Animated Visuals: How to Bring Still Images to Life

Do you use visuals on your blog and social media?

Have you considered animating them?

To explore how to use animated visuals in your content, I interview Donna Moritz.
More About This Show
The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It's designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with social media marketing.

In this episode, I interview visual marketing expert Donna Moritz. Her blog Socially Sorted was recognized as one of Social Media Examiner's Top 10 Social Media Blogs in 2015, 2016, and 2017.

Donna explores three popular types of animated images.

You'll discover tools to easily animate your own images.

Share your feedback, read the show notes, and get the links mentioned in this episode below.
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Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show:
Animated Visuals
Why Animate

As people scan their social media feeds, they're making lightning-fast decisions about what content they'll pay attention to. In this context, animated visuals add a little bit of movement that can attract the eye and add value in a short, snappy way.

Donna explains that short animations can be less intimidating to create than video. Animation is simply combining drawings, photographs, text, or computer graphics to make them move. You don't need to talk in front of a camera.

Short animations can also be a way to develop your audience. Donna says if you can make a strong first impression with a short animation, that animation can encourage viewers to watch longer videos and further engage with your content.

Listen to the show to hear Donna discuss the findings of a small MIT study that investigated how quickly people interpret images.

Popular Formats

Donna says that quick animations aren't divided into formal types, but you do tend to see a few common approaches. In a one- to three-second animated image, the background is typically fixed and only text is animated. For example, she points out, Social Media Examiner does these on Instagram. She says you might also see a mini slideshow.

"Video is your window of opportunity to get seen the Facebook news feed." - @mari_smith #SMMW17 #marketing #socialmedia #business #entrepreneuer #socialmediamarketing #smm #socialmediatips #smallbusiness #new #socialmediaexaminer #professionaldevelopment #smb #socialmediastrategy #businesstraining #quote #quoteoftheday
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A GIF is a silent animated loop often used to convey a feeling. GIFs have become hugely popular on social media. GIFs started appearing in blog posts and emails but have spread to messaging apps like Slack and Facebook Messenger. For example, in a blog post about social media strategies that drive her crazy, Donna says the only way she could express her frustration was with a Muppet GIF from Giphy.

Another type is a 3- to 10-second video, which you could create with something like the Ripl app. (More on that below.)

Finally, Instagram and Snapchat stories enable you to blend and share quick successions of images or videos.

All of these types of content are easy to create because so many tools are available.

Listen to the show to hear about audio in short video.

The Pros and Cons of GIFs

In blog posts and in email, GIFs are a great way to highlight particular emotions, add humor, or simply break up the content. Donna says she once sent out the wrong email to her subscribers, so she used a GIF to apologize.

However, you need to be careful about how you use GIFs. Donna recommends using GIFs sparingly. In a blog post, use no more than two GIFs, and in email one is enough. Donna says too many GIFs are like strobe lights going off at a nightclub. When you insert a GIF in an email, Donna suggests checking the file size and compressing the GIF bef...