Beth Daniel, Digital Marketing Assistant at Sookio, writes:
The GIF, or Graphics Interchange Format, came about in 1987 when Steve Wilhite of Compuserve sought to create a way to quickly transfer compressed, still, coloured images which didn’t use too much space in the pre-internet world.
Up until a few years ago, the animated GIF had become a byword for old-fashioned, unsophisticated web content. Take a look at the The GeoCities Animated GIF Search Engine for some real beauties.
But in the last couple of years they’ve had a resurgence, partly due to the technology improving so we can create them more easily and make them look more professional. They became huge on Tumblr, then Twitter partnered with Giphy to offer the option to include GIFs in tweets. The GIF was back.
Whether you pronounce it ‘GIF’ or ‘JIF’ (contrary to modern opinion, it was actually originally pronounced ‘JIF’, inspired by the American peanut butter brand), many social media users now use GIFs for the purpose of comical communication among friends.
Nowadays, almost every social media platform now includes a function to add a GIF to your post.
From famous film quotes to babies, animals and politicians, there’s now an animated GIF for pretty much everything.
So how can businesses use them effectively in their social media communications?
Use GIFs to convey emotion
Want to liven up your posts a bit? You can use GIFs which enhance or react to whatever your post is saying, while making your posts more visual.
Visually appealing content is also more likely to bring in the likes, responses, retweets or shares.
GIFs can display complex ideas, simply
Character limits, particularly on platforms like Twitter, can make sharing complex ideas or explaining how your product works tricky.
Like all kinds of animation, GIFs can be used as a way to easily demonstrate complex concepts, or even just more information than a standard social media post.
So if, for example, your business sells a product or service which is too complex to explain through words or still images – like a type of technology or software – you could use the GIF format to easily get across the message to your social media audience.
GIFs can get your information across
Update your followers on your business’ latest updates, offers or new products easily and effectively through shareable GIFs.
Supermarket chain Aldi (@AldiUK) do this particularly well, using short animated GIFs featuring their products to inform their customers of the latest deals, seasonal products and competitions in a visually interesting way.
To make ‘em laugh
Businesses can use GIFs in a similar way to how we use them on our personal channels, to make their social media audience laugh and relate to the content.
We love how Give Blood NHS (@GiveBloodNHS) uses fun GIFs to make the process of giving blood seem fun and appealing, in turn encouraging people to sign up donate blood. The office discussion we had about Give Blood’s GIFs when writing this blog post actually led to one of the Sookio team making an appointment to give blood… so it works!
GIFs help you engage with trends
GIFs are taking social media by storm at the moment, so using them can help your business appear current and ‘with it’, which in turn could lead more people towards your social content.
You can use GIFs to react to trends, such as news and events, national days and weekly trends. Provided you react to trends in a way which is somehow relevant to your business or reflective of your brand personality, doing so can create engaging, shareable content.
Read the rest of this post over on the Sookio blog
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