GIFs get the subject across swiftly and save the short talk for later. Here, you’ll discover why you should start practicing them and how to arrange them.
Posting GIFs on Instagram Stories isn’t just entertainment or a quirky idea to do. As marketers, we always hold the ultimate goal in mind: To generate conversions. Consider it or not, GIFs are practical marketing tools that you can practice across all social media platforms.
What is a GIF
GIF, Graphics Interchange Format, a bitmap image format designed by a team at the online assistance provider CompuServe managed by American computer scientist Steve Wilhite and delivered on 15 June 1987. It has since evolved into widespread usage on the World Wide Web due to its overall comfort and portability between applications and operating systems.
The format holds up to 8 bits per pixel for each image, enabling a single image to reference the palette of up to 256 distinct colors picked from the 24-bit RGB color space. However, it also promotes animations and concedes a different palette of 256 colors for each frame. These palette limitations make GIF less suitable for reproducing color photographs and other images with color gradients but well-suited for more detailed images such as graphics or logos with solid areas of color.
Here are unique ways that the most prominent marketers use GIFs to their advantage.
Increase Brand Awareness
When it gets to GIF usage, context, and branding matter, you can’t just drive a GIF up and assume it’ll bring people in. You still need people to acknowledge your brand and its disposition.
Develop Brand Interest
If you’re amplifying brand awareness, you’re engaging people to know about you for the initial time. If you’re creating brand interest, you’re attempting to solicit to those who are on the accomplice about you. By explaining your brand’s personality and furnishing an incentive to purchase, you may go from consciousness to interest to conversion, all done due to one concise video.
Deliver the Important Message
As brands understand that their audience, especially millennials, care about objectives and make purchasing judgments based on brands’ benefits, they have frequently gotten on board with choosing sides. For example, to bring extra attention to a cause your company holds in, you can utilize a GIF rather than a chunk of text or a static image.
Simpler Than Video but More useful than Pictures
Visual communication supports you better interact with your audience. Producing visual content is becoming an industry standard. GIFs can often come for free! However, you require to guarantee your message gets across when you prefer your short, stimulating image.
GIFs Communicate in a Short Time
GIFs are excellent for supporting users who consume a lot in a brief amount of time. Plus, they customarily loop. So if they missed your message the first time, it’d come back around again. Thus, GIFs could serve as the ultimate “pattern interrupt.”
Build Branded GIFs
While you may see related GIFs over and over while scrolling over social media, this doesn’t mean you’re limited to those generated by others. Instead, you can create branded GIFs. The method doesn’t take too long, and they give many customization alternatives for you to pick from.
Show Your Brand’s Personality
Cultivating your brand can deliver consumers to trust you more substantially and sense they’re buying not from the faceless business but genuine, live people.
Apply Your Target Keywords
Never neglect that keywords don’t settle with SEO. You require to apply keywords for your Instagram marketing as well. So utilize keywords in your GIF, its caption, and in any other means, you can.
Employ Instagram Stories GIFs to Direct Your Followers’ Attention
Using Instagram Stories GIFs is a unique way to seize your viewer’s attention and highlight some aspects of your story. You can hunt for GIFs with call-to-action keywords like “link in bio,” “sound on,” “swipe-up,” and other tips to let your viewers comprehend precisely what you desire them to do.
Pin Instagram Stories GIFs
Desire to attach a wonder element to the Instagram Stories? You may “pin” Instagram Stories GIFs to a distinct location on your video, so they only pop up at decisive moments. It presents your story stand out and holds it more enjoyable! Pin your GIF in the fancied location by hitting and holding the screen until you notice a little bar at the base that says “pin.”
Create Distinct Effects by Resizing & Reverse Instagram Stories GIFs
Varying the size and orientation of your GIFs on Instagram Stories is an excellent way to attach some creativity to your content. You can improve and reduce the size of any GIF by tweaking or extending it with two fingers — just similar to conventional Instagram Stories stickers or text.
Apply Instagram Stories GIFs to Highlight Your Text
If you need to make your text stand out, Instagram Stories GIFs are a great way to grab your viewer’s attention and keep them from skipping through your story.
Employ GIFs To Make Images Come to Life
Get your images to come to life by combining an animated element to your photo. While your GIF shouldn’t get away from your appearance, adding movement to your story is a great way to catch your follower’s interest.
GIFs to Complement Your Theme
The fabulous thing about GIFs— and videos, in general- is straightforward to consume. Customers don’t have to exercise the corresponding effort to learn a long post to capture the essence of your message. However, you will require text on stories to keep your followers handling your news—and that’s okay! But, with the aid of animated GIFs, you can use your text-based tales to a perfect new level.
GIFs for Reactions
Let’s assume you’re driving an Instagram Stories Q&A to communicate with your followers. Of course, you could wish to acknowledge their questions with text, which would be just lovely. But if you need to earn the most of your Instagram Q&As, you can apply looping images to reply to your followers. With GIFs, you can build an emotional (and fun!) connection with your listeners that’s more powerful than mere text.
Conclusion
Using GIFs on Instagram stories is an exciting strategy that a lot of marketers overlook. Frequently, we see text, images, or videos alone, but GIFs combine all of this in an easily digestible way. It makes them able to generate a lot of brand awareness, interest, and, potentially, conversions. The best use of GIFs for marketing is offering an inside look into your business, showing off your work and your brand’s personality.
