Say it With Pictures
How pictures excel in communicating what we want to say
All of us at some experience being at loss for words when expressing what we think or how we feel. When you lack the words to say something, post some pictures to put your message across. This method is very much effective as a picture can say a thousand or more words. This is because images are powerful vehicles of information that the brain can immediately process. In fact, the mind processes images faster than the written word. This is because with words, we first have to recognize the letters and read each word to discern the meaning of a statement. Pictures are the opposite. Everything you need to know is in the picture.
That’s why social media campaigns earn more success if you use pictures. As it is far more attractive to look at beautiful pictures than read even a short article, people engage more with businesses that post pictures on their brand pages. Let’s take the top 10 Facebook company pages, for example. According to M Booth, a global communications company, there’s more customer engagement on pages bedecked with pictures and videos (which are essentially moving images).
This demonstrates the influence of pictures on strengthening social engagement with your customers. Videos, especially those that are creatively made, attract more eyes, likes, comments and shares. Pictures are not to be outdone, beating text posts twice as much in the popularity contest. Here are some posts on Intrepid Travel to serve as examples:
This company page promotes travel as a way of life and allows people to see different sights that may inspire them. The pictures above are certainly stimulating and fascinating enough to make followers want to go these places and experience for themselves the wonder of beholding such creatures and places up close. This is the effect that images bring to viewers and visitors of Intrepid Travel’s social media page. Aren’t you enticed to go to these places as well?
There’s also Instagram on the rise, which brings back how Facebook achieved 100 million users, four years after its inception. But Instagram shows such a meteoric rise that threatens to break Facebook’s record. The rise of this picture-based mobile application is quickly gaining popularity with its 80 million subscribers…and counting.
Tumblr, a microblogging site which enables users to post text, images, videos, links and other forms of content, has been around since 2007. According to the Data Never Sleeps infograph, Tumblr blog owners publish an estimated number of 27,778 new posts per minute. This mind-boggling number translates to how much content this site is churning out every day. The data below show how images are so pervasive in the lives of Tumblr users. There are memes and GIFs or graphics interchange format that go viral because of its interactive quality that snags the attention of fans on this social network.
Here’s a sample post from Corgi Addict, one of the most popular Tumblr bloggers:
One reason this particular post garnered so many notes (combined number of likes, replies, and shares) is its format. Each picture in the collage is an animated GIF, which enable the images to move in rapid succession like a soundless one-minute movie on loop.
There’s also YouTube, where users are said to upload 48 hours’ worth of video every minute. Everyone (think 100 million users) can post a video on YouTube and show anything under the sun, below the ground or something beyond outer space. But only a small percent of videos become viral and generate more than 100 million views. There are music videos, as well as video clips about animals, baby antics, parodies, and more.
But when it comes to images, images, and more images, Pinterest is the reigning queen. Although its main market is women at around 80%, this percentage is slowly decreasing to accommodate the number of male users tweaking with the Pinterest interface and creating boards that illustrate their various interests.
Pinterest is a social network that shows off a dizzying variety of pictures numerous users share every day. Users can create boards where they can pin pictures that center around a theme. For example, you want a board that shows recipes of delicious vegetable dishes. All you have to do is name the board and pin images related to your chosen topic.
The picture power is illustrated on Pinterest, which became the leading social network in a short period of time. As a result, this site beat veteran social media networks like Twitter and StumbleUpon, and became number one for traffic referrals.
Pictures act like a flower with such an attractive scent that attracts thousands of bees. Many businesses use images to bring more traffic to their site and attract more potential customers. Therefore, use more well-taken pictures to make viewers pay attention, interact with your content, and generate more sales leads. Follow the example of businesses, which have successfully used pictures for their marketing campaigns. Check out Etsy and Whole Foods on Pinterest, and other ventures!
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