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The Power of the GIF

Jan 18th, 2021 by Stephanie Warner

Whether you’re a marketer, consumer, or both, everyone is a fan of the GIF. When words just don’t do justice, the animated GIF offers us ways to express our emotions, show a reaction, grab your reader’s attention and express ourselves in this digital world. 

What’s a GIF?

The GIF — pronounced “gif” or “jiff” — is an animated image file format. Where .jpg and .png are still image formats, the GIF format has a special ability to be animated. But it doesn’t include sound, so it isn’t a video file. People use GIFs a lot like they use emojis. They search for the GIF that best expresses their feelings, a moment in pop culture, or the subject matter of their conversation, and send it through social, a messaging app, or as a text. 

GIFs are arguably more popular than ever. In fact, the GIF search engine giphy.com has the second largest number of searches after Google. You may not realize it, but it is the Giphy search engine you’re searching with when choosing a GIF to share on iMessage, Twitter, Facebook, and many more.

Do you know about GEO?

If you are a marketer, you are definitely familiar with SEO (search engine optimization) and usually have a working knowledge of SEO best practices. However, GEO (gif engine optimization) might be a new term and area that you could add to your marketing knowledge. The “case for GEO” was recently published by Marketing Brew including a case study in which eToro, the world’s leading social trading company, utilized GEO to drive 65 million views with 133 gifs on Giphy since February. In a challenging time, when budgets are tight — for just the cost of the GIF design — that many views can really move the needle for companies and organizations.

How do you start practicing GEO? Just like eToro, you can start out slowly. Create a GIF or two for your brand or publication. Next, upload your GIF to Giphy, and tag keywords in Giphy related to your GIF’s content, topic, location, event, etc. As you add more GIFs to your account, you can fine-tune the keywords and play around with GIF designs to really maximize your GIF engine optimization.Not sure how to start creating and utilizing GIFs in your marketing? You can create a GIF in Photoshop or a number of sites or apps, but you often need the individual files and assets to start from square one. Already an Issuu user?  Issuu makes it really easy to transform your existing digital content, including long-form catalogs, brochures, sales decks, and ezines into eye-catching GIFs. Plus GIFs created on Issuu are more than just animated images your followers can enjoy. They also link back to your content which drives readership and engagement for your brand, organization, or company.

Issuu will transform your content into GIFs

How does it work? Upon publishing your PDF, Google Doc, Powerpoint, Canva file and more, use the Issuu desktop workspace or mobile app to create a GIF.

  1. Simply select the content or pages you want to feature.

  2. Customize the background color to match your brand.

  3. Then publish your GIF. 

That’s it. Now you have a custom created animated GIF that you can embed in emails, send through messenger apps, and include in social posts. Don’t forget to upload your GIF to Giphy, tapping another channel to grow your audience and generate awareness.

Ready to add GEO to your marketing strategy? Turn to your existing Issuu content into exciting GIFs with just a few clicks. Get step-by-step instructions on how to use the Issuu GIF creator here. Don’t have Issuu yet? Check out the Issuu Premium plan to unlock our most popular features for your content marketing.

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