Using GIFs to make your social media strategy more awesome

A GIF is simply a series of still images (frames) coded into a single file, and looped over and over again. They can be used within your content marketing strategy in either an informative way (such as an infographic) or to add emotional weight to your social media posts.

To keep it simple we can say that a GIF can be used in the below three ways –

- To increase awareness about your product/ services (informative and not relative to this post)
- To make your social media posts more emotional
- To convey your brand values

The first step is to identify what emotion you want your audience to be feeling. There are 14 major human emotions to bear in mind, those are -

- Desire
- Faith
- Love
- Sex
- Enthusiasm
- Romance
- Hope
- Fear
- Jealousy
- Hatred
- Revenge
- Greed
- Superstition
- Anger

The second step is to then chose an image that matches up to your audience and brand values.

The third step is to be mindful of current trends and topical news, which might also influence what image you select.

Below I have selected some of my favourite GIFs from my favourite GIF site GIPHY.