Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

As a marketer, you are probably already aware that images are important. They're easier to digest than a bunch of words on a page and can help support your other content by telling a story in ways that words cannot. Whether in social media posts or in blog posts, images help your audience to better understand what you are talking about, plain and simple.

Cinemagraphs can take things a step further.

What is a cinemagraph, you ask? The artists over at Cinemagraph.com – where the cinemagraph was essentially born – describe them as "an image that contains within itself a living moment that allows a glimpse of time to be experienced and preserved endlessly.

"In plain English, a cinemagraph is really just a fancy GIF – a file format often used to create short, infinitely-looping animations for the web. Check out the example below....

There’s significant momentum for publishers toward increasing the production of video content, on account of both the strength of video as a medium for storytelling and high video CPMs as advertisers begin to move their TV spends online (see the Chicago Tribune’s coverage for one example). An increase in video content across the board, of course, means that it’s all the more important that we have a sense of which parts of our audience we can hope to reach with video. To that end, below is a brief survey of the state of online audiences and their consumption of video.

The demand for visual news has changed the way the media reports the news. Digital PR can provide the images, audio and video for their websites.... a recent Q & A with top journalists and bloggers from major publications they all said that their editors demand visuals with every story.

Why? Analytics of viewer behavior shows that when a story has images, video or charts to support and enhance the text, it can increase views by as much as 9.7x.The L.A. Times calls it “No story left behind.” All of them agreed that they use outside video. The only caveat was that the images and videos have to be original, good quality and relevant to the story.

“Visual information reigns supreme, from video to images to infographics. Overwhelmingly, marketers plan to add more video to content marketing initiatives, necessitating increased investment in both technology and production resources. Marketers’ confidence in and reliance on content marketing is beginning to diminish their reliance on print and broadcast advertising, as well as public relations.”

- Altimeter Group: Content, the new marketing equation

Think like a publisher. Get your Digital PR team trained to produce excellent visual material that extends the story. And learn to do it fast. Work with the media and help them to tell stories that capture people’s hearts....