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Animated GIFs! Are they only for the internet geeks? I mean who doesn’t love good gifs?
Remember those Harry Potter newspapers from your childhood and trendy Tumblr posts of your favorite bloggers? All those moving creatures by default grab your interest in a way that you can’t leave them in half way. So you can see things get better when in motion like a ferris wheel or an athlete. And especially marketer and bloggers should keep this thing in mind that only words are not enough to make such effect on audience which these flickering images create.
Ohh, Don’t relate these moving images with videos. Videos are so different and here I am talking about the latest in trend animated GIFs.
Yes, GIFs. They are everywhere today and have populated the whole internet to a great extent. That’s why whatever you search on internet, you find clips of TV shows, movies and other videos expressing your thoughts. So when something is this much viral on internet how can our marketing and blogging community ignore it for a long time.Since marketers are the ones who always crave for latest trends that audience loves to interact with.
Marketers today are including these mesmerizing GIF in emails, in tweets and also in slack channels to make team announcements. In short wherever there is a message, there is a chance of GIF being used. Animated GIFs in email is the latest trick that marketers use in their transactional emails.
Now that we are on the same page let’s start our learning on how to create a GIF. Let’s understand where and when one can share them. Sit tight and see what I have for you in this comprehensive guide. Here I am going to cover all these topics one by one:
Among many meaningless debates on its pronunciation with your co-workers, many of us never get the clear idea of what actually a GIF is. Well don’t worry, this three letter word is not too complex to explain!
GIF is the acronym for graphics interchange format which is a file format that incorporates both static and animated images. GIFs are no sound condensed image formats that seems like a short video clip. Laymenly, it is just a running series of still image frames encoded into a single file and continues to play without any pause button in a loop session. These moving images are capable of conveying emotions and information in a way that no other platform can do.
You will be shocked after knowing that GIF is not at all a new phenomenon and is going to celebrate its 32nd anniversary in year 2019. So, don’t get confuse and try your hands on this old yet new technique.
From the entertainment viewpoint, GIFs don’t have any competition but from the business point of view it is difficult to see the values. Ultimately it depends upon the imagination of creator. A creative mind can bring the ideas that rise like a Phoenix from the ashes. If you are looking at the GIFs from marketing point of view, I would like to add some points that no doubt strengthen your thought of adding GIFs to your marketing efforts.
So have a GIF attached to whatever you want to present in front of people. And let’s find out when and where we can use this attention grabbing methodology!
“The biggest benefit of GIFs is that they load, they run, there’s no pressing play and there’s no waiting for buffering,” Caldwell says. “For the most part, they’re pretty straightforward and simple.”
Let see where a marketer can take advantage of these awesome GIF animations.
Videos might not be a feasible choice to illustrate your product qualities in detail. After all, how many videos you can include at one place? two? three? Or hardly four? Gifs at their place can make things simpler for you. If you own a true 3D product then this GIF thing is certainly a fantastic idea but it is not wise to showcase a T-Shirt or a poster via animations. And yes one more thing to count is avoiding usage of messy or extra flashy animation. Instead, use seamless and faded images to attract customers.
Gone are the days when every product was accompanied by a “How-to-do” video! Today, no one has patience to stick to a single video to learn how things work. Rather than making a 5-6 minutes video or more, embedding a looping GIF would serve the purpose. People are smart enough to understand the procedure.
Do you really think a GIF is too short to get to the point? No, if it is developed with a perfect mindset! In fact, GIFs are best in storytelling. You can merge many images together to frame a pleasing story.
This is really an awesome way to depict your statistics in an animated form. You need to go along with the fact that no-one likes to analyze those big data charts with boring statistics even though they are important. So make use of GIFs to add color to these dull statistics.
Now you don’t need to make a full video just to brief your next big announcement. GIF also takes your burden here and you can create an amazing teaser of your next offering that en-roots further curiosity among your audience.
It’s always not necessary to use GIFs to convert your not so entertaining data into one but you can always share some cool stuff on your social media platforms just to entertain your audience. In fact,for marketers and bloggers it is really a good practice to stay connected with their visitors.
With the grand comeback of GIFs, we have also welcomed some new issues along with it. Today these GIFs are popping up everywhere and almost every social media platform is using them as its favorite way of communication. But, it can result into over-exposure and no one likes too much of anything. People get easily exhausted when something becomes ubiquitous.
So wisely decide the right amount of spice to add in your marketing recipe to make it more delicious as excessive use of these spices may cause a risk of ruining the dish. Hence to let you know what is appropriate, I have put together some points for guidance.
Just for the sake of adding a moving image, don’t include it. If you really want your image to have an impact then get a pop culture test in your motion pictures. For example a facial expression, a dialogue from famous TV shows or your favorite cartoon characters are undoubtedly the best way to centralize your audience attention and use them in a way that they can relate it to what you want to say.
Think of novels that have graphics! Amazing books they are! Yes, Art is obviously the best way to cement a scene in mind that author want to describe. And these GIF artworks are like a cherry on the cake. Trust me, GIFs make your content more accessible.
It is always good to know what others are doing in order to get maximum visibility in the market. This competitor analysis benefits you in many ways. Keep a sight on how they are going on with latest trends and what is there that you still have not adopted.
As it was said earlier that too much of anything exhaust people, so to maintain the proper impact of the post make use of GIFs sparsely rather than using them in a row. Moreover, adding too many graphics also slow down the page loading speed which could be another reason people don’t want to approach you.
Do remember that people come to you because you have something valuable to offer. That is why it is foolish to replace all your content with the graphics in a hope that people will love it. Text has its own importance and graphics has their own. So use them in a way that they compliment each other.
Frankly trying to be too much cool is probably the most uncool thing in the world. When someone not so much technical recites the movie quotes and cartoon character then it’s perfect but for a brand who is extremely technical and adds too much memes then it’s time to see off the internet.
Whoa, you know almost everything to start the chapter of creating a captivating GIF 😛 .So let’s start our learning to create one with this long list of different tools for creating online GIFs.
Well there are a lot of ways to create a GIF and you can take advantage of any of the method. It is always better to switch between methods to bring out the creativity.
For the ease of learning I have separated these different methods into three main categories and they are named as:
Creating a GIF is not that much difficult. All you need is a little bit guidance and you are right on the track. You can make your own GIFs using Photoshop also, certainly a good news for Photoshop lovers.
Creating GIFs is a huge ground to play and I think you find this guide useful. But yes there is a lot to learn still and I am looking forward to learn from you as well.
Please share your experiences while creating and using GIFs in the comments below. It’d be great to hear from you.
Thank You!!
