10 Types of Visual Content You Need for Social Media in 2024

We'll explore the 10 types of visual content that you need for social media & share tips for creating stunning marketing materials

By Claudio Pires
Updated on February 8, 2024
10 Types of Visual Content You Need for Social Media in 2024

The use of social media for business purposes has become more of a necessity. We’ll explore the 10 types of visual content that you need for social media & share tips for creating stunning marketing materials. Every other influencer or marketeer wants to maximize the number of likes, shares, and engagement they get on their posts to increase their overall reach among the audiences. The increasing availability of graphic design software tools and several digital marketing courses swarming up the internet shows us that this is a very relevant skill to work on in the coming years, especially in 2024.

However, the content you are posting and advertising on your Social Media represents you and your brand. It is vital to have some background to the work you are posting and for its context to be relevant. A poorly formatted, non-compelling, and unrevised post can backfire on you and your brand, throwing your hard work and effort down the drain. Things that go online once tend to stay hidden in some archive, even if you delete them from their source.

Customizing your visual content and websites helps you stand out among your competitors and gives you an edge in increasing your market share and online presence. To ensure that you put out the visual content that will gain you the maximum traction, we bring you a list of 10 types of visual content you need to put out on your social media to up your game and make your content go viral!

1 Images

When you think of visual content, the word that seems synonymous is an image or picture. Images are undoubtedly the leading runners in your social media content strategies. Photographs and images use a lot of colors, which can be particularly eye-catching and resourceful in visual marketing. It can add a color pop to social media feeds, especially Instagram.

You must have noticed that most businesses or even personal profiles on Instagram maintain a color theme throughout. It increases the aesthetics of your feed, making it more lively and captivating. Apart from that, it also sets a tone for your brand as well. You can incorporate your brand colors in the feed and ensure the audience gets familiar with them. That way, they will remember and associate the colors with your brand.

Moreover, pictures and images tend to become the face of your brand and can influence people to buy your product or service. They transmit your core message to the audience quickly and are also said to be SEO-friendly. The importance of SEO can be considered equivalent to success. So, use pictures to ensure that your content remains search-engine friendly.

The best part is that there is always room to experiment with pictures where you can play around making different edits or collages with the help of graphic designing software. Again, you can break the image for the Instagram feed over a grid of 3, 6, or 9. That would genuinely captivate your audience’s attention.

2 Videos Visual Content on Social Media

Video is the new content king nowadays. Sure, an image is memorable. However, multiple images curating a story are even more retention-worthy. Videos tend to be eye-catching and grab one’s attention immediately. It is also noted that videos tend to be shared more than images, meaning you will miss out on significant business if you don’t use this visual content on your profiles or websites.

What’s more, videos can be personalized as well. Your movements and gestures in a video can convince the reader better than a static image. It can also incorporate other elements like graphics, texts, or animations.

Videos increase customer retention and increase engagement on all your posts. Moreover, they have the powerful ability to engage the customers by building emotional connections with the audiences, which are said to work in favor of your brand loyalty. Similar to pictures and images, videos are extraordinarily SEO-friendly, and it is the art of creating video content that can achieve the benefits of SEO.

3 Infographics

An essential aspect of good content creation is imparting information. A crucial way of ensuring that your brand is helpful to the audience and adds value to their knowledge is through infographics. They can put information concisely and precisely, which is easier to understand for the viewer. When representing any data or statistics to the audiences, it is more efficient to use graphics rather than just writing the numbers out there.

Infographics are more comfortable to share and can put complex information into a more digestible form. It helps the audience remember the essence longer than reading a report or article. It is also more likely to stay etched in their memories, mainly if you use colors and graphics to captivate them. Keep reading explore the best types of visual content that you need for social media & share tips for creating stunning marketing materials.

4 Call-to-actions (CTAs) Creating Stunning Visual Content

A call-to-action is a way to make your audience do something (add your product to the cart or like, share, or follow something) after you have successfully made them see your content. It is a crucial element to be used for any business. You can create good content, but if you follow it through with a call to action button, it presents a chance for your audience to purchase something from your business.

You can use unusual fonts and imagery full of color to influence your audiences and improve the likelihood of them taking action. CTAs are particularly useful while advertising for some sales or exclusive offers. Their placement is crucial, too. So, you must ensure they are placed where they can create a more significant impact.

5 GIFs and Memes: Types of Visual Content for Social Media

Memes and GIFs are the most viral forms of Visual Content this decade has seen. People of all ages enjoy a good laugh, and memes and GIFs often serve that purpose. Memes are usually better suited to light-hearted content and gain much attention.

Especially from younger audiences. What’s best is that it appeals to the millennials and Gen-Z better than any other form of content. In today’s fast-paced world, where most of the content is aimed towards millennials, it is advisable to use memes and GIFs.

GIFs are more multipurpose and can be for both corporate and social engagements. The pictures are a very engaging visual content often used by Social Media giants such as Facebook and Twitter.

6 Tutorials Visual Content for Social Media

Tutorials can include step-by-step instructions for anything and everything. These may come in videos, images, text, or a combination.

This kind of visual content leaves lots of room for creation and innovation on the creator’s part. It also adds value to your audience, elevating your brand’s presence. Nowadays, you can create tutorials on a lot of things. From cooking tutorials to DIY projects, you can cover anything that goes with your brand voice.

7 Screenshots

Screenshots are an excellent resource for resolving a problem or simply sharing a picture to explain in addition to what is in the description. They can be accommodating to illustrate instructional content or show consumer service reviews. And in particular, showing positive reviews to customers can increase your customer influence for creating stunning visual content.

8 Quizzes and Visual Puzzles: Types of Visual Content for Social Media

Engagement with the audience is likely to be high. Suppose you get them to take quizzes and puzzles about your products and services. They can be a creative way to bring clarity to knowledge about your product, which may otherwise be too abstract. Once people relate to a product, they are more likely to buy it.

9 Data Visualization

In the cases where you have heavy and dense data to present to your audiences. Data visualization and graphically representing data accurately are critical. Using data visualization to describe facts, figures, and extrapolations is the best visual content for social marketing.

Audiences may be looking for specific trends and patterns, and seeing raw data would only overwhelm them. However, graphs, charts, maps, diagrams, etc., can help improve your brand’s reflection in the eyes of the audience.

10 Drawing and Comics: Types of Visual Content for Social Media

Drawing and Comics differ slightly from memes because they usually use brand palettes. So, typography and other visual cues alter and align your work with your brand correctly.

Using quotations in your drawings or having stories curated via comics can help you build an emotional connection. With your audiences, they are helping you create a more meaningful impact. Accompanying your pictorial quotes with appropriate hashtags can boost your social media engagements by a mile with visual content for social marketing.

Amp Up Your Social Media Game!

So, if you want to elevate your brand and create buzz around it, you should adopt these practices. As mentioned above, they will help you increase your audience. More audience means more growth for your business. Besides, creating engaging content also ensures consumer retention, which will help you maintain the longevity of your brand. These ten types of visual content will keep your content diversified, helpful, and engaging.

Claudio Pires

Claudio Pires is the co-founder of Visualmodo, a renowned company in web development and design. With over 15 years of experience, Claudio has honed his skills in content creation, web development support, and senior web designer. A trilingual expert fluent in English, Portuguese, and Spanish, he brings a global perspective to his work. Beyond his professional endeavors, Claudio is an active YouTuber, sharing his insights and expertise with a broader audience. Based in Brazil, Claudio continues to push the boundaries of web design and digital content, making him a pivotal figure in the industry.