According to an article on Digital Sherpa titled Infographics: The Importance of Visual Content in Your Marketing, the popularity of such graphic-centered social networking websites like Pinterest and Instagram serves as proof that visual content is critical to successful social media campaigns.
The article continues to explain those successes with a bit of research:
- Human brains process visual input 60,000 times more rapidly than they interpret text input.
- Almost half of consumers say that they consider a website’s appearance when judging its credibility.
- The graphically oriented social site, Pinterest, generated 3.6 percent of referral traffic in 2012, and this is more than the total referrals from YouTube, LinkedIn, and Google+.
Even on websites, like Facebook and Twitter, that rely more upon text, posts with graphic content tend to stand out. Some information is better suited to text, but good graphics can attract eyeballs to the page with the text on it.
Brand Your Social Media Pages with Graphics
For example, we designed a Facebook and Twitter cover image header for one of our Centennial, Colorado clients, A Bead Store. Since adding these covers, our client has enjoyed a higher level of social interaction on both social websites. In our experience, simple and professional graphics for social media pages provide a great return on investment. In the best case, these cover graphics complement the website design to help with branding.
Use Images on Social Media Posts
Images help social media posts stand out from text posts, and this is particularly important for businesses that hope to stand out on busy news feeds. One type of graphic, the infographic, is particularly effective at gaining attention and imparting information quickly. To learn more about infographics, refer to this article on our blog: The Power of Infographics on the Web.
As an aside, the Digital Sherpa page mentioned in the first paragraph of this article contains a very attractive infographic. It contains supporting research to back up the claims about the importance of graphics in social media in a very easy-to-digest manner.
Enjoy More Social Media Attention With Professional Graphics
Instead of only spending more money on exposure, maybe your business should begin maximizing the potential of the exposure that you already have. The combination of text and graphics maximizes your chance to attract and keep attention focused on your brand.
On busy Facebook and Twitter feeds, this ability can increase your ROI and make the difference between a mediocre and truly successful social networking campaign. At Tag Team Design, our graphics department is eager to make an impact on your next social media campaign.
Have questions about social media marketing or graphic design? Click here for an hour of free consultation
source: http://www.digitalsherpa.com/blog/infographic-importance-visual-content/