How to Use GIFs to Improve Your Content

GIFs are not new – they’ve been around for quite a while now. They are great at arousing emotions and drawing reactions, and this is what makes them timeless.

But their popularity exploded in 2013, which is the year when GIPHY, the home of GIFS, have launched.
Since then they keep gaining more & more popularity.

Shocking GIF Facts & Statistics

In order to debunk the bias that GIFS are not a serious thing, Here are some facts & statistics that will shock all the skeptics:

GIPHY , unbelievably, is worth $600m! The company has received funding totaling over 150 million USD. There are over 250 million monthly users on GIPHY, and it serves over 2 billion GIFs daily.

In 2015 Facebook added the option to send GIFs on Messenger and right in the same year, 5 million GIFs were sent daily via messenger. In 2017,  25000 GIFs were sent through Messenger per minute which means 36 million GIFs daily! 

November 2016, the use of GIFs grew the more when WhatsApp added the same options as well and a stunning number of 70 million GIFs are sent via WhatsApp chats daily.

With these statistics, GIF’s are certainly not going away soon. They are in constant, positive evolution.

Using them can help us create a more fun and appealing content in little effort, but before using GIFs, we should make some things clear so they will be great.

Requirements for a Good GIF

In general, a GIF becomes a good one when it’s fun and resonating with your audience.
In order to fit these characteristics, we will have to take care of these elements:

Right Tone

Make sure your GIFs don’t miss the tone of the related content. If an article is technical, an accompanying GIF will be appropriate.

For an article that is somewhat about a more abstract topic, a fun GIF can do the job of passing your point as well.

Good Graphics Quality

GIFs don’t necessarily need to be in high resolution. But low resolution becomes problematic when:

• Resolution is so low that the GIF cannot be understood
• GIF contains a lot of details
• There is text and it’s unreadable

Healthy Humor

Humor is fun, but it can become the opposite when used in excess.

You surely had an embarrassing moment in your life when a joke has told,  the threshold has exceeded and the joke became an inappropriate one. 

You have to know this threshold for each piece of content you’re putting a GIF on. 
An article about long-term care insurance will absolutely make some people feel very confused if it will contain any GIF which is not 100% to the topic and showing super relevant things.

On the other hand, an article explaining the benefits of your new software updates can definitely make people feel more excited if it contains good GIF.

So please, have a correct filling about who’s going to see your content and

Sarcasm? Only in the Right Amount

Being sarcastic is a progressive humor skill. If it’s unknown what exactly passes in your content consumer’s head, it might be better to skip sarcasm because bad sarcasm can be harmful compared to inaccurate humor. The GIF you use is witty and not silly.


Where to Place GIFs

A lot of benefits are waiting for those who understand how to place GIFs correctly in their content.

Articles

Boring articles can pop if you add Gifs to them. If you do put them in your articles, make sure they fit into the requirements for a good GIF written above.

Social Posts

Want to make your post more attractive and boost engagement? Add a GIF to it.
Facebook, Twitter & Pinterest – These are the most GIF-friendly social networks, you can use their integrated GIFs library and just pull one into your post.

You can also upload your GIF or upload it from a link, but make sure the link contains .gif in the end.
Instagram & LinkedIn – These social networks don’t support GIFs. As an alternative, you can download them in mp4 format from GIPHY or Tenor, and convert them into mp4 online (make sure their quality isn’t too bad after converting).

Comments

These days it’s very popular to see top comment containing only GIF with no text. Although a simple text and gif and go well together, a precise GIF pulls out all they need in a text. It’s also instantly understood and more entertaining.

Popups & Forms

It’s not that the previous ways to use GIFs are not awesome, they are just widely known. When inserting GIFs into your popups and forms, you can be more innovative. You can gain more engagement by combining GIFs with your overlays in ways like:

Create Enticing Newsletter Popups

Newsletter popups are an effective lead generation tool. Implemented correctly, they can increase your conversion rate greatly.

Adding GIFs to your newsletter popups will make them even more effective. 
 

Put Animation Over Your Page

Animations are an old trick which was super cool back there in the late ’90s, and it’s easy to make it annoying, but it also can be sweet and a great attention drawer if done modernly & smoothly.
 

Create Friendly Previews

When it comes to teaching, videos are the most useful media.

But let’s put some things down; A video that requires clicking a play button which is over a still image is much less likely to attract users’ attention than a GIF which is just running by itself again and again.

Conclusion

GIFs are powerful when used right. You can use them as an attention magnet, and they are great to connect with audiences. Be sure you know how to copy and paste a GIF the correct way so that it shows up in your content

All you have to do is choose a GIF that stands the requirements and place it correctly in your content.

Remember, the message you trying to communicate will be understood if you choose a GIF that stands in the requirements and you place it right.

Have a great time gifting your users with awesome GIFS!