New year, new start. Everyone says it — and for good reason. It’s the time to turn over a new leaf and be hopeful about what the future holds. In the world of marketing, this concept is highly applicable in the development of visual content.

Here are the visual marketing trends which are sure to capture the attention of the online community this 2017.

GIFs: Bringing Images to Life

Gone are the days of memes made of images with edited text on them. The next cool thing is moving images. Once only popular on Tumblr dashboards, these days, even networks like Buzzfeed know the value of these low-res sequences of images as a tool for engagement.

GIFs serve as a more interactive addition to visual content because of their animated nature. Twitter knows this well: based on their observations, tweets containing GIFs are, in fact, driving more traffic. As such, adding them to your content lets you engage in more meaningful interaction with consumers.

Videos: Painting more Words than Pictures

More than half of social media consisted of images by the end of 2016. This year, videos are rising alongside them as a form of visual content medium. The reason? Videos encompass all types of audience — from the vlogger generation to the Baby Boomer businessmen — proving that it is an effective visual marketing strategy.

Businessmen and women, for example, invest time in business-related videos. Meanwhile, younger individuals get on YouTube for regular updates on their favourite personalities, such as beauty vlogger Lauren Curtis and vlogger-turned-singer Troye Sivan.

Moreover, videos have the ability to say a lot more than images, so they serve as an effective campaign to engage with consumers.

Streaming: Taking Videos to a Whole New Level

Thanks to the continuous development of technology and the hunger for instant gratification, visual content has evolved from stationary images to live-streamed videos. The online community now benefits from live-streams of their favourite entertainment personalities to the momentous speeches of political figures.

Streaming is not just applicable to the immediate connection with renowned individuals, though. In digital marketing, you may utilise a stream to acknowledge your consumers and let them know that you do make efforts to associate with them. You can do this, for example, through webinars.

The prevalence of GIFS, videos and streaming show just how far technology has come. If you want your content to capture attention, then you need to catch up with the latest trends and apply them in your strategy.