Welcome to our first episode of #PiktoChat – a series of chats with leaders and entrepreneurs to inspire the future with their knowledge and experience. In this episode, we’re proud to feature Anne Payuan, an avid user and supporter of Piktochart since 2018.
Anne is a social media content creator and the co-founder of The Bright Millennial – one of the Philippines’ leading finance Facebook pages. She is also the lead digital marketer for The Bright Media, an outfit that creates digital content and manages social media campaigns for many brands and thought leaders in the Philippines.
Hear Anne’s inspiring story of how Piktochart has transformed her career and led her to co-found her marketing agency, The Bright Millennial. To date, TBM has a following of more than 290,000 followers on Facebook with an average of 1 million reaches for their posts that promotes financial literacy to young professionals.
Watch the #PiktoChat below!
We’ve also prepared a transcript of this #PiktoChat so that you can read along below.
How did you discover Piktochart?
Anne:
I started with Piktochart because years ago, we had to market online when my fiance, Garett (who’s also the co-founder of The Bright Millennial) needed to market himself online. I didn’t know how to use Photoshop back then, so I looked for online editors. And although there were a lot of them, most of them were quite difficult to use.
Still, I tried creating templates and posters using those editors, and when I showed it to my friends, they recommended me to try out Piktochart. I tried it, and I fell in love with it at an instant. Since then I’ve been using Piktochart for every piece of content that I do.
I’ve been using Piktochart for about three years now, and I’ve gotten a lot of projects because of it, which I thought was impossible.
You were using Piktochart when working for a company and now have grown TBM into a business. What was that journey like?
Anne:
When we launched The Bright Millennial it started because we wanted to market ourselves online. It opened up doors for partnerships with a lot of brands and companies that wanted to hire us to do social media marketing and digital marketing. Even though I didn’t have any background back then, Piktochart was very supportive and provided a lot of inspiration. I am so thankful to Piktochart!
From The Bright Millennial, we also created The Bright Media, which mainly focuses on the digital marketing side while The Bright Millennial focuses on making partnerships with brands. It has currently grown to more than 300,000 followers.
Why do you think visual communication is so important for a digital marketing agency?
Anne:
I really believe that to be a good communicator or marketer, you have to communicate your message and your product very well. In a wider scope of your audience regardless of your age, educational background, or field, visual communication does just that. Aside from being interesting to look at, visual communication helps our audience understand a product and services in a more layman and less complicated way.
I think it’s common knowledge that if you have a business, you have to put it out there and online. Marketing your business online isn’t just about writing a document and being a good writer, but having a visual to go with that would help to attract more clients.
Visual communication plays a big role in communicating to the audience. Millennials also have a special way of marketing and it’s different from traditional marketing, as we aim to connect with the audience.
With digital marketing, we can target our audience specifically and create visuals that are more catered to them.
How has Piktochart benefited your business?
Anne:
Because of the viral content that we’ve created using Piktochart, it created a lot of opportunities for us here in the Philippines and abroad. Garett was invited to a lot of speaking engagements, radio and television interviews, and being featured in magazines and news articles.
When we ask those people why they choose Garett to be their guest, it was mainly because of the infographic we’ve created that has gone viral. Due to that, people see us as an expert when it comes to finances topics because our infographics are very easy to understand.
Aside from that, we get more inquiries and clients, and there was once when we received more than a thousand inquiries in just one day because an infographic we created with Piktochart went viral. Today, The Bright Millennial has more than 30 financial advisors and over a thousand clients from our page.
My digital agency, The Bright Media, is currently a team of five, and we’ve catered to hundreds of clients. Again, everything was done using Piktochart.
I honestly don’t think I’ll ever be here if it wasn’t for Piktochart.
What is your proudest creation done using Piktochart?
Anne:
There’s actually a lot as I’m proud of all that I’ve created using Piktochart. Well, I’ve created posters for billboards and magazines, and that’s a proud moment for me.
There is also a media outlet that featured my work, but I think the proudest creation would be The Bright Millennial page because that’s where it all started. The Bright Millennial opened up a lot of opportunities for Garett and me. The viral infographics that we’ve created using Piktochart helped us build The Bright Millennial’s following with currently 300,000 followers and a Facebook group with 15,000 members.
Whenever people message us to let us know how our infographics have helped them understand finance better, it’s actually my proudest moment because we get to help one person to be financially literate.
For our infographics currently, we usually get an average of a million reach on Facebook, and that’s our minimum. A lot of people are reading our infographics, and I’m sure that if I posted our content as an article, I’m not sure that people will be reading that.
We have tried posting a very long text, but it didn’t get a lot of engagement. I then turned that article into an infographic and it just went viral. This particular infographic received a million reach in 30 minutes!
Based on your experience, what are the three most important visual communication tips?
Anne:
The first would be to communicate who you are, what you do, and what you believe in. Who you are and what you believe in would reflect on your visual communication. Hence, visual communication should be more than just a visual identity, but it should be able to get your message across.
Second, don’t make visual communication too complicated. I used to put a lot of elements, colors, and fonts in the past before Piktochart, thinking that those will make it more beautiful. In actual fact, the simpler it is, the better it is. It has to be easy to be understood and we should leave out jargon in the terms. Our focus should be on making people understand our work.
Lastly, a strong visual identity is going to play an important role in a business. A cohesive look and on-brand design language reflect and enhance your business. Don’t take that for granted, but invest in it, research about it, and learn the new trends – so that you will be up to date with your business.
When we first got started, the designs of our content were actually not good. While we were trying to improve our design, we were also trying to improve how we can better communicate with our audience. We are actually focusing more on communicating with our audience and making them understand, and our design reflects that.
What are your favorite features about Piktochart?
Anne:
I have three favorites. The first would be the clip arts and icons because there’s a lot to choose from. I never run out of clip arts to use. What really made me choose Piktochart from the start is that all of the clip arts and icons are already available in the free plan, so I didn’t have to pay to use the clip arts.
Next would be the photos. I like that Piktochart has its own set of photos and the integration with Unsplash. I could just put keywords that I need and there would be a lot of photos for me to choose from.
Finally, the templates are very original and the designs are top-notch. There are days when creators like myself are not creative, but Piktochart has different templates to inspire you and give you more ideas to be creative.
We’re so grateful to Anne for sharing her story with us in our first episode of #PiktoChat! For those interested in learning more about using visual communication to win clients for your business, check out this free PDF handout with free templates that you could easily use on Piktochart.
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