tone-deaf.
You should consider quite not just the statements your gifs make—it’s the items people or characters in your chosen gifs have done.
If you’re using celebrities or politicians in your gifs, confirm you are doing your due diligence on their recent escapades. Have they done anything controversial? If you’re employing a fictitious character, is there anything that character that would turn viewers away?
Keep Up With Gif Trends
Staying on trend with gifs can keep your brand relevant and assist you to show up in searches through trending keywords.
Many gifs riff off famous movies, TV shows, events, or celebrities.
One way to stay your gifs and, by extension, your content relevant is by creating an ingenious gif that speaks to an occasion.
Another way to remain on-trend is to make a gif employing a popular show, movie, or person of interest. That would be a star, politician, or simply someone within the news enjoying (or not) their quarter-hour of fame.
Keep an eye fixed on Gif File Size
When it comes to gifs, smaller is typically better. Giphy recommends the following pointers for importing gifs to their site:
- Files 8MB or below is best.
- Resolution at or below 480 is best.
Gifs aren't like still images, where high resolution is important. It’s more about the message than the looks, especially since most gifs are going to be viewed on mobile.
Add Tags to Your Gifs
Once you’ve uploaded your gif, don’t forget to feature tags, as users search by them. Confirm you include all relevant tags.
Keep Gifs Short and Sweet
Gifs aren't videos, and Giphy recommends keeping gifs below six seconds and 100 frames if possible, though longer is allowed.
Six Ways to Use Gifs to Market Your Brand
Gifs became their language. you'll use them to react, show emotion, give support, say the items that are hard to mention in writing—just about anything is often told through gifs.
That includes telling your audience why they ought to choose your brand.
Here are some recommendations on the way to use gifs to market your brand to your audience.
Use Gifs to Entertain Your Audience
This is probably the foremost common use of gifs. Brands use gifs purely to entertain their audience by sharing popular gifs associated with their brand or by creating their own.
Whether you’re using popular culture icons or creating something of your own, keeping things entertaining can draw your audience in.
Use Gifs in Blog Posts
The king of the gif-laden listicle is Buzzfeed. They’ve created a whole genre of articles based solely on gifs.
Giphy has also gotten into the sport, creating blog posts about current events and trending topics that feature gifs in their program.
GIF program - Use Gifs in Blog Posts
Keep in mind that you simply don’t need to create entire stories out of gifs. Simply employing a few well-placed gifs during a blog post could illustrate or emphasize some extent better than a still image.
Pro Tip: If your blog post covers a significant topic, consider leaving gifs out.
Use Gifs in Email Marketing
Using gifs in email marketing is often a touch tricky, but it might be beneficial if done well.
Ask yourself how your audience would answer gifs in your emails. For some, opening an email to a barrage of moving images may be a turnoff.
This is where some research could are available handy—for instance, check out how your community is interacting together with your brand on social media to ascertain if they appreciate an honest gif.
No matter who your audience is, you ought to use gifs sparingly in your emails. This is often for 2 reasons:
- Too many gifs make your emails look busy and confusing. Your target audience may additionally lose your message among all the flashing shades and shifting pictures.
- Gifs are often big files, and that they could create lag time when your audience tries to open them.
Finally, if your emails combat a more serious or professional tone, don’t use gifs in the least. Gifs provide a content piece a lighter tone that will not jive together with your message.
Use Gifs to point out Off Your Products
Gifs don’t need to be solely for entertainment. You'll use them to spotlight product features during a few frames.
This is especially beneficial for social media ads. For example, Subway regularly creates fun, colorful gifs to exhibit off their sandwiches and salads.
Use Gifs to spice up Engagement
Engagement with gifs creates beyond likes and shares. Here are two ways you'll use gifs to spice up engagement.
Reaction Gifs
Reaction gifs are an excellent thanks to answering followers’ comments on your social feeds. Since most social media platforms have built gifs, it’s easy to upload one.
Let’s say someone paid your brand a pleasant compliment. rather than merely writing “thank you,” which may encounter as a touch impersonal or robotic, you'll include a gif to point out what proportion you appreciate their feedback:
Gifs allow you to customize your responses to your brand’s voice and therefore the message you would like to convey.
Live Giffing
In 2012, Tumblr introduced the planet to measure giffing during the presidential debates.
Think live tweeting but with gifs.
You can use live giffing during a serious TV event, just like the season premiere of a well-liked show, an awards show, or a sports event.
Anything you'll relate to your brand may enjoy live giffing. This will be done on any social media site.
Conclusion
Gifs may have started as spinning icons and funny animations, but they’ve evolved into a strong tool for marketers.
When most are using gifs to speak, it’s a no brainer that brands should get in on the conversation to extend engagement and promote their products and services.
Look at your marketing strategy and choose when and the way you'll use gifs to best convey ideas to your audience. Find gifs on search engines or create your own—whatever works great for your brand.
If you would like help implementing this and other content marketing techniques, we’re here to help!
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