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Most slides created to date are not suitable for social media channels due to their high text intensity. But visuals is powerful format for carrying your stories in social channels.

Design your visuals to tell the story without a speaker. If used by different speakers allow them to use the visuals and put their own twist to the story. Visuals crafted around pictures and numbers have great potential.

As a starting point I would like to suggest you can tell all your stories in social channels with a visual. With a clear idea on a visual target format you can create a large amount of related content and tell broader stories by combining them. Creating a few base formats for your visuals simplifies the publishing of coherent content down the road.

I would suggest you build your content around three powerful cornerstones. For your best stories the three of them can almost stand on their own and when combined they will generate a 1+1+1=4 result.

1. A headline telling the essence of the story – great message, good search words and clever word-smithing. An art easier said than done.
2. A picture capturing your audience minds – own unique pictures or from a stock photo provider. It should work in both your visuals and related blogs.
3. 1-3 facts with numbers per story – numbers tell better stories than letters, and in a lot fewer signs.

The headline is the only part most people will see of your story. It is classical word-smithing art. Vital to secure the right search words are part of your headline.

A good storyteller visualizes pictures as his mind is crafting the story. The pictures can then taken in real-life or by capturing existing objects and situations. If you have the luxury to have a photographer on your content team you can create unique pictures, making your content stand out.

Quality and breadth of the stock photo market is in most cases a faster and cheaper alternative. The licensing options varies from free content for blogs to affordable stock pictures.

There is large numbers of market numbers out there. Finding 1-3 facts with crisp numbers make your story exciting. Use data points from credible sources and refer to the source.  The fact statements and data points often tell the story on their own.

Good questions to ask in developing this area are:

1. What type of visual language should we aim for in our pictures? – Decide upon a red threat throughout your material.
2. How much are we prepared to invest in visuals and which licenses do we need? – There is a big difference in prices for non-commercial and commercial use.
3. How do you want to cross use visuals between social media channels and face to face presentations? – The first work for presentations but the latter don’t work for social media channels.

For further reading turn to one of the following:

• The importance of visual content in Marketing [INFOGRAPHIC] – by Digital Information World
• How to create great pictures for blog-posts & Content [INFOGRAPHIC] – by Marketing lands

• The 17 best stock photo signs every designer should bookmark [BLOG] – by Vladimir Gendelman
• The growth of visual story telling [BLOG] – Cameron Uganec by Hootsuite
• Visual social media: How visuals improve your social media marketing [BLOG]   – by Donna Moritz
• What pictures Tell: The future of social is visuals [BLOG] – by Robin Fray Carey