At the beginning of the year, we took a look if or could Podcasting be part of your marketing arsenal. This week, a new trend has been drawn to our attention and after playing around with different ideas, we’re sharing our thoughts on why text is now becoming an increasingly important element within your marketing graphics and visuals.
Lights, Camera, Caption! Why subtitles are no longer just for the hard of hearing is an article which was published in The Guardian a few weeks ago and a piece of writing which got our team thinking. For the arts sector, the article offers some valuable insights and learnings on some interesting audience trends and we believe it could be the missing ingredient to your marketing mix! So we’re highlighting some of the key insights our team took away from the article this week… Let’s Begin!
Why are Subtitles Important to Current Audiences?
“Lots of teenagers and people in their early 20s said they liked using subtitles because it allowed them to multitask”.
During The Ticketing Professionals Conference in Birmingham this Spring, we learned a lot about making our events stand out in a crowded market place. What fascinated us the most was really understanding and realising that people have no idea what they want until they see it.
With boosting social media content on top of our list of priorities, we know that potential audiences are using social media sites, search engines and are landing on booking pages through online videos. Did you know that video has the most impact on consideration, with 25% of people reporting that it affected their purchase? The combination of visual and text could ensure that you are reaching the maximum engagement from spent advertising on Social Media.
“Increasingly, social media is the lens through which people watch TV – and TV then pushes them back to social media”
You might ‘love it or loathe it’, but there’s ‘no take it or leave it’ when it comes to social media. Nowadays, everything is connected to social platforms. For some audiences, it’s how they engage with current affairs, online shopping, and even phone calls! It is reported that millennials spend over 200 minutes online every day. This is great news, we know our audiences don’t skip a day making regular checks to their social feeds. However, this does provide us with the challenge of keeping our content fresh, interesting and engaging to avoid them getting tired of the same content. How can we utilise text and subtitles effectively to catch the attention of scrolling eyes?
For our team, it was a unanimous decision on what we would trial. Memes - because if you know our social media, you know Ticketsolve just LOVE a good meme. And secondly, Twitter threads, mainly because we love having the chats with the Ticketsolve Community.
Memes
Memes need very little introduction. They are everywhere (the good, the bad, and the ugly). The term 'meme' derives from the Greek, meaning imitated and according to Forbes, “Memes are so commonly shared that, according to Google Trends, “memes” are becoming a more popular search term than "Jesus."
Memes are simple and easy to create but there's a beauty in their effectiveness on creating brand awareness and engaging audiences.
Twitter Feeds
If you have read our blog on The Top 10 Organisational Tools for the Arts, then you’ll know we’re a fan of Hootsuite and Buffer. It looks like Twitter feeds haven’t just caught our attention, Buffer have also conducted their own research on why we Need to Consider Twitter Threads.
The highlights of their research show that;
1. Twitter threads tend to get more impression
2. Twitter threads tend to get more engagements
3. Twitter threads tend to get fewer link clicks
4. Overall, Twitter threads seem to perform better than link tweets
If you’re not fully convinced on their findings, take a look at Helen’s accidental Birthday Thread.
While we’re still getting creative and having fun playing around with the power of text on visuals we’ll make sure to check back in with any new findings over the next few weeks. For now, we’ll leave you with one final thought if you are still in doubt over utilising Text on your marketing visuals…..
When was the last time you looked at an Instagram story of Facebook Live (in work, on the bus, at the back of a meeting) without the sound on? Watching videos live, without sound, is more common than you might think!
