While GIF images have been around since what seems like the beginning of time, they are making a comeback in the blogosphere and social media.
Recently, Twitter added GIF support to their site, allowing anyone to upload an animated image and play it like a video.
These visually attractive photos can be used to increase visibility of your status updates and make for great marketing tools!
GIFs are created by composing a series of images into one single file.
They play on a loop, sort of like a mini-video.
You can create slideshows, and even little stop animation graphics, like Pizza Hut did.
These fun little images help increase user interactivity and help you to stand out from other posts of a similar nature (or your competitors!).
If you still don’t know what a GIF is, let me show you:
Using GIFs in your blog posts can also add interest to your articles.
By condensing the steps of a tutorial into one single image, or showcasing products in a fun way, you’re offering a little something extra to the reader’s experience!
How To Create A GIF
Luckily, creating an animated GIF does not have to be complicated.
The more experienced user can use Photoshop’s “Animation” window to create a sequence of images, but if you’re not too handy with Photoshop you can try my brand new web tool, Giffysnap!
I created Giffysnap because I wanted to make it easy for anyone to create an animated image.
By simply uploading a sequence of images and rearranging them however you like, you can create your own GIF quickly and easily.
Giffysnap lets you save the final image to your computer for social sharing, or grab an embed code to paste onto your website.
You can adjust the size of the image and the speed of the animation.
