Why Visuals Are a Must for Social Media Posts
With the universal shift of online communicating with friends, family, clients, prospective clients, etc., posting on social media can be one of the best ways to share updates about your business and industry resources. In regards to social media especially, your online audience sees these updates and resources and might share them with their network. But what pushes people to share, or even read the posts that pop up in their social media feeds? Essentially, your words are on component which draws current and potential members of your audience to your social media pages.
But your words aren't the only thing that attracts visitors, nor should that be the only thing. What also draws them are the pictures you post. A picture speaks a thousand words as the saying goes, and engagement from posts with images is almost always higher than posts with just text. Your small business should make posting authentic visuals to your social media pages a priority. If you haven't been including images with your social media posts, or not posting anything at all, now is the time to start. If you need some convincing, here's why visuals are a must for social media posts:
- Illustrative visuals are gaining in popularity: Social platforms such as Instagram and Pinterest, which solely focus on images and video, have been raking well among users. According to a 2015 report called The Demographics of Social Media Users done by the Pew Research Center: out of 26% of the adult population, "31% of adult internet users" use Pinterest, and Out of 24% of the adult population, "28% of adult internet users" use Instagram. According to Mashable, both websites "nearly doubled their users between 2012 and 2015." While Facebook doesn't solely focus on images, users enjoy updating their friends and followers with pictures and videos. If you do the same, you just might see an increase in view, clicks, shares and comments pouring in from your audience.
- Your audience absorbs images faster than text: While it can sometimes seem tricky incorporating visuals with your text-based posts, sometimes a message can get across to your audience much faster with images. According to the Huffington Post, "images used in your social media are far more likely to evoke emotional reactions in viewers and can portray information more efficiently than text." While text shouldn't go away completely, make an effort to Incorporate images that are just as hard-hitting as the informative text content you’re posting. These images can be a literal representation, or even more artistically connected.
Contact us for information on great image resources, more tips, and a few of our strategies for incorporating visual into every social media post.
