The Future of Social Media: GIFs

You would see many people pronouncing it differently, but you would rarely find someone who doesn’t enjoy using these short animated file formats! In the previous decade, GIFs (graphics interchange format) have conquered the digital world.

Over the past few years, GIFs that were once considered immature, unprofessional, and solely meant for entertainment have now transitioned into the professional corporate world. They are necessary for social media marketing and are found across social media platforms namely Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Google.

The social media giants, namely Twitter and Facebook, support GIF formats and are increasingly popular. Facebook even has a GIF search engine! GIFs play on continuous loops without any sound, and this particular feature makes them an instant hit for social media users who can effectively communicate using animations rather than videos.

Even memes in the GIF format are more popular and entertaining. Social media users can convert dialogues or scenes from their favorite shows into GIFs and use them to express their emotions freely. GIFs add color, motion, and excitement to otherwise mundane social media posts, making them the obvious choice for most social media users.

GIFs now play an important role in social media marketing for various brands and businesses that use them as an effective tool to convey their brand image. GIFs allow data to be presented in a more user-friendly and digestible format, improving viewership. Advertising using GIFs is an excellent way of grabbing the audience’s attention. A short looping video of a few seconds can be very impactful as it remains within the social media user’s attention span. While scrolling through hundreds of posts, a single colorful and animated GIF is enough to draw attention!

GIFs allow brands to show off their products using a perfect combination of emotion and content in just a few seconds. They are also easy to share and are particularly helpful in showing a company’s fun or entertaining side. Using GIFs may help a brand come across as trendy and on-point. The audience would remain engaged and develop a positive perception of the company.

Owing to the immense popularity of these short yet interesting animations, there are a lot of websites dedicated to GIFs only where one can find the perfect GIF for every occasion. Some popular ones include giphy, Tumblr GIF, GIFbin, etc. The best part is that GIFs can be used on almost all popular social media platforms. Whether it’s your personal account or a business account, you would not have to go through the hassle of converting your file into different formats for posting on different sites. One GIF can do it all!

GIFs are now not just a beloved source of entertainment but also an emerging tool for successful social media marketing, and the above tricks will allow you to use GIFs to their full potential!