With all the content clutter online, content marketers have to look for new and creative strategy to make their content outshine others—one that is appealing and can capture and engage people. This is after all the age when long blog posts are no longer the primary ingredient to a successful content marketing.
Truth be told, people are drowning with words. They are already overwhelmed with all the information they are exposed to everyday. And, whether you like to admit it or not, text-only content can be bland, dull, and boring. So to spice it up, you can bring visual content into play.
By visual content, we refer to visual elements, such as images, infographics, slides, comics and videos, among others. Here are some reasons why visual content is important on social media:

A picture paints a thousand words

We all like seeing pictures. By looking at them, we can already understand what it is trying to convey. It could tell a story effectively well and could easily awake emotional responses from people.
If a picture paints a thousand words, how much more if we include a visual content in the form of a video that contains hundreds of frames. A video translates into a thousand words, making it more comprehensive and effective in storytelling than just a text-only blog post.
It was shown that compelling image and video could generate 94% more views than text-only content.

Visual catches more attention

People nowadays are becoming savvier in choosing the type of content they want to engage with because they do not want to waste their time.
Hence, they want to see and read something that is easy on the eyes. The proof is found in the thousands of pictures, infographics, videos, memes, and other visuals shared everyday on social media sites like Instagram, Tumblr, Facebook, Youtube, and Pinterest, and others.
When you log on to Facebook and scroll down your news feed, what often catches your attention more are the images, memes and videos. The quality of the visual content can compel you to like, comment and share. Have you noticed this scenario in your social media use?
Here are some visual content we at Third Team Media made:

Visual content is perfect for digital marketers

Statistics show  that 90%of the information being digested by our brain is visual and our brain processes images 60,000 times faster than text-only content. Almost 40% of people respond to visual content, making it the preferred type of content among digital marketers.
Visual content is a must because 40% of online users are more responsive to images than text. Leveraging compelling visuals for your content will increase traffic to an average of 12% and engagements by 37%, helping you acquire more subscribers and followers.
Not to mention that almost 93% of human communication is nonverbal, which means people are more likely drawn to visuals.

Visuals are persuasive

Quality written content is persuasive, we give you that.
However, as social media evolved significantly, visuals too are used to take persuasion to the next level. A break from the venerable text-only content can catch people’s attention, make them understand easily what your brand is and encourage them to send inquiries, buy your products and support your initiatives.

Visuals boosts your SEO

Search Engine Optimization is integral in every digital marketing strategy of a brand. By including images to your post along with an accurate and descriptive alternative text and meta tags, you are boosting your presence online.
By simply labeling properly the file name, title, alt tags, and description tags and creating an image sitemap, your image will be indexed and figured out how relevant and useful your image is by Google and other search engines.
As much as possible, make use of whatever tagging system social media sites have for you to optimize your visual content.
Make it a habit to use and add visuals in your content once in a while. But, if you are having a hard time creating visual content for your brand, we at Third Team Media could help you out. Avail of our free consultation today.
(with Mary Mae Yburan)