Looking to promote your small business on social media, your website and in emails?
You might want to consider using GIFs for quick how-tos, product demos or even lighthearted ads.
How Popular are GIFs?
According to a recent study by Gfycat, a popular user-generated GIF platform, 63 percent of Americans are GIF users — and one in five Americans can’t get enough of them.
GIFs are eye-catching and entertaining. People just can’t seem to get enough of them. Just look at this GIF here:
Study Findings on American GIF Habits
Gfycat polled 1,000 Americans about their GIF engagement habits. Of the 63 percent of Americans that use GIFs, 43 percent said they use them sometimes, while 20 percent said they use them all the time. Only 14 percent said they’ve never used one, and the other 23 percent don’t know what a GIF is.
“Gfycat’s users create hundreds of thousands of GIFs per month,” Gfycat told Small Business Trends. Forty-four percent of Americans create GIFs for comic relief, and 13 percent to express creativity.
Interestingly, 39 percent of Americans create their own GIFs and just 23 percent said they didn’t know they could create their own. Small numbers of Americans (23 percent) have created a GIF a handful of times, while 17 percent have done it many times.
Of Americans who have never created a GIF, 70 percent said they would like to try to make one, even though 47 percent of them admitted they don’t know how.
Suffice it to say, we have come a long way since this:
One of the oldest GIFs on Gfycat site.
Small businesses already create and use animated GIFs on Twitter to attract more attention and tell their stories better. And with Pinterest also allowing users to post GIFs to the site, you might definitely want to consider using GIFs for your business communication more often. Incorporating humor in your own communication with animated GIFs can be a great strategy to make your brand go viral.
Gfycat conducted a survey of 1000 Americans on June 2, 2017 to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the GIF, which was on June 15.
GIF Search Photo via Shutterstock
This article, “One in Five Americans Can’t Get Enough GIFs” was first published on Small Business Trends