An arresting image can kidnap our eyes and stir our souls, a power that experienced content marketers use to their advantage. Communication and education marketing professionals are developing new ways to engage audiences across multiple channels with provocative graphics and video.
Game of Thrones fans might recall when HBO elected to forgo a traditional press release to announce the season seven premiere date, instead live streaming a block of ice melting to reveal the date. Despite some technical glitches, the broadcast drew an impressive viewership of 142,000.
Even without the extensive resources available to the HBO marketing team, any company can harness the power of visuals in its education marketing and PR efforts. An infographic, for example, requires a small amount of time to create, but can yield high-impact results. Here are some tips for using infographics strategically to gain visibility and boost engagement.
1. Distill complex text
An infographic can squeeze extra mileage from a white paper or study your team has created. While some in your audience will prefer to get the full details in long-form text, others will appreciate the concise visual summary of key facts an infographic provides.
Be sure to include a hyperlink to the full content in your infographic to track referral traffic. If your team is planning to share the original written content in an email distribution, an infographic will catch recipients’ eyes and improve the click-through rate to your website.
2. Provide a helpful how-to
If you don’t have content like a white paper readily available, you can still develop a valuable infographic. Brainstorm with your team to pinpoint the inside knowledge that educators would find intriguing and useful.
For example, you might share a visual guide to implementing a game-based learning initiative, or an illustrated explanation of confusing policy jargon. Content built on your niche expertise grows both your audience and thought leadership.
3. Make it shareable
Although it’s important for the infographic to link back to your company, limited corporate branding can boost its shareability. While some infographics are designed to be promotional, the most universally appealing ones are educational.
If the goal is to have your social audience or the media share the infographic, be sure the attribution to your company is easy to find – but doesn’t overshadow the content.
4. Pair it with a story idea
Media are often looking for assets to include with stories. If you don’t have photos readily available to share with a news release or story idea, an infographic can make your pitch more enticing.
Even if a journalist doesn’t pick up the infographic for a feature story, it could land in their outlet’s newsletter, gaining more visibility for your content and company.
The right image is worth a sea of text, as education marketing and PR experts acknowledge. Companies can reap big returns from investing a modest amount of creative time on an arresting, information-rich graphic. Take these tips to the drawing board on your next storymaking move.
If you enjoyed this CB&A education content marketing blog, check out these companion articles:
- Four Ways to Streamline Your Content Development Process: Content development is a vital part of any education marketing strategy.
- Turn Every Call to Action into a Lead-Generating Tool: Without an effective call to action, education content marketing efforts could go to waste.
- Creating and Maintaining a Content-based Sales Process: To sharpen your sales funnel with content marketing, you need to evaluate the role content plays during each stage of the sales process.