How to attract more fans, followers and customers online, guaranteed

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Have you jumped on the hottest online trend going? Or are you still stuck in 2010?

It’s all about the visual. Here are the facts:

• Blog posts with images generate more traffic.
• The most shared and clicked-on links on Twitter are images.
• Images on Facebook generate more reach, views, and interactions.
• The exploding popularity of Tumblr, Instagram and Pinterest (all image-centric online platforms)
• Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter have all increased the size and number of images they feature.

Looking at the trends across web content and social networks, one thing is clear – visual content can break through our overloaded attention spans more easily than written material.

So, what does this mean to you? As a professional who wants to be famous in your field, one of your goals is to grab your audience’s attention and hold it, so that you can demonstrate your know, like and trust factor.

You know what you need to do.

Go visual.

Yes, visual images get people’s attention quickly. But it’s not just about combating short attention span syndrome.

It’s about getting your message heard.

They also help us learn faster and make the ideas stick better.

Images help us tell stories.

I’ve got five ways that any fame-seeking professional can put the power of visuals to work for them.

1. Quotes and soundbites. 

Inspirational, motivational or humorous, we love to share quotes, especially on social media. And if you’re a professional creating a celebrity platform around your personal brand and your business, you probably have some of your own soundbites. Grab more eyeballs, get more mileage (and even a few shares) by making them visual.

You don’t have to be a graphic artist to whip up these high impact messages. Free online tools like PicMonkey make it dead simple to create these.

2. Facts, Stats or Lists.

Spice up your dry facts and spark sharing for your stats by converting them into an image.

Do this on your basic webpages, too. Number of employees? Locations? Make ’em visual!

3. Blog post images.

Blog posts with images get more views. And more views mean that more people are being exposed to your message and your expertise.

It’s a Good Thing.

Snap your own images with Instagram, use stock images (I like Stockfresh) or find free images online, offered under Creative Commons licensing on sites like Flickr.

4. Book, white paper or article.

Online marketing expert, Jeff Bullas said in a post that “articles with images get 94% more total views.”

Instead of just linking to the text-based title of your fame building piece of content, grab attention (and online real estate) by using an image of the cover and linking it to your Amazon page, white paper download or pdf article.

Want to get really fancy-pants on a shoestring budget? Use a free online tool like 3 D Pack to make your content image 3 dimensional.

5. Press releases

Including a photo and a video in a press release increases views by over 45%, says Bullas.

What are you waiting for? You know what you need to do!

Your fame boosting assignment: