Social Fast Food & Snackable Content | Pelican Communications

By Pelican consultant Emma Scott

3 minute read

Key takeaways

The objective of snackable content is to offer immediate entertainment, prompt social sharing and attract new leads as a result.

To maximise genuine engagement, ensure quotes are aligned with the strategy and purpose of your business.

Used correctly, snackable content formats can lead to meaningful and lucrative outcomes.

Snackable content is the online equivalent of a bag of crisps: not as satisfying as a whole meal, but quick to digest and easy to share.

It’s the stuff that makes you laugh and hit ‘retweet’. The memes that go viral. The gifs that communicate a complex range of emotions in endless three seconds loops. And it’s becoming an increasingly important part of digital marketing strategies.

The objective of snackable content is to offer immediate entertainment, prompt social sharing and attract new leads as a result. So which types should you be using, and how?

Here we look at four of the most popular and easy-to-use types of snackable content…

Quote graphics

You can barely go on a social media site without coming across at least one motivational quote that will make your eyes roll, but thanks to their universal appeal, they get liked and shared easily compared to other, more targeted content. But before you’re tempted to tweet a reminder that ‘rainbows follow storms’ or that ‘magic is believing in yourself’, remember that, as with all social media content, the quote you post should be driven by your objective.

Even if people like and share one of your quote posts, it doesn’t mean they’re clicking through to see what your brand has on offer.

To maximise genuine engagement, ensure quotes are aligned with the strategy and purpose of your business. This way, you’re not just sharing random thoughts, you’re growing the ethos of your brand.

And while there’s nothing wrong with posting a compelling quote on its own, combining it with striking visuals will help capture attention and generate interest. This means more than just finding a nice picture; you need an eye-catching and relevant backdrop and a distinctive font.

If you can create quote-oriented content that’s relevant to your business, use it, support it with interesting images, and don’t forget to cite your sources.

Memes

Memes perfectly encapsulate what snackable content is all about, being entertaining and easily shared. But despite their simplicity, creating a successful meme is deceptively tricky, especially if you’re using memes to support your marketing efforts. It’s easy enough to create a meme, or re-purpose an existing one, but hitting the right note is something of an art.

Memes usually leverage satire, social commentary, or nostalgia, meaning a high-quality meme is both funny and insightful. But memes can also be rude or offensive, so marketers must walk a fine line. Many meme marketing attempts miss the mark because they’re fundamentally structured as generic ads rather than cultural commentary.

That said, if you can make entertaining memes without upsetting or irritating your audience, you’ll quickly build a suite of snackable content.

The key is to be authentic and not overly conservative. Edgy content demonstrates your brand has a personality and unique voice that sets you apart from competitors.

Infographics

Infographic are one of the best mediums for relaying informative, meaningful content without sacrificing snackability. What they lack in laughs they make up for in accessibility and dynamic visuals. This makes them incredibly useful for conveying a range of information quickly, from ‘how to guides’ to facts and statistics.

Though there will always be information that’s too technical to summarise and set against pretty pictures, infographics might be the best way to project complex information in a snackable format.

Gifs

As a format, gifs are extremely versatile, being used to show short-form videos silently, show captivating images on a loop, or capture the essence of specific emotions and reactions. They’re compulsively shareable content with tremendous potential to go viral.

While many gifs exist purely for entertainment, they can be an incredibly useful marketing tool as well. For example, the format works well for quick how-to videos or snippets of product demonstrations.

They can also add interest to email campaigns, surprising your contacts and helping you get attention, engagement and conversions.

Original gifs are similar to original memes in that they have endless sharing potential, but just as much potential to miss the mark. If you create and share gifs over social media or other channels, put as much effort and thought into them as any other content.

These are four of the easiest, most straightforward snackable content formats that can lead to meaningful, lucrative outcomes if done right. If you need help or advice with your social media campaign or wider marketing strategy, get in touch with our team today.

Pelican Communications is a specialist in the environment & CSR, food, packaging & logistics and trade association sectors and offers a range of services such as strategy, design, content creation, public relations and people development. Contact us for marketing and communications expertise.