The Importance of Using Visual Content in Social Media Marketing

Social media plays a vital role in today’s digital marketing.

Marketers leverage social media platforms to target specific audiences and deliver high-quality content to a large number of people at the same time. That way, marketers can effectively promote their businesses, as well as their products and services.

However, almost every business on the market uses social media to tailor their messages and promote their offers by posting content on social media networks. As a matter of fact, 140 million tweets are generated and over two million videos get uploaded to social media every day.

In addition, there are over 1.5 billion individual pieces of content on the Internet, which makes it very difficult for the content you produce to truly stand out in the crowd.

That’s why visual content is key for your social media marketing success.

In fact, people are visual beings and they process visuals 60,000 times faster than plain text, making visual content a lot more popular than textual information.

The Importance of Visual Content in Social Media

The human brain is wired to process visual information far more swiftly than text, catapulting visuals to the forefront of effective digital communication.

This intrinsic preference underscores the critical role visual content plays in capturing attention, fostering engagement, and enhancing message retention on social media platforms.

• Captivating Attention: Amid the incessant stream of digital noise, visuals act as beacons of interest, instantly drawing users’ eyes and differentiating content in a crowded feed. The allure of well-crafted images, videos, and infographics can halt the scroll of even the most hurried social media users, offering a window of opportunity to convey your message.
• Boosting Engagement: Engagement is the currency of social media, and visuals are the mint. Content adorned with images, videos, or animations invites interaction, from likes and shares to comments and saves. This heightened engagement not only amplifies your message across networks but also fortifies your social media presence, cultivating a community around your brand.
• Enhancing Comprehension and Retention: Visual content transcends linguistic barriers, delivering messages in a universally digestible format. Complex ideas distilled into compelling visuals are more easily understood and remembered, ensuring that your message resonates with the audience long after their initial encounter. This enhanced comprehension and retention are vital for brand recall and loyalty.
• Driving Conversions: Visuals not only decorate content but also drive action. The inclusion of relevant and appealing visual content in social media marketing strategies has been shown to significantly influence consumer behavior, encouraging more clicks, visits, and ultimately, conversions. From product demonstrations to testimonials, visual content serves as a persuasive tool that guides potential customers along the buyer’s journey.
• Adapting to Platform Preferences: Each social media platform has its own visual language and user expectations. Tailoring visual content to align with these preferences maximizes its impact. For instance, the ephemeral nature of Instagram Stories invites dynamic, moment-driven visuals, while Pinterest’s layout favors high-quality, inspirational images. Understanding and leveraging these nuances is key to engaging effectively with diverse audiences.
• Fostering Brand Identity: Beyond its functional benefits, visual content is a powerful medium for expressing brand identity. Consistent use of colors, styles, and themes across visuals strengthens brand recognition, creating a cohesive and memorable online presence. This visual consistency helps forge a connection with your audience, differentiating your brand in a competitive landscape.

Let’s explore more in-depth the main reasons why visual content is important for social media marketing:

Fact: People Prefer Visuals

As mentioned before people are visual beings. Online consumers can retain only 10 to 20% of the information they read or hear about, but once that information is paired with visual elements, the information retained suddenly goes up to 65%.

At any given time, the human brain can only process a very limited amount of information. In addition, any information that can be processed faster will take priority in grabbing a person’s attention.

That’s why visuals and images are more suited for content than simple blocks or lines of text.

People on social media are more willing to engage with visual content. In fact, 40% of online users will provide a more favorable response to visual content than plain textual content. For instance, tweets with images get 150% more retweets than tweets without images, while Facebook posts with images generate 2.3 times more engagement than posts without them.

Increases Views

Your social media content will generate 94% more views if it contains visual elements, which proves that people prefer to engage with content that’s both informative and pleasing to the eye.

This can prove invaluable, especially if you want to deliver a well-tailored message to your audience and ensure your message has reached your audience accordingly. Moreover, your social media post views can increase by 48% if they contain both images and videos.

Also, press releases that contain photos can generate 14% more views when published. Attracting the right kind of attention with your social media marketing is essential for your campaign’s success. By adding visual content to your strategies, you’ll be able to attract the necessary attention required to get your message through to your target audience.

Boosts Engagement

High-quality visual content included in your social media marketing efforts can generate more likes, shares and comments than a simple text would.

As a matter of fact, your articles can experience a 37% increase in engagement if they are optimized with compelling visual content. Furthermore, an engaging visual content is more likely to go viral, meaning that people will share it further with their friends, family and other members of their online community. Furthermore, engaging visuals aren’t just meant to go viral.

They can also help your audience better understand or appreciate the message you’re trying to deliver.

For example, your message will be much better received if it’s backed by a soothing nature photo. Moreover, if your content is clickable, it can bring you a lot of inbound links; just make sure it contains your logo so everyone knows where the content originated from.

Inbound links make your content more relevant and improve your search ranking, while generating 60% more interest from your target audience.

The 8 Types of Visual Content That Boost Social Media Success

1. Images: High-quality images are the backbone of social media visuals. They capture attention quickly and communicate brand personality and style. Simple, clear, and visually appealing images tend to perform well, especially on platforms like Instagram and Facebook.
2. Infographics: Infographics are powerful tools for simplifying complex information, showing data, and presenting comparisons in a visually digestible format. Ideal for B2B audiences and educational content, infographics encourage shares and save rates across platforms like LinkedIn and Pinterest.
3. Videos: With video content accounting for over 80% of internet traffic, videos are highly effective in capturing attention and building engagement. Short, engaging videos work well on platforms like TikTok and Instagram Reels, while longer formats are better suited for YouTube or Facebook.
4. GIFs and Memes: GIFs and memes bring humor and relatability to your content, creating an informal and engaging experience. They work especially well on Twitter and Instagram, encouraging interaction and shares.
5. Stories and Live Streams: Stories and live streams foster a sense of immediacy and authenticity, making them ideal for real-time engagement. Instagram Stories, Facebook Live, and LinkedIn Live allow brands to connect in real-time, offering behind-the-scenes looks or live Q&As.
6. Carousel Posts: Carousel posts allow for multi-image storytelling, enabling brands to showcase products, explain processes, or deliver tips. They are particularly effective on Instagram and LinkedIn, where audiences engage by swiping through slides.
7. Interactive Content (Polls, Quizzes, and Q&As): Interactive elements invite followers to participate actively, whether it’s through voting in a poll, answering a quiz, or joining a Q&A session. This type of content is great for gathering audience insights while boosting engagement.
8. User-Generated Content (UGC): Featuring customer photos, testimonials, and stories provides authentic social proof, enhancing trust and credibility. UGC is a hit on Instagram, where brands often showcase customer experiences and product use cases.

Measuring the Impact of Visual Content on Social Media

• Engagement Rate: Track likes, comments, shares, and saves to measure how users interact with your visual content. A high engagement rate signifies that your visuals resonate well with your audience.
• Reach and Impressions: Reach tells you the number of unique users who saw your content, while impressions reveal how often it was displayed. These metrics are crucial for assessing brand visibility and the effectiveness of visual content in reaching broader audiences.
• Conversion Rate: If you’re using visual content for lead generation or sales, monitor the conversion rate to evaluate the percentage of viewers who took desired actions, like signing up for a newsletter, clicking a link, or making a purchase.
• Click-Through Rate (CTR): For posts with links, CTR shows the percentage of viewers who clicked on the link, indicating how compelling your visual content is at driving traffic to your website or landing page.
• Audience Retention Rate for Videos: Track how long viewers watch your videos to understand engagement levels. This metric helps determine which parts of the video hold attention and where drop-offs occur, allowing for content adjustments.
• Shares and Virality: The number of shares indicates how engaging or valuable viewers found your visual content. Content that gets shared widely achieves a level of virality, increasing reach and brand visibility organically.
• Comments and Mentions: Track comments and mentions to see how visual content contributes to conversations around your brand. This qualitative feedback helps you gauge audience sentiment and engagement levels.

BONUS: Visual Content Optimization Checklist for Social Media

1. Image Quality and Resolution: Use high-resolution images and videos to avoid pixelation. Each platform has its own recommended dimensions, so be sure to optimize visuals accordingly for Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and others.
2. Consistent Branding: Maintain a cohesive brand aesthetic by using consistent color schemes, fonts, and logos. This strengthens brand recognition and creates a memorable visual identity.
3. Platform-Specific Optimization: Tailor visuals for each platform’s specifications and best practices. For instance, vertical videos perform better on mobile-heavy platforms like Instagram and TikTok, while horizontal formats are better for YouTube.
4. Captivating Thumbnails for Videos: A compelling thumbnail encourages clicks on video content. Ensure it’s eye-catching and clearly communicates what the viewer can expect.
5. SEO-Friendly Descriptions and Hashtags: Use keyword-rich captions and appropriate hashtags to increase discoverability on search engines and within social platforms. Hashtags also help categorize your content, making it easier for users to find.
6. Alt Text for Accessibility: Adding alt text to images ensures they are accessible to visually impaired users and improves SEO, making content more inclusive and discoverable.
7. Clear and Engaging Calls-to-Action (CTAs): CTAs like “Swipe Up,” “Click to Learn More,” or “Shop Now” guide viewers to take desired actions. Place CTAs strategically in the caption or directly within the visual.
8. Mobile-Friendly Design: Ensure all visuals are easy to view and interact with on mobile devices, where most social media consumption happens. Prioritize vertical and square layouts for better mobile compatibility.
9. Analyze Performance Regularly: Use analytics tools native to each social platform (or a third-party tool) to monitor the success of your visuals, making data-informed adjustments to improve performance.
10. Experiment with Different Formats: Regularly test various content formats, such as carousels, GIFs, or videos, to discover what resonates most with your audience and keeps your content fresh.

Your Audience Loves Video

Video is one of the most important visual aspects used in content marketing today.

That being said, by 2019, 80% of internet traffic will consist of video traffic. Generally, online audience prefers watching videos rather than reading plain text.

In fact, four times as many consumers would rather watch a video about a product than read about it, while 90% of consumers state that watching a product video is very helpful in making a purchasing decision.

In addition, 64% of consumers are more willing to purchase after watching a product video. Making video the main visual aspect of your social media strategy will undoubtedly boost your sales.

Moreover, including video as appealing visual content will boost engagement among social followers. The fact of the matter is that Facebook users watch 8 billion videos per day, and a live video turned out to be the most popular format.

Visual elements, such as images, videos, infographics and other are undeniably more interesting and appealing to social media users, as well as online consumers in general.

Implementing visual content into your social media marketing will not only improve views, engagement and social following, but it will also help your content attract the right kind of attention and boost engagement from your target audience.

Read more:

• Types of Effective Visual Media
• The Power of Visual Content for Marketers