Memes w/ Action Attract Attention.

I love gifs... and from what I am told, so does everyone else. At least... everyone loves moving imagery, cuz the data says so. The majority of successful online digital marketing pieces use videos. These include short clips generated by users, instructional and informational videos outlining a products usage, and moving memes in the form of a gif.

Not sure what a gif is? Click here to find out more.... but I’ll give you a run down.

GIFs = moving pictures.

• They are usually fun

• Quickly attract attention

• Easy to read

• Best of all... super shareable

So... I thought I would show you my process. I decided to create an image for a recipe blog. I was specifically thinking about the blog where I learned to create pulled pork on my BBQ Gas Grill. The post definitely gave me the groundwork toward many experimental variations, and delicious success.

Maybe with a GIF the owner of this blog could generate more traffic through social sites? Maybe with an animated GIF you could generate more traffic also? Yes.

so here is my process...

I created this piece entirely on my IPhone 11Pro.

First, I took a photo of my delicious pork, after smoking for 16 hours. After that I used Adobe’s Spark Post to create a video with text and a zoom-in background. (Actually, I ate a bunch of pork, then ate more, then made this video.)

#BBQPork from socialist.net

I wasn’t too keen on the ”ring“ of the copy. I felt it could use less words and sound more poetic. On top of that, it was about BBQ pork not just pork, so why not hashtag the thing?

I went with #BBQPORK which, over the last six days has had only 14 total tweets, but those have hit a reach of 2173 with over 3000 impressions. (Not bad from only 9 total users.) There must be plenty of BBQ Pork lovers out there following the hashtag, and although it isn't a goldmine tag, nor currently trending, this it is ripe to try and get a few leads through.

So my updated "hashtag" iteration, using Adobe’s Spark Post, was then moved to GIPHY, and GifLab. I tried making a loop through both apps to see how they handled the video. I really like both apps but have a preference for GifLab because of the ability to save at adjusted speeds and higher resolutions for camera roll export. They also have different tools and stickers and if the final platform is for a facebook story or instagram, exporting directly from GIPHY keeps a higher resolution than the one I saved to the camera roll, as you can see in the two samples below.

Ultimately I could use either of them to create the gif from scratch, but having the templates to remix from Spark Post is a great way to get started.

Now, I am off to check on the pork I started smoking at 5am this morning. This has been a regular practice since the Covid Days, and even after many pork butts, I realized something today I could do differently which will make the next one just all that much better. So a big thanks to Chris of Shared Appetite for his content marketing effort that has helped me fill my belly. (I do not know this guy, but hey... thanks.)

If you are interested in learning more or want pricing on an animated gif, please click here.