Are You Prepared for Visual Social Media Marketing?

It's becoming clearer and clearer that images are the key to breaking through the clutter of social media and reaching consumers. So how can you take advantage of this trend?

I recently released my third book, Visual Social Media Marketing, after I noticed a trend in social media content, as well as the implications for businesses. Looking at the trends across social networks and Web content, one thing is undeniable – in order for content to be shared online, it must be visual.

Consider these statistics:

  • The most shared and clicked-on links on Twitter are images
  • Images on Facebook generate more reach, views, and interactions
  • Blog posts with images generate more traffic
  • Recruiters judge your LinkedIn profile more by the photo than the content

In addition, the quickest-growing social networks and applications are visual. Flipboard, a visual news app, was the number one application when the iPad launched. Pinterest and Instagram are the two quickest-growing social networks, and both focus on visual communications.

The trends are clear – images are the key to breaking through the clutter of social media. With 88 percent of businesses now on social networks, it is more important than ever to build a strategy that involves the content that your audience actually wants. Increasingly, that content is visual.

Why Does Visual Content Break Through?

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. This is true. We can communicate more information faster with images versus text. Since we are sifting through lots of information online, our brains are naturally drawn to the content that gets the message across quickly. Images break through the clutter and immediately and quickly communicate messages.

Why Does It Matter?

The reality is that images are leading social content for sharing. Meaning that images are highly viewed, engaged with, shared, and clicked on social networks. If you want your website content shared across visual social networks, you need to have a strong image strategy. Many websites, like MarthaStewart.com, report that visual social marketing is the number one source of traffic to their website.

I realized this a few months ago, when I researched how content from www.BootCampDigital.com was shared on Pinterest. I immediately noticed that a picture of me had been pinned. As I investigated I realized that the pinner was sharing a link to our Google+ report. The Web page with the report included the entire report, however it didn’t have an image of the report – it only had a few random logos and a picture of me in the sidebar.

The lack of images on our website made it difficult for fans to share the report, and having an irrelevant image was limiting the amount of traffic that we were generating from Pinterest and other social networks. We added an image to represent the report, and found that traffic to the report page from social media sites increased, because there was a relevant image to support the page.

neher-report

How Can You Take Advantage of This Trend?

There are three main opportunities for marketers to take advantage of this trend.

  1. Include highly relevant images on all of the pages on your website. This will ensure that your site is highly sharable on the visual Web and can drive more traffic, leads, and sales to your site. All pages, especially product pages and blog posts, should include highly relevant photos. Try pinning your pages on Pinterest to see what images show up for each page.
  2. Optimize your social content to break through the clutter with images. Most leading businesses are making use of images in their content on all social networks. Your Facebook, Twitter, blog, and even LinkedIn strategies should include images.
  3. Join some of the fastest growing image social networks. Pinterest and Instagram are two of the quickest-growing social networks, and brands have seen tremendous success in brand building as well as generating traffic, leads, and sales from these networks. Take a look at these sites and build a strategy for how your business can get results.

Don’t delay any longer – images are dominating content that travels online, so take advantage of these sites before your competitors do.

Subscribe to get your daily business insights

Whitepapers

US Mobile Streaming Behavior
Whitepaper | Mobile

US Mobile Streaming Behavior

5y

US Mobile Streaming Behavior

Streaming has become a staple of US media-viewing habits. Streaming video, however, still comes with a variety of pesky frustrations that viewers are ...

View resource
Winning the Data Game: Digital Analytics Tactics for Media Groups
Whitepaper | Analyzing Customer Data

Winning the Data Game: Digital Analytics Tactics for Media Groups

5y

Winning the Data Game: Digital Analytics Tactics f...

Data is the lifeblood of so many companies today. You need more of it, all of which at higher quality, and all the meanwhile being compliant with data...

View resource
Learning to win the talent war: how digital marketing can develop its people
Whitepaper | Digital Marketing

Learning to win the talent war: how digital marketing can develop its peopl...

2y

Learning to win the talent war: how digital market...

This report documents the findings of a Fireside chat held by ClickZ in the first quarter of 2022. It provides expert insight on how companies can ret...

View resource
Engagement To Empowerment - Winning in Today's Experience Economy
Report | Digital Transformation

Engagement To Empowerment - Winning in Today's Experience Economy

1m

Engagement To Empowerment - Winning in Today's Exp...

Customers decide fast, influenced by only 2.5 touchpoints – globally! Make sure your brand shines in those critical moments. Read More...

View resource