Stop what you’re doing right now because Facebook just announced they now support GIFs. What is a gif you may ask? It is a graphic interchange format; in other words, an animated image.
It is similar to a video, but a million times better. For those of us lacking patience, we don’t want to click a link, wait for the video to load, turn on our sound, and sit through the whole thing. Let’s get real. GIFs give you everything you could want in a few seconds, no loading required.
Simply paste a link to your GIF from an external website, like Giphy, Tumblr or Imgur in Facebook’s status box, and it will automatically populate the GIF. Publishing is so easy, and when stacked up against regular old jpegs, GIFs win every single time. They capture attention in an otherwise overcrowded timeline.
So how can GIFs work as a marketing tool? Believe it or not, GIFs are for more than just Internet trolls who sit on Tumblr all day. Not only is it the best way to express emotion on the Internet, it is also the next up-and-coming social media trend. Here’s why you should start using GIFs as a regular part of your social media strategy:
- They have an emotional impact. Where words fail, GIFs succeed. Excitement, fear, sadness, and especially reaction GIFs. You can display any range of emotion and nothing gets lost in translation.
- They break through the clutter. It’s easy to tune out all the words, pictures and links while scrolling through Facebook. GIFs move, which captures the attention of those with extremely short attention spans.
- They add personality to your brand. Scheduled content on social media can start to feel forced and robotic. By posting GIFs to express an opinion or a reaction, it reminds your followers that you’re human too.
GIFs are going to make Facebook a much happier place, and it will make your profile way cooler than it already is. This might be the perfect chance for you to try something new and kick up your creativity.
