Why Visual Content Is Vital For Successful Digital Marketing

We occasionally post on our social media platforms about the importance of strong visual content in an effective social media strategy. Because of its importance, the topic deserves much more coverage than a simple social media post. In a digital world where visual media is so popular, you’re at a huge disadvantage if you only post things like links and text. Posts without visuals gather much less attention and are shared rarely. If your strategy generally lacks great visuals, you’re fighting an uphill battle to get seen by your target audience.

Strong visual content, on the other hand, is both very popular and highly effective in boosting your reach and engagement.

That said, let’s get into it and discuss what visual content is and why it is vital for a successful digital marketing strategy.

What is visual content?

Visual content is online content that is visually appealing like photos, illustrations, infographics, GIFs, videos, etc. Simply put, a strong piece of visual content is something that really catches the eye. It can be silly or serious, just-for-fun or specifically purposed—whatever best conveys the feeling or thought you want to get across. 

Why is visual content vital for successful digital marketing?

A digital marketing strategy that makes skillful use of visual content is more effective in driving engagement and growing business. This is the type of content that is attractive to online users, especially on social media. To give more substance to these claims, here are three aspects of visual content that make it vital to your marketing strategy.

1. Visual Content Grabs Attention

Social media users are accustomed to scrolling quickly through their feeds until they see something compelling enough to seize their attention. Links and paragraphs of text, while they do have their place, are rarely interesting enough to pause the scroll. An interesting picture, however, often does the trick. And videos are even better at winning more than a few seconds of attention. Moral of the story? 

If you want your audience to pay attention to what you have to say, include some eye-catching, scroll-stopping visuals in your posts. 

It is also important to ensure that your pictures, videos, graphs, etc. are high-quality. Not just any old visual will do. This means posting interesting and well-composed photos, professional-looking graphics, and useful or captivating videos. It is this kind of quality visual content that compels your audience to stop their speed scrolling and give you a bit of their attention. Do this, and you are on your way to a strong social media presence.

2. Visual Content Conveys Information Quickly And Easily

Visual content is also vital to successful digital marketing because it is one of the few ways to convey a message in an instant. Imagine looking at a beautiful landscape versus having someone describe it to you. Your eyes can process in a matter of seconds what would take paragraphs or pages of text. Thus the familiar saying, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” This rings true for social media.

Here’s an example: Let’s say you want to convey that the Bluetooth speaker you are selling is waterproof. You could write a paragraph of text about its waterproof capabilities and ratings, or you could post a picture of it resting half-submerged in a shallow brook. The latter is much more interesting and engaging, and it communicates the message much faster.

Along with photos, infographics are also useful in getting messages across quickly and easily. An infographic is likewise worth a thousand words because it is packed with visuals. This style of content can be very helpful if you want to share a lot of information quickly or make a smashing how-to post. After all, instructions with pictures are the easiest to follow. 

Visuals also work wonders for information retention. According to Brain Rules, hearing information results in a measly 10% retention rate after three days, but add a photo and the number jumps to 65%. Employing visuals will keep your message on your audience’s minds longer.

Whenever you plan a post for your social media accounts, it’s a good idea to ask yourself, “How can I convey this idea visually?” By doing this, you will put yourself on track for higher engagement rates and greater brand visibility, which leads to our final point.

3. Visual Content Drives Engagement And Boosts Visibility

Building on the previous to advantages of visual content, this final point is perhaps the most persuasive selling point for integrating visuals into your social media strategy. Sharing strong visuals on your social media profiles grows your business by driving high-level engagement and boosting brand visibility. We’ve mentioned already that this is more popular among social media users. Now here’s some hard data to back it up:

• Content that includes pictures earns 94% more views than content that does not.
• Image-based Facebook posts get more than a 3.2x higher engagement rate.
• LinkedIn image posts get 98% more comments.
• Tweets with pictures earn 150% more retweets.
• Infographics boast 200% more shares than image-less posts.
• Videos result in an 80% higher conversion rate.

If you really want to put your brand in the spotlight and grow your business with social media, you need to be posting a lot of strong visual content. Of course, consistently producing and posting content like this takes time, experience, and skill. If you feel lacking in any of these areas, FlightCast is here to help. Creating and sharing contagious digital content on social media is our specialty and our passion. Get in contact with us to see how we can help you grow your business with digital marketing.