Visual Content

As humans, we are visual creatures. We pay attention to and remember visual information better than any other type of information.

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Images support the understanding of concepts, it’s the way humans learn and comprehend. Some studies show how people following instructions with text and illustrations perform 323% better than people who learn without illustrations.

Tweets with images receive 150% more retweets than tweets without images. Facebook posts with images see 2.3 x more engagement than those without.

Whilst stock libraries can provide high-quality imagery to help make your point in social media (with Unsplash remaining one of the strongest) you should look to invest in creating your own original imagery that stands out in fast-moving social feeds.

In fact, visual information also helps us to remember text or audio information. For instance, it has been observed that when a person hears and understands a piece of information, only three days later, they will remember just 10% of it. Add a picture to the audio and they will remember 65%.

Different images work on different platforms. While you should be careful about generalising, here are some overall trends:

Facebook
Facebook users are typically looking for emotional or entertaining content. Share incredible, inspirational or surprising photography. Think about personal stories and moments captured visually. Bring humour with memes and highly relatable or topical content.

Instagram
People open their Instagram app to see beautiful things, places and lifestyle. Think of it like a magazine full of aspirational objects that people covet, incredible places they want to go, and amazing experiences they would like to partake in. How could you articulate your brand’s purpose and message via beautiful photography?

Twitter
Twitter’s use in the world is coalescing around news and information. People use the platform to get real-time updates on events happening in a particular moment in time. Users go on Twitter to also keep abreast of an industry or niche they are interested in. Humour is also very important on Twitter.

The imagery on the platform works best when it is highly informative, such as small infographics, charts and graphs. These can be supported by commentary in the tweet, or indeed a thread of multiple tweets explaining and discussing your key points.

Pinterest
People use Pinterest like a search engine- primarily for things, not people. What objects and places make up your business? Could you place them in the Pinterest ecosystem? Bear in mind that all images can link to an external website so there are potential traffic benefits too.

LinkedIn
If not at the beginning, the power of images has become apparent in recent years. Most updates in the feed are now accompanied by an image, with the platform also introducing videos. Work-related imagery such as key people, events, aspirational office space and work fashion rule here. How can you take the more corporate code of your organisation and visualise it for an audience of potential clients, partners and staff?