Word clouds first became popular on personal blogs and then on company websites. They are geometrical or fancy shapes filled with words occurring most frequently in the respective web page. The words have various font styles and colours, and represent a visual focal point on the page. Initially used for tagging, word clouds have expanded their use beyond this primary purpose.
Recently, more and more businesses have discovered the versatility of word clouds as marketing tools. These visual elements are no longer confined to web pages alone. With the help of free word cloud generators, such as Wordle or TagCrowd, you can create word clouds out of your content and save them to your computer as image files. Alternately, you can save the word cloud as embeddable HTML code.
Let us take a look at the various ways in which you can use word clouds to complement your digital marketing strategies.
- Illustrate Your Content
Instead of looking for a stock photo, which does not really have the personal touch of your brand image, generate a word cloud from the content and use it as illustration. This original type of visual will not only look original and make your blog section look different from other business blogs out there, but it will also help your readers get the gist of the topic in a look.
As more people use mobile phones to read content and their attention span is shortening, word clouds used as visuals are very useful. People can scan the most frequently used words included in the cloud and decide whether the topic is of interest to them and worth reading.
- Use Word Clouds as Social Media Cover Photos
Everyone uses their company logos or photos of their headquarters or their products as cover photos. Dare to be different and create a catchy and great-looking word cloud which includes the top keywords which define your business. Since there are no limitations concerning text used for cover photos, word clouds are a great alternative to other options for illustrating your social media accounts.
Most word cloud generators allow you to customise your files according to your brand identity – including the colour and font style of the words.
- Post Poll Results as Word Clouds
When you poll your social media followers or customers on various aspects, you should post the results as soon as you have them. The simplest choice is to post them as a list. However, it is even more creative to generate a word cloud. You can save it as a photo to share on the social media and as HTML code to embed in your own website.
- Create a Pinterest Board
Pinterest is one of the visual social media networks with a very high level of engagement. Creating a board featuring only word clouds is something truly original, because very few companies do it. In order to be effective, the word clouds need to be artistic and tastefully done (using premium word cloud generators, which allow you to customise your clouds any way you want).
These word cloud boards have a high potential of becoming viral and creating more hype and awareness around your brand and business.
- Enhance Your SEO Strategy
HTML word clouds posted on your website count as content which can be read by Google spiders. They are also useful to assess the effectiveness of your keyword strategy. Since the algorithm of the word clouds automatically extracts the most frequently used words in each article and web page, you can check if you are using the right words with the adequate frequency in your content.
Last, but not least, you can use word cloud generators to spy on your competitors’ keyword strategy. By copy/pasting their web page URL, you can generate a word cloud in seconds and have a clear image of the keywords they try to rank for.