Things have come a long way very quickly when it comes to Social Media – and ever since Facebook floated on the share market a few years ago they have made a massive move to reposition themselves to be a more profitable company – they have been doing this by giving businesses an even greater reach (when you pay for it of course) to their users. It’s now got to the point where almost all of a newsfeed has been taken up by advertising and updates from companies and organisations you ‘like’ rather than seeing all of your friends updates.
It has been a subtle shift and you wouldn’t have noticed things change overnight but they have certainly changed. How do you ensure your post stands out in a crowded advertising space? – Which is even more important now that you’re most likely paying to ‘boost’ your posts and advertisements just to appear in someone’s newsfeed.
Use animation and movement to stand out
With so many ads across Social Media it does get harder and harder to stand out from the crowd. It’s no different to traditional advertising, where-by the ad that really stands out the most is the one that gets noticed by potential customers.
One way that we can leverage this is to create a bit of movement in your ads and posts – no longer are we confined to a static image. With mobile networks now able to cope with greater demands of data and offering larger data-caps along with Facebook automatically playing videos (like it or not) advertisers have a great tool that they can use to grab attention. You can even add animations and videos to your Cover image on your Facebook page as well as in your posts to help your own brand page stand out as well.
You don’t have to spend big to add movement to your posts though, you don’t always need a full-blown studio production – even subtle movement can catch the eye and using age-old techniques like stop motion animation can create an effect that is eye-catching and straight to the point but just as important, is easy to achieve. Generally with Social Media videos and ads you want something quite punchy, something that lasts a few seconds just to grab attention and stop-motion animation works as a great effect. People are busy and may not engage with a full-blown production or TV style advertisement but a quick little animation works wonders.
We have noticed quite a shift in some of the Social Media content we have been producing and now try to incorporate a little movement into content where we can. Much of the time it just takes a little extra thought and foresight on a photoshoot, to ensure we capture enough ‘frames’ to build into a moving image. Something that lasts a few seconds is often all we need. Allot of the time we don’t even need to run through the process of a dedicated photo-shoot and we can often create stop-motion ads from existing graphics and images we or a client already has using a bit of technical know-how and creativity.
Using apps to create moving content for Social Media
There are also multiple apps around that can be used right from your smart phone to help build great moving content. If you have an iPhone for example you have that function almost built right in with the ability to use your camera as a ‘stop motion’ camera from the native camera app by switching the setting to ‘time-lapse’. There are also the Instagram apps ‘Hyper-Lapse’ and ‘Boomerang’ that can create fun effects. Even Apple’s own iOS software takes ‘moving’ images every time you click the shutter of a camera if you have ‘Live Photos’ enabled (check your phone’s camera settings) and in the new iOS software you can add animations to these live photos by ’swiping up’ from your Photo’s app. Now it’s easier than ever to take advantage of a bit of movement and really make your content pop!
Below are a few examples of some media we have created that we think works great to add a bit of pop and movement to Social Media posts. Speak to us today if you want to add a little movement to your Social Media!
Remember, if you would like to learn more or you would like help creating amazing Social Media content get in touch with us here Zynke Design! We can walk you through the basics and teach you about the different file types for animated, moving images (learn the difference between a GIF and MP4) and help you create your own content, or we can create it for you.