Taking advantage of Giphy: A practical guide

Making GIFs is easy if you follow the steps on this practical guide for Giphy, the best way to search, share and discover GIF documents on the internet. Similar to the way search engines work, almost all the content comes from an index based on the best and most popular GIFs and search terms on the web.

All these GIFs are ordered in such a way that it makes easier finding and using them on your social media. GIFs are the perfect resource to improve your digital marketing campaigns. You’ll be able to find, among other things, things to improve the impact of your email marketing campaigns by using animated GIFs or give a breath of fresh air to the content on your social media. With this practical guide for Giphy, you’ll get all the info you need to give a twist to your content marketing strategy.

Giphy Practical Guide

This tool full of GIFs lets you share content, in the form of GIFs, on your digital platforms. What makes this tool special, and the reason for the existence of this guide is that it can be used to create your own custom GIFs. But it’s important to make this clear, this is a tool with millions of GIFs at your disposition if you don’t want to create your own. You just need to type the keyword on the search bar, find the perfect GIF for you and share it. If you want to create your own, just follow these steps:

Uploading content

Use the “Upload” tab to upload your GIFs and share your documents with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, MSM, email or any other website. Follow the steps on this practical guide for Giphy to do so:

1.- Adding documents

Choose any GIF document by dragging and dropping it. Click on the blue search button to explore your documents and insert the URL GIF to add and upload your documents. But there’s one thing, you need to log in to load more GIFs, letting the tool to store them in your own profile and also creating a page using your own GIFs configuration.

TIP: if you add GIFs using a URL, make sure your URL ends with “.gif” and not any type of site’s URL. For example, something like “http://i.giphy.com/l0O9xQNSsQKmfSeUU.gif“.

2.- Reorganizing your GIFs

This is an optional step. You can change the order in which the GIFs appear on your profile by dragging and dropping the documents or by clicking on “Reverse Order”

3.- Add tags, source URL and private configuration

There’s an option to add relevant tags to your GIFs, separated with commas. Or even add a source URL to give credit to the GIF’s original source. You can also change the public GIFs to private. The private GIFs can’t be seen by anyone, only by you when online, they can’t be shared either. These settings will be the default ones for any future and past GIFs you have uploaded.

4.- Uploading GIFs

Press the “Upload GIFs” button to finish. Once the upload is done, you’ll be able to see and edit each GIF on your personal page. You’ll be able to see everything on your profile page, as long as you remain online.

5.- Sharing

You can share the GIFs on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, Reddit, iMessage, SMS, email, and any other website. 

You can also create GIFs using slides. Use the “Slideshow” option to mix your images and GIF in an animated GIF slideshow. The process is almost similar.

Use the control to change the times in which the fixed images will appear on your slideshow before going to the next one. This timeframe only applies to fixed images because GIFs will always play once before changing. Press the “Create presentation” button to end the process. You’ll end up in the GIF page when it’s ready.

GIF MAKER

You can also add video documents, no more than 15 seconds long to upload them and transform them into GIFs. With GIF MAKER you’ll be able to create and edit animated GIFs from new video documents and YouTube links:

1. Add a new video document or YouTube link: Choose a video by adding a YouTube link or video, dragging and dropping a video document, or by clicking on the blue search button to search your documents. But first, the videos must be smaller than 100 MB and should last no more than 15 minutes.
2. Edit the starting and ending time: Use the two sliding buttons to record your GIF. The upper slider selects the starting time and the lower one the ending time of your GIF.
3.  Add subtitles and effects: Add a legend to your video. You’ll always be able to edit it or delete it in the future if you want. Use the upper tabs to check all the available effects, stickers and other decorative elements you can add to your GIF.
4. Add tags, origin URL and privacy configuration: As when you upload content, you’ll be able to add tags separated with commas, the source URL to give credibility to your document and even you’ll be able to make it public or private.
5. Create your GIF and share it: Press the “Create GIF” button to end the process. The app will take you to your GIF page when it’s done. You’ll be able to share your GIF on any website.

How to add a GIF to your content

This can go without saying, a way to add a GIF to your content. Need to add a GIF from this tool to your website, blog, etc.? Giphy offers two different ways to do so:

1.- Iframe Version

This is the easiest option and it’s compatible with CMS and publishing platforms. You need to add the image’s link and attach it to your content code as you would do with any YouTube video. Click on the “embed” link found on the corner of every GIF. Copy and paste the code on your publication. And you’re done.

2.- Optimized Insertions (JavaScript / HTML5)

This is the most optimized integration method. They are automatically compressed to adapt to any type of channel they’re inserted to. To use the optimized insertion, first, you need to click on the “more options” button, found on the bottom of every GIF. Choose “JS embed”. Copy and paste the code on your publication. But there’s one thing, consider that some CMS won’t allow pasting JavaScript on an HTML edition view. If that’s the case, just use the first option.

Three GIF characteristics you should know

GIFS are perfect to animate any type of content. In this Giphy guide, we will share three good practices while making or using GIFs: 

1.- Context is key for the GIF

GIFs allow you to express and relate with everyone in a very carefree and fun way. But you need to create them using the correct context. If you forgo this step, your brand’s image could be tarnished. GIFs are full of humor. But sometimes it might not fit with what are you trying to share.

Almost all GIFs are fragments of pop culture (memes, tv shows, movie scenes, etc.) and this means that it could have some other meaning beyond what’s happening on the GIF. Before sharing something, you need to be sure that the context used on the GIF is the right one, so you won’t end up sharing by accident a GIF that has a way different meaning than the one you intended to convey.

2.- Give different purposes to the GIFs

When someone uses the perfect GIF, it’s entertaining. While funny GIFs could improve your engagement level and make a brand look more relatable, there are many ways to use GIFs to promote your brand.

You can use GIFs to animate data, play ads or even create more attractive presentations, product demos or ads, etc. Don’t only use them to support your content, you can make the GIF the main event. It’s a way to make your content marketing strategy have another purpose.

3.- Omit content using your brand’s image

Create your own content. But it can’t be overexaggerated nor very closely related to your brand. You don’t always need to show a logo or something that is related to your brand. You can create something that simply supports your content.  Whenever they see your feed, they’ll see it full of GIFs with your logo and you want to avoid that. It looks extremely boring. You need to capture incredible moments.

If you have created a fantastic and original GIF related to your brand that you want to share on social media, keep it simple and avoid making your brand the thing that stands out from the GIF. Just add a little logo on the lower corner, like a watermark. This will give personality and a trademark to your GIF.

As with everything, creating GIFs is just one part of the content marketing strategy that can help you reach your target audience. An authentic and different strategy that will directly impact your users. Antevenio can help you find the essential elements to improve the impact of your actions.