gifographics

There’s a hot new player in the world of content creation, and it’s called a gifographic. Gifographics are the next level to the amazing visual content piece known as an infographic. And gifographics are taking it to a whole ‘nother level. In addition to being more engaging and more interactive than infographics, gifographics are also ideal for mobile displays and primed to make a huge impression in content marketing as we know it. Curious to find out about this innovative form of content? Curious to learn how you can use them in your content marketing? Let’s discuss. What is a Gifographic? In many ways, gifographics are the close cousin to an infographic. Infographics, of course, use images and text to provide an informative piece of content for users. GIF-ographics are an infographic… and just what the title suggests, with the parts of a moving GIF. See the differences in our two creations below. Infographic: “Ultimate State of Content Marketing in 2015” Gifographic: “A Guide to Writing & Optimizing Great SEO Content” Much like an infographic, a gifographic works by providing a platform for a lot of information in a small space. Gifographics, like infographics, also feature images but, decidedly unlike infographics, gifographics are animated. And “gifographic” is a term that Neil Patel coined back in 2014.  “GIF” is an acronym for Graphics Interchange Format. GIFs were one originally of the earliest forms of moving images on the web and they’re still massively popular. Sites like BuzzFeed use GIFS in their content all the time for high engagement, and Facebook just began allowing GIFs in its newsfeeds. Twitter allows direct GIF uploads, too. For example, here’s a GIF from a Twitter participant during one of our #ContentWritingChats: Excited to join the first #ContentWritingChat: What is a Copywriter? pic.twitter.com/aDbBvGw7v0 — Kathleen Burns (@katbu) January 19, 2016 While GIFs are short, sweet, and often hilarious, they lack one big component: they don’t often provide a ton of information for users. While they’re great for cat videos or images of people falling down, they haven’t dominated the “informative content” market until now. Combined with the traditional format of an infographic, gifographics have the potential to provide huge value for users and marketers alike. Published late 2015, our gifographic already has over 300 shares thanks to the fact that it illustrates the concepts while also providing a transcript and some helpful information for our readers. Effective, right? We think so, too. We even repurposed and cut the top of it as a GIF for an Instagram video: Today on the blog, our first #gifographic (link in profile): A Guide To Writing & Optimizing Great SEO Content (Gifographic) #infographic #nextlevel #marketing #googlesearch #webtraffic #optimization #content #seo #seoproblems #success #entreprenuer #sales #copywriting #writing #contentmarketing #blogging #inboundmarketing #growthhacking #newblogpost #newblogger #bloglife #instablogger #newpost #blogspot #writer #expresswriters #photooftheday A video posted by Express Writers (@expwriters) on Nov 19, 2015 at 4:44pm PST While infographics are far from dead and are still effective in many ways, it goes without saying that they don’t work as well today as they used to. This is part of the reason gifographics are coming into popularity right now. One of the most important aspects of a gifographic is that it harnesses the power of video content, which is fantastic because an estimated 69% of all web traffic will be directed at video content by 2017. This means that the future of gifographics is bright and that you can benefit from incorporating them into your marketing strategy right now. The Content Sea We’ve talked before about the idea of the “content sea.” Today, the average social media user is confronted with MORE than 285 pieces of content each day. What’s more, people receive roughly 121 emails a day and the web at large shares over 27 million pieces of content on a daily basis. With that in mind, it’s no wonder that we’re suffering from content burnout. This may be one of the many reasons that people are on the lookout for concise, valuable, informative pieces of content now more than ever: we simply don’t have time to read 5,000 word articles or pick apart the meaning of long-form. It would seem that we’re between a rock and a hard place. As the web continues to grow and as tech continues to develop, everyone needs content to make their businesses run, but more and more consumers are becoming burnt out on content. So what’s the answer? How do we create content that readers want to read? How do we create content that doesn’t immediately sink to the bottom of the content sea? The answer is simple: make it more interesting. This, my friends, is where the power of gifographics enters the picture. How Gifographics Can Help Your Content Stand Out Gifographics combine several of the things consumers love – information, visual interest, and conciseness – into one highly-shareable and highly-viral package. Gifographics are extra exciting right now because they’re just starting to break into the mainstream. While people beyond a select group of content marketers are starting to get familiar with this content form, they haven’t saturated the market yet, which means the grounds are ripe for marketers who want to jump on the bandwagon. One of the reasons that gifographics are so effective is that people are 323% more successful at following directions that include illustrations than text-only directions. Additionally, we remember an average of 80% of what we see, compared to only 30% of what we read. These facts illustrate the importance of gifographics and prove that marketers who aren’t using them should be. 5 Key Benefits of a Gifographic Aside from being immediately understandable and digestible by readers, gifographics offer a series of important benefits: 1) Gifographics boost SEO According to Neil Patel, gifographics are one of the primary pieces of content that marketers can use to boost SEO rankings, help build authority, and gain readers. 2) Gifographics go viral If you think infographics are the perfect vessel for “Going viral” you should check out what gifographics have the potential to do. A recent Buffer study found that when blog posts feature animated graphics, they … Read more