The Future of Visual Social and What It Means for Nonprofits

4 min readOct 17, 2017

On Wednesday, I’ll be moderating a panel of distinguished visual marketing experts at the Social Tools Summit in Boston.

My panel is entitled: “Pics, Videos, and Infographics, Oh My! The Future of Visual Social” — one of my absolute favorite topics.

While the audience at this summit will be mostly made up of business owners and entrepreneurs, the lessons of the summit are certainly relevant to savvy nonprofit marketing professionals and practitioners.

If nonprofits are ignoring visual social, they are missing out on opportunities to get their content to stand out in an increasingly more demanding, cluttered, and noisy online world.

Images, videos, and graphics are absolutely vital to enhance and elevate social media posts, tweets, and content — but, increasingly, they ARE the message.

The increased popularity and engagement on predominantly visual social networks like Instagram, Pinterest, and Snapchat are living proof.

Join me live on Facebook this Friday when I give you the low-down of what I learned at the Summit, and my 5 best social tools tips for nonprofits. Click here to get a reminder.

How Can Small Shops Keep Up?

During the panel, we are going to address the following questions, and more:

For businesses that think they don’t have visual content to share, what is a good strategy?
What is the future of visual social?
How is virtual reality and augmented reality technologies playing a part in marketing?
How can small brands use 360 video and other video experiences?
How can you measure the return on investment with some of these tools?
What social listening tools are relevant to visual social and how are they used?
What are the roadblocks that small brands encounter in getting interesting visual content?
For “unsexy” or “technical” niches and causes, how can the marketing person get creative?
How can a small brand explain complicated concepts using visual social?
How do you organize your visual content to maintain a cohesive narrative?
How do brands leverage livestreaming video? What do they get out of it?
How does your visual strategy change from B2B and B2C?
What channels or tools are you most excited about?
What technologies are you experimenting with and what lessons are you learning?
What is the first step that a small brand can take to keep up with the pace of technological change?

I certainly don’t know all the answers to these questions, and I’m excited to find out what the other speakers have to share!

My Top Tips for Nonprofits Using Visual Social

Focus your website on visuals.

Google has found that you have two seconds to grab someone’s attention with your website, and that starts with great visuals.

Photos and videos should dominate the most prominent parts of your home page (and other website pages), not big blocks of text.

Resource: 10 More of the Best Nonprofit Websites by Jeff Kline

Use Instagram filters (they’re free).

We all have smartphones and/or tablets, and that means we can all get the Instagram app.

The best way to get great visuals for your nonprofit is to create them yourself. Snap some photos of the volunteers, the back office, even clients if they are amenable.

Using Instagram, add a filter, and you end up with a professional-looking photo!

Resource: 10 Inspiring Nonprofits on Instagram by Matt Petronzio

Get photos from fans to share.

Ask your supporters and your fans to share their photos!

The Trustees of the Reservation asked their Instagram followers to go on an Instagram scavenger hunt with them, snapping photos in certain locations and conditions and sharing them using the hashtag “FrostyFun2014.

Resource: How to Get User-Generated Content from Supporters by The Connected Cause

Turn your annual report into a visual.

Let’s be honest. Who really reads that 30 page, glossy, super-expensive and wordy monster of an annual report?

Why not be more cost and time-effective and create a great visual to share with your supporters?

A great example of this is the Fiscal Year 2013 in Review from the Greater Boston Food Bank.

Oxfam thanks donors and details where donations go in this simple visual.

Resource: Making the Annual Report a Visual Story with Instagram by Cassie Dull

Use faces in your visuals.

A close up of one or two people works so much better than a faraway shot of a group of people (I’m looking you, people who post shots of their Board retreats).

Facebook is called FACEbook after all — we like to see photos of faces! (And the other social networks are following suit.)

No more posting photos from the back of the room with people’s heads down, no more far away fuzzy group shots.

Get closer and get personal, and reap the benefits in terms of community engagement!

Resource: 40 Tips to Take Better Photos by Lisa Clarke

Visual Social Resources

I have addressed the topic of visual marketing for nonprofits in several blog posts:

10 Tech Innovations That Will Revolutionize the Sector

What You Don’t Know About Visual Marketing On Facebook

10 Ways Nonprofits Can Succeed with Visual Marketing

Pinterest, Instagram, and Creating a Visual Online Brand

For more Visual Marketing articles and resources, visit my Pinterest board on the topic.