Engaging customers with visual content

Content is king, but the amount of words it takes to create good content seems to be forever shrinking. We have seen social media trends transition from from blog posts, to Facebook status updates, to Twitter posts, and now we have come to a point in which visual content is the best way to engage on social media. Understanding why visual content is important and successful is necessary for any business that wants to keep up with its competition. The following are the top four reasons visual content is good for engagement:

Visuals are hard to ignore

As people scroll through their newsfeeds it is easy to ignore text, but not images; according to a 3M Corporation study, we process visual information 60,000 times faster than text. That means it’s almost impossible for someone to not at least register subconsciously that they saw your image. More often than not, that subconscious registration sparks people’s curiosity enough that they stop to look at the picture.

Visuals are sharable

Most content that has gone “viral” is visual content. Images and video are the two most shared types of content online, thus making them the best candidates for engaging your customers and getting your audience to share your content for you.

Visuals are memorable

Staying relevant on social media can be difficult. Social media moves at such a quick pace that a tweet is past its expiration date after 40 minutes. Getting your message seen is a must, but it also needs to be remembered, which is once again why visual content is so important; studies show that humans remember images better than text and the more a visual is viewed, the more likely someone is to remember it.

Visuals produce better SEO

Due to the popularity of visual content, Google has added to how it ranks websites. Instead of just using keywords, Google now evaluates social shares. The amount of shares, likes, and retweets your content gets is now factored in to how well your site ranks on a search engine.

Whether you think social media is becoming more efficient or lazy is up to you, but either way you look at it, content is trending toward fewer words and more visuals. As the above examples prove, visuals are important and your business needs to jump on the visual content bandwagon if it doesn’t want to be left behind.