GIFS have become a huge part of online culture. They've become a huge feature of social media platforms, allowing users to communicate through these GIFS. In most cases, they're used for humour, often to reply to a joke between a user and their followers. They began to be implemented into social media platforms in the mid-2010s and have since become widely used on an everyday basis. Each social media platform has their own way of showing off how they have incorporated these images.
When it comes to growing your social media presence, the use of GIFS could actually help you out a lot. They allow your audience to feel more involved with your account as it feels more personal and relatable. It also allows you to add some humour into your platforms, which is often always a positive thing when trying to grow your following. Each platform implements their use of GIFS differently; here's how each of them do it!
Twitter even has its own GIF section when creating a 'Tweet', allowing the user to easily access these images. Twitter sections of these GIFS into different categories. In doing this, it's a lot easier for the user to find the perfect GIF they need for their post. A lot of people use GIFS when replying to Tweets, such a good luck image, or a funny GIF. This is a good way to get your account noticed, as by picking the best GIF you're more likely to get noticed, and therefore driving more people to check out your account!
Facebook has a similar approach to posting GIFS. They can be used when replying to someone's post in a comment. The search bar for these GIFS is a lot smaller than the Twitter search bar, but still offers some recommended GIFS when immediately searching for some. The GIFS aren't sorted into categories like they are in Twitter, therefore making it more difficult to find the image you want. People can like your comment containing the GIF, again showing you if people found your input interesting or not through the GIF you have used.
Instagram's approach to GIFS is quite different than to Twitter and Facebook. As Instagram is photo/video based, there isn't an option to simply post a GIF to your feed. However, you can post GIFS on your live stories. Instagram has implemented the search engine GIPHY into its live story feature, allowing the user to choose from billions of GIFS for their story. Whilst this is a fun feature to the platform, live stories only stay up for 24 hours before disappearing. Therefore, if someone hadn't viewed your post within that time frame, then they wouldn't have seen your use of GIFS on your story.
A lot of these GIFS are posted from the website GIPHY. GIPHY is a search engine that allows people to save GIFS for personal use (whether that be on social media, texts, etc.). There are billions of GIFS on the website, giving a huge range for users to choose from. GIPHY has become so popular that as of October 2019, there are over 700 million daily users on the site (Smith, 2020).
Thanks for reading! Hopefully you've learnt a bit more about the use of GIFS for your social media platforms. Make sure to follow the Tips For Clicks social media accounts for the latest updates about the blog!
References:
SMITH, C. (2020)[Online] Available from: https://expandedramblings.com/index.php/giphy-facts-statistics/ [Accessed 29/11/2020]
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