When creating content it’s important to know why you are using it, as well as how you will use it.
This is especially important for visual content – if you want it to be effective and get measurable results online. To be successful it needs to do more than merely look nice.
In my last article, I talked about five reasons to use illustrations in your marketing. Now, I will cover how to use them in order to have the most impact.
How to Use Illustrations on Social Media
The popularity of illustrations on social media is constantly rising – especially on the overtly visual platforms like Instagram and Pinterest.
There’s good reason for this.
With over 1 billion monthly active users, there is a massive pressure on businesses and brands to not only show up and be constantly active on the platform but to also deliver high-quality content on a consistent basis.
There is a constant pressure to come up with new things that are creative, unique and which stand out from the noise.
I completely agree that any content you create and publish should be high-quality. However, I also believe you should always be authentic and true to your values and brand personality.
This alone will make you naturally different from others. As long as you present your brand its values in creative, authentic ways, you will begin to get noticed and start to stand out.
When it comes to being creative on social media, we often feel overwhelmed trying to come up with new ideas. It feels like everything has already been seen and done before.
But you shouldn’t fall into that trap. Instead, start experimenting with other types of content – like illustrations.
While more and more businesses are starting to use illustrations to communicate with their audience, you will stand out from the crowd, because illustrations are uniquely capable of representing your business authentically and honestly.
Here are just a few ideas of how you can use illustrations on social media:
Present the Services/Products
Lifestyle Illustration
Instagram Stories
Wallpapers
How to use illustrations for the website
Because they are so customizable and unique, illustrations can give incredible character and personality to websites.
You can implement illustrated elements with the rest of the design, or illustrate the entire web page.
Used well, they can create a really attractive, clean and engaging online experice.
Of course, you need to make sure the website is still easy to navigate and clear.
You also need to be sure to keep a clear difference between interactive elements and illustrated content.
To avoid any confusion between them, it’s best to keep buttons, navigation elements and CTAs in a different style to your illustrations.
To better understand how to can spice up your website with illustrations, let’s take a look at how a few other travel businesses have used them to great effect:
TripIt, a popular app that helps users organise bookings on their trips, uses only illustrations to show how the app works. These illustrations quickly communicate the benefits of the app, its features and how to use it.
They serve the dual purpose of communicating how the service works and the benefits of it – while also looking modern and attractive. This creates a fantastic experience for the user.
They also have a short explainer video, which is a great example of how effective and useful animated illustrations can be, helping you to be consistent in your communications:
Another website that relies only on illustrations is FareDrop. They keep it simple and use a very clean style of illustrations to describe how they help you find the best deals. Again these illustrations are clean and attractive, but they also help to communicate emotions and information about the service.
Photographs often fail to do this as well as illustrations do, because firstly they are not created specifically for the purpose they are used for, and secondly they can look too cheesy and too much like awkward stock photos when they are created to tell a very specific story.
Uber is a great example of how you can incorporate both illustrations and photos on a website, however. Both types of visuals are perfectly balanced, meaning it doesn’t look busy or cluttered. The style of illustrations is clean, and uses different shades of just three colours:
Finally, On the Grid is a good example of how simple line illustrations can be very effective:
The illustrations you use do not need to be works of art, or overly complicated to be incredibly effective.
How to use Illustrations in Print
If you have created illustrations for anything from above, the good news is that you can then repurpose them by turning them into design elements that you can implement on printed marketing material – flyers, brochures, banners, and so on.
There there are many other creative concepts that you can bring to life with the illustration:
Related Articles:
Introduction to Visual Marketing for Travel Businesses
Visual Content Ideas that will help you Stand Out online
Five Reasons to Use Illustrations in your Marketing
Have a question about Illustration and Visual Marketing?
We’d love to hear from you! Whether you want to learn more about Visual Marketing or pick our brains on that topic, we are here for you. Contact us anytime or, even better, schedule a free 1-hour consultation call and let’s take your content, and your brand, to the next level!
Stay safe and stay healthy,
Until next time,
