Five J Design Blog

You might be wondering, what is visual storytelling? By definition, visual storytelling is the use of any viewable media to relate your message to your customer base. This can include anything from infographics and images to video and illustrations. Although visual storytelling has been around for quite some time (think cave paintings) we have seen an uptick in image and video based storytelling in the last few years, thanks mostly to the social media boom. So why does it matter? And how can it actually help your marketing efforts?

It is Social Media Day, and we are going to tackle one BIG question that seems to come up quite often with clients! "Why should I use social media?" 

To start off, let's cover some of the excuses people make as to why NOT to use social media. Following these excuses, I will cover some reasons why social media is indeed a game-changer for business. Keep on reading!

"It takes too long and I don't have time."

"It's too complicated."

"It won't benefit my business." 

So, what is YOUR excuse for not using social media as a marketing tool? Does it confuse you? Does it take up too much of your time? Is it for the "younger generations"? Well, whatever your reasoning, listen here: 

How many times this week have you been sucked into the Facebook video vortex? I'm guessing it has happened at least once. We all start innocently; watching that Ed Sheeran carpool karaoke video and suddenly your learning about how a 24 year old embryo was implanted into a 25 year old woman resulting in a successful live birth and your spouse walks in and says, "Seriously, what are you doing?" Come on, it isn't just me, right?

Well, according to the research it isn't just me because 45% of people watch more than an hour of Facebook or YouTube videos a week. If your business isn't using video as a part of your online marketing strategy, you are definitely missing out. 

According to this article on enhancing facebook engagement by Buffer Social 93% of all adults users online are using Facebook. Want some other motivating statistics on social media?

• 8 out of 10 internet users are reached through social media or blogs
• Marketers saw an increase of 74% in website traffic after devoting just 6 hours per week in social media.
• 87% of small businesses claim that social media has helped their business.

We have put together a list of guidelines you should follow when using facebook as a marketing tool for your business.

Twitter has more than 650 million users and more than 130,000 users sign up everyday. That’s a big pool of potential customers to be ignoring! Make a twitter account, but with a twitter come great social media responsibility. This is one small step for your business, one giant step in the right direction.

Twitter is the most interactive of the social medias for businesses. Think of Twitter as a public texting forum. This is not the social media where you post your music lyrics for the week and your family photos from the weekend before. This. Is. Microblogging. You are limited to those 140 characters per tweet, so tweet wisely.

If you think that social media is not a tool your business should be using, think again. Here are some very real, very big statistics from Search Engine Journal:

• 87% of small businesses claim that social media has helped their business.
• 85% of business-decision makers believe that at least having one social media channel is very important for technology purchase decisions.
• 40% of small businesses feel that social media helped with their word-of-mouth referrals.

Social media platfroms are one of the biggest ways to reach customers on the web, and if you're a business that uses social media to market to your customers, you know how hard it can be to figure out all the different image sizes you need across various platforms to make sure you show the best side of your business. 

Well today you're in luck, because we have found a comprehensive cheat sheet for you via our marketing partner, Hubspot, with all of the social media image sizes and specs you could ever need!

If you're a social media manager, or just happen to have multiple user accounts within Instagram, you know what a pain it is trying to keep your passwords straight and log into multiple Instagram accounts. Well, behold! In their recent app update (version 7.15) for iOS and Android, Instagram will now allow multiple user accounts starting this week.

When it comes to your business or organization, the quality of your graphic design materials matter. Just take a look around. High quality graphics are everywhere.

They’re on our smartphones and tablets, apps, digital billboards, on our TVs, social media and on our websites. Business owners, schools, churches and organizations have started to step up their game and are using high quality graphic designs. Gone are the days when a free piece of clip-art will work.