Hosting Mautic QuickStart -50% with support in Spanish
24 hours and free training
Send up to 1,000,000 emails/year. Mautic support in Spanish 24 hours, 365 days
If you’re used to using social networks and consuming digital content, it’s been many months since you’ve seen how the use of animated GIFs is becoming more and more popular.
And it is that, even people who are not familiar with the term “GIF”, have seen (and even used) one more than once.
“On the Internet, they really like the use of animated images to give dynamism to each message, whatever its type.”
Although in reality GIF’s are nothing new, seeing them in a general way in the messages that brands have with their users is something new.
They began using , which are now more than accepted by all of us, to later move on to the use of stickers (or stickers) that help us to give greater expressiveness to our digital messages.
Among all of them, we can find a wide variety of themes. But, also, don’t think that everything is limited to cartoons that move, they actually have tremendous educational potential when it comes to applying an effective and impactful content strategy.
Do you want to join this trend of animated GIFs?
Today in this article I will tell you all about what GIFs are, where to find them and how you can use them strategically if you have an online brand or business.
What is an animated GIF?
Let’s start by getting to know these small media files in detail. You know, you can’t start applying something to your online marketing strategy if you don’t know everything it can bring you.
I am sure that defining and reviewing the advantages of integrating GIFs in your messages and digital content will encourage you to use them too.
“gifs means “Graphic Interchange Format” or, translated into Spanish, graphics exchange format. In other words, it is a type of visual file that is made up of several static images that are played sequentially and in a loop.”
These static images can be photographs, illustrations, symbols… Any type of image that adds any meaning to the final result.
Because, as it happens in the cinematographic world, you will already know that the sequencing of images ends up producing an animated sensation.
After all, cinema is nothing more than a montage of static or totally different images that, sequenced, have a meaning. A concept more than applicable in marketing and, specifically, in our web content, don’t you think?
Advantages of using GIFs in your messages
Now that we are clear about what a GIF is, let’s go one step further to understand why it is so interesting to incorporate them into a web page and, thus, bring our brand’s content to life.
“Don’t use animated GIFs just to be a fad. Think that fads are temporary and may not fit well with your style, your tone or your strategy.”
If you decide to incorporate GIFs in the communication with your users, you have to assess whether or not your brand will really contribute some of these advantages:
- Transmission of a current brand image: Today, who else and we use these files in our conversations. They are already integrated into , into Facebook Messenger and into practically all channels. If your brand uses them, it will show to be modern and current.
- Load release in multimedia content: When your website has loading problems due to excessive multimedia files, the GIF is presented as a lighter alternative that, in turn, improves the user experience.
- Attention call through visual impacts: A static image can go unnoticed among all the impacts that users receive. A moving file is more likely to catch everyone’s attention.
- Promotion of the virality of your web content: If your content has a casual style and the use of GIFs is consistent with your audience, they will feel comfortable when sharing them on social networks.
Remember that animated GIFs are a double-edged sword, and not all brands provide these benefits. Also, if you launch GIFs without rhyme or reason, the results you will achieve will be the opposite, since you can give the wrong image. Be very careful with this!
How to use GIFs on your website or online store?
So that you don’t run the risk of misusing these multimedia files, I want to give you some recommendations and examples on how you could integrate the use of GIFs in different web content if you have a website or online store.
Specifically in:
- That of your products.
- The design of your promotional banners.
- The messages you leave your users in their queries.
Remember that my tips are just general ideas that you should adapt to your type of business and communication style.
Product description
A very good business idea is to include animated GIFs in the description of products to encourage purchase.
Think that it can be a fantastic way to show how your product works, what its star feature is or the range of colors available.
Also, using GIFs in this type of web content is a great alternative to producing expensive video commercials.
It will be enough for you to have a sequence of good photographs!
Browsers who make purchases online, no matter how used they are to it, do not usually have time to read long product descriptions (and less if they are not really interested). With this type of GIFs the problem is solved 🙂
banners
This is the most traditional use of GIFs in web content since the Internet was invented.
And it is that, they are the best way to make a stand out among the static elements of a web page.
In this type of files there are no limits; You can promote anything you want. The only “requirement” is that you be consistent with your corporate identity and your communication style, since the banner design must identify your brand.
Responses to users
If your relationship with users is informal, and you like close and daring conversations, you can include GIFs in them.
Here you have a very close way to answer your questions and suggestions (always, of course, with respect).
Be careful and make sure you choose the files you are going to share well. Use those that are consistent with the conversation and that cannot cause double interpretations or communication problems.
How to use GIFs in your blog?
In a blog content of all kinds is shared; texts, videos, images, infographics… Everything is welcome if it helps to develop the different themes and make the message more understandable for readers.
In addition, beyond using animated GIFs on social networks, you can make them part of your blog.
Of course, all these types of content must always be used correctly. Each piece of content should support the theme, but should also follow the usual communication style.
It doesn’t make sense for your texts to be academic for professional users and then use a humorous GIF that goes off the rails. In this case, it would be best to use GIFs that serve as educational reinforcement.
visual content
Among the visual content that you can share on your blog are graphics, illustrations, infographics or photographs.
All these contents can be animated in a GIF to give them more visibility.
A good example is this infographic with animated parts that José Facchin shared on his blog to explain the future of infographics themselves.
banners
As with a web page, blogs also have spaces to place banners such as sidebars. In them, you can promote your website, products or services, a future event, or the subscription to your newsletter.
Placing a GIF banner on your blog is an opportunity to highlight calls to action towards what you want your users to know about.
It can be for or to promote something, for example.
If you usually carry out promotional campaigns on platforms such as Facebook Ads, Twitter Ads or LinkedIn ads, you can also consider using different content formats, including images, GIFs or even small landing pages.
For example, to include moving GIFs in your ads, you have to select the option to make an ad from a video (although they are not strictly so).
You can use your own GIF or one that you get from one of the download sources that I will share with you later.
Whichever you choose, its reproduction in advertisements is automatic after viewing by the user, so it will not be difficult for you to attract their attention.
Newsletters are another social channel in which there is space to work on content in motion.
You can include both GIFs and banners that direct users to your website.
If you are going to promote a product or service, I recommend that you use an animated GIF of the type we saw for ecommerce. Here is another example used in a newsletter:
Where to download animated GIFs?
We have seen that there are many possible uses of GIFs in an online marketing strategy.
In fact, these have only been examples of uses that work, but there are as many as you want to give them. After all, no one knows your target audience like you do, so you must adapt the content to their tastes and needs.
Creating an animated GIF is not difficult, but if you are not familiar with image editing tools it can become quite a challenge.
Even so, you should not worry, because there are many sites on the Internet that can help you by offering you GIFs of all kinds.
It is the leading website for GIF downloads. It is the one used by most users, both to download files and to upload their own creations and make them public for others to use.
It is mainly used to viralize humorous content that is then used on social channels.
However, the number of files it collects is overwhelming.
It has more than 10 different categories and they are organized by keywords. If you do the right search, you will surely find what you need.
It is a much less well-known page, probably due to the simplicity of its contents, but it stands out for having a wide variety of files aimed at promoting educational and academic topics.
Tumblr is a microblogging platform that, in principle, has nothing to do with the world of GIFs, but users have used it so much for its content that its developers have decided to install a specific search engine for this type of content.
In it, you will find as much variety as there are types of microblogs, so the offer is very extensive.
You can search for them by keywords or directly by the most popular topics of the moment.
Some of the main social networks have already realized how important a GIF is in conversations between…
Facebook Comments
Disqus