Snackable content is fancy marketing speak for short form, high impact visual content: image, videos or infographics. In today’s #LOL technology drenched world your business needs to create mouthwatering content to stand out.

Snackable content conveys meaning, it’s tasteful, has impact, it’s noisy and attention grabbing: it cuts through the tech drenched world we all live in. It’s everywhere.

Why You Want to Create Snackable Content Feeds

• When consumers are in a rush they select a product with the most visual appeal. Visual trumps everything else.
• Consumers and professionals only remember 20% of what they read.
• Photos are “liked” 2-3X more than text.
• People are visual: 57% consider your web site design as the primary determinant of your brand credibility.
• We are moving into the “goldfish marketing zone” - the average attention span of a consumer was 8 seconds in 2013 - the gold fish comes in at 9 seconds (you do the math).
• Content with images drives 94% more total views than content without.
• 2 Billion blog posts are written every day: many have no images or infographics. Stand out from the herd.
• Visual content is processed 60,000 times faster in the human brain than text.
• 42% of all posts on Tumblr are images
• Press Releases with images and a video drive 58% more engagement.
• The web is moving to visual from textual: YouTube, Pinterest, Vine, Snapchat, Tumblr, Instagram, Visualy,  Imgur  are reshaping how the web is “consumed”.

Christian Louboutin Image (Brand Driver: Short on Product Placement and Long on Visual)

Rules for Snackable Content Marketers

• Distill and remix existing content to make it “snackable” - use an existing section or thought in a blog post and turn it into a phrase, a hashtag or an image.
• Newsjack localized or topical content to build an intersection between your customer and your business.
• Try to create snackable content that pays it forward: we embedded a download link to our Dropbox account in a blog post about Editorial Calendars.
• Dig in to your customer comments, stories, critiques, thoughts and repurpose with an image. For small brands with not a lot of traction this is harder. Be creative.
• Drive social amplification across targeted groups or discussions on social platforms.
• Try not to overtly promote your business brand or products; this will come later. Your building awareness and shareability first.
• If you have no ideas (can’t get started) ask your customers and listen to feedback.

Petco/Petsmart: “The Cost of Cute” (mini infographic)

Content & Image Strategy Your Peers are Using

• Blog: 76% use blogs to drive content marketing and see 2x increase in traffic and a 5x in leads.
• Articles on web site
• Newsletter
• Case Studies and White Papers
• Webinars
• Mobile Apps
• Podcasts
• Branded Long Form “evergreen” content
• Infographics
• Microsites
• Videos

Smithsonian Institute: Native American/Cultural Heritage (wonderful captures the moment image)

Seven Key Content Marketing Metrics

1. Stellar curated content still drives engagement: an editorial calendar is just a horizontal tool.
2. Mobile usage is driving 30-50% of content “consumption” (be mobile savvy) but “brand stories” may drive significantly more engagement: mix and match the size of your content (long or short form).
3. Content syndication is increasingly more important in today’s “technology drenched’ world: use rinse and repeat cycles to reach today’s distracted consumer and professional.
4. Personalty still drives content engagement for B2B and B2C brands and it’s becoming increasingly more important to use imagery that gets attention in the marketplace. Note: LinkedIn’s move to an image centric feed.
5. Content Measurement is Critical: have a finite grasp of these ROI drivers: Unique Visitors, Page Views, Return Visits, Time on Site, Bounce Rate, Engagement/Virality (ReTweets, Shares, Likes, Comments), Revenue or Lead Generation.
6. Mix and match “snackable” short form content (images, video, infographics) with “evergreen” high value content to drive brand engagement, incremental traffic and revenue.
7. Build in cross platform marketing on all top tier platforms: Tumblr, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook using plugin to automatically “push” content to other platforms or pure play content syndication cloud based services.

 Getting Attention with your Images and Content

1. You have ten seconds to get the attention of your visitor. The usability maestro Jakob Nielsen’s Darwinian logic is spot on for content marketers.
2. Headlines drive the visitor into the text; or not! Be compelling.
3. Know your visitor – what do they want to read and how do you educate?
4. Try to integrate some emotion or personality into your content.
5. Confusion kills: God knows all content marketers struggle with this. Try to be concise.
6. Text should broken up with headers, bullets or numbers.
7. People read in an “F” pattern, starting at top left and moving down.
8. Go lean and mean with your text. #lessismore
9. Bullets and Numbers are smartphone friendly – use them or lose the visitor’s attention span.
10. Mix and match practical images with “creative” images - some times the wackier the better.

Viral (11M+ views) Nike: “Make it Count” (Casey Neistat)

Torie and Howard: “Our Promise Page” - understated branding

Fox: “New Body Wear Collection” Ad ” jumps off the page”

 30K Foot Snackable Summary: Curated in Some Manner, Pays it Forward, Tells Story, Has Good Headline, Incorporates Visual Impact, Shareable  via the  Social Web, Features Quality Graphics (the gotcha: “quality” is always subjective”).