gif October 7, 2022

Animated GIFs – How to Powerfully Use Them on Social Media

“GIF” or “Jif”? No matter how you pronounce the word but we know that GIFs are here to stay. In this era, people are more interested in images and less concerned with grammar. This became the beloved file format for memers on social media. This word is widely used and that’s why in 2012 the word “GIF” was the Oxford Dictionary Word of the Year.

They have now become an essential tool of social media and social media marketing. They are attractive and easily shareable over different social media networks. Animated GIFs can add importance to your brand and show off your great personality.

Table of Contents

What is a GIF?

GIF stands for Graphical Interchange Format. In 1987, Steve Wilhite, a US software writer, invented this image format. And he was searching for a way to animate photos in the smallest file size. Basically, they are soundless video that’ll loop continuously and does not need anyone to tap play. It increased in popularity as a way to react on social networks without words. Twitter and Facebook both support animated GIFs.

When to Use GIFs for Social Media Marketing?

There are many people who ask if they should use GIFs in their marketing efforts. Many marketers declare that it actually depends on your audience and even your industry. In this digital era, you better know that people attract to funny and helpful GIFs. If you want to use them then here are some of the best that you can use in your marketing.

1. To show your Brand Personality

They give brands a great chance to increase their personality via animated images. There are many brands that are doing the same to attract their targeted audience. We will show an example of Pop-Tart’s Giphy channel which is a quirky brand. Its main aim is to target the Gen Z market.

Denny’s is another example that uses GIFs to demonstrate its brand personality. Below is the most famous GIF of this brand which they use to clearly showed their brand’s nature.

2. To Show off your Product

Gifs can give you a fun and engaging way to show off your product, regardless of your product. For example, Starbucks is doing a great job of demonstrating its product with its GIFs:

It is a great way to make your product seem more attractive and eye-catching to consumers. Nike is one of the best brands and it uses GIFs to demonstrate products in a high-energy way:

3. To show users how to do something

This is the perfect way to guide the online audience on how to do something. You can easily use them to give a tutorial, illustrate a process, or even run a recipe. You can take HuffPo as an example because people really adored their GIF yoga series:

4. To thank your customers

Customers really love to be appreciated. You can appreciate your customer with a simple thank you GIF. You can get an idea from the Kotex Brand that uses this kind of GIF to appreciate its customers:

5. Use GIFS as Ads

Many brands are now using Gifs as Ads instead of creating subtle brand ads. For example, Converse contracted with Millie Bobby Brown to create a series of GIFs to advertise their product.

Conclusion

As it might be seen, animated GIFs are versatile and useful tools that you can add to your marketing strategy. They are actually small in size, an alternative to subtle videos, and most importantly easy to make. So, if you want to promote your brand’s product then hire a digital marketing agency to make Gifs your brand can use.