College Sports Information Directors of America

by Marc Jordan, University of Texas, Social Media Coordinator, CoSIDA New Media Committee Member and Brian Clinard, Spalding University, Director of Athletic Communications, CoSIDA New Media Committee Member

Remember the old saying “A picture is worth a thousand words,” well these days with the ever-shrinking attention span and everyone looking for the next big thing to hit social media before it vanishes in the blink of an eye, it is becoming harder and harder to stay relevant and grab attention. Cut to our own rendition of “Video killed the radio star” video has moved in on the still image and has created its own sub-category of motion graphic, the gif. The exuberant mathematic equation that is the human attention span has caused the run-of-the-mill graphic to become a visual and motion masterpiece. This magic number? Six-seconds or less.

Wishing y'all a Happy Independence Day! From your #TexasFamily ???? #HookEm ?? #ThisIsTexas pic.twitter.com/g5T2faIbEw

— Texas Men'sSwimDive (@TexasMSD) July 4, 2017

The next piece of the puzzle is whether or not to use a gif or short-form video. Here are some pros and cons for each.

With the top recruiting class and 3 returning All-Americans, the Longhorns start the season No. 1 in the @AVCAVolleyball Preseason Poll ???? pic.twitter.com/RMrLX8UNou

— Texas Volleyball (@TexasVolleyball) August 9, 2017

For twitter to loop your content, it needs to be less than six seconds and it will play on repeat through the twitter feed.

Gif-Friendly Apps

ImgPlay – This app gives you the ability to cut video into gifs with options for size and quality. Depending on where you plan to post the gif, this app offers different image quality settings while also letting you cut the length of the video to fit within posting sizes. Other features include looping type (forward, backward, repeat), cropping, color enhancement and text overlays. It even offers the ability to import from other applications on the main menu, pulling video from various sources. This app needs the partner app GIF Viewer in order for you to save the file as a gif capable of being uploaded to social media.

GIF Viewer – This app lets you view gifs from your library and do further (albeit minor) edits and has application synergy with ImgPlay. You can import and export your gifs and make sure that the file size will meet social media requirements. You can also provide content to followers that require more than 140 characters.

We're one day away for @SU_Volleyball opening the 2017 season with an alumni exhibition. Here's a look at the 2017 home schedule! #sueagles pic.twitter.com/EDXNLtYK96

— Spalding Athletics (@SU_GoldenEagles) August 22, 2017

GIFs can also be a good way to celebrate a win allowing you to convey your information in a concise way, while standing out from text based Twitter posts.

EAGLES WIN! The Golden Eagle Nine roll past Transy, 12-6, to improve to 8-2 on the season! pic.twitter.com/w8IoYlDabi

GIF Do’s

• Create animated posters for events
  • Create movie ads without investing time in video
  • Can share more information than 140 characters
• Visualize data
  • Elevate your content by showing statistical data of a team or student-athlete
• Feature awards
  • Use a GIF to feature an award
  • Can be combined with data/statistics to highlight award and stats
• Bring content to life
  • Convey emotion
  • Run back a highlight play
  • Use GIF to add to the story
• Utilize first frame
  • Use an eye grabbing first frame to catch the eye

GIF Don’ts

• Use an irrelevant GIF
  • Make sure your GIF matches the content of you message
  • Ask yourself, “How will this benefit my audience”
  • Is this GIF representative of my program’s overall brand
  • Would fans/followers relate
  • Is this GIF still culturally relevant, does the message translate to the audience
• Don’t use multiple GIF’s in one post
  • Ruins the focus/highlight factor
  • Can cause slow loading time
• Don’t use large files
  • Keep file size minimal to optimize load time

In closing, social media is meant to be fun and the GIF is a great way to engage with your followers. Just make sure that the GIF aligns with your strategy and that your brand remains strong in the process.

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