Why Pinterest’s Visual Content Marketing Will Continue To Rule Social Media

The visual internet is exploding, Pinterest is in the lead and other social networks are doing everything they can to catch up & maximize their use of images to increase engagement.

Sadly most bloggers have not caught on yet…

One of the biggest mistakes I often see in blogs and articles is that the writer does not include images.

It’s unfortunate because I come across great articles I want to share on socials but there’s no image!

So I can’t share them.

What are they thinking?

Not only that, when images are included they are too teeny tiny and are not even pinnable.

5 million articles are being pinned on Pinterest daily. If you want to grab your reader’s attention and have them sharing your content, visuals are no longer an option, they are mandatory.

If you’re not including images in your articles please begin to do so because you are falling behind the times. The visuals help tell your story. You’ve all heard that saying “a picture is worth a 1,000 words” right? Think about it. We live in a fast paced society where we’re glued to our smartphones, laptops, iPads and images are easy to consume. This shouldn’t be all that surprising when 65% to 85% of people describe themselves as visual learners.

Key Takeaway: Find a way to share your content as simply as possible (which means images). People have a short attention span and are in the habit of moving on to something else very quickly.

Let me dig deeper to illustrate why visuals are so effective:

1) As humans, we are biologically wired to process the world visually. We understand images instantly—long before we learn the language to describe them. In the stone-ages the images were being drawn on rocks! Images have always been powerful.

2) The brain processes images 60,000 times faster than text.

3) We remember 80% of what we see and do compared to 20% of what we read.

4) Visual content drives 84% more views and 94% more clicks than text.  Bloggers….let that sink in.

5) 94% more views were attracted when images were included in the content.

Other social networks quickly picked up on the fact that people like images. Not only does it grab the attention of viewers, images can also drive the message home quickly. In other words, it’s just good for business.

1) According to LTU Technologies images have the most shares and retweets on Twitter.

Twitter’s data scientist Douglas Mason analyzed over 2 million tweets sent by thousands of verified users for a period of 1 month. The key finding: people don’t engage equally with every tweet.  While this isn’t surprising, photographs drive a 35% increase in retweets.

2) Facebook updated the look for their news feed that included larger photos and new icons and fonts.

“People who tested it told us that they liked the bigger photos and images, but found it more difficult to navigate Facebook overall. The updated design has the best of both worlds: It keeps the layout and navigation people liked, but offers bigger images and photos, as well as a new font. The current design on mobile remains the same,” stated Facebook.

75% of Facebook posts worldwide are photos based on Socialbakers.com March 2014 research.

According to Mitt Ray from Social Marketing Writing photos on Facebook receive 53% more likes than the average post. 92.6% of people make purchasing decisions based on the visuals. WOW!

According to Simply Measured a month after Facebook debuted Timelines, adding newsfeeds with photos and videos, brands saw a 65% increase in engagement.

3) GooglePlus rolled out a full image feature. According to GooglePlus expert Mike Alton articles and links shared on GooglePlus will includes:

• a much larger image
• title of the article
• a description of their article
• the name of the site from which it was shared

Here are 3 facts from MDG Advertising that reveal visual content’s winning appeal:

1. 67% of consumers consider clear, detailed images to be very important and carry even more weight than the product information, full description, and customer ratings.
2. 60% of consumers are more likely to consider or contact a business whose images appear in local search results.

3. 14% increase in page views are seen when press releases contain a photograph. (They climb to 48% when both photographs and videos are included.)

Source: Column Five

Marketers are taking notice of this trend. According to Social Media Examiner in this year’s Social Media Marketing Industry Report marketers value visual marketing more highly than ever before. 66% of marketers with more than 5 years of experience are investing in Pinterest.

Looking to the future, the report also highlights marketers’ interest in visual channels. It found that:

• 50% of marketers plan on increasing their Pinterest marketing
• 70% of marketers plan on increasing their use of visual content content forms over the next year

According to Social Media Strategy Consultant Jay Baer he goes on to say in this video “If your brand doesn’t have a visual content strategy you’d better get one and fast”.

The real winner here is Pinterest because it’s all visual and it has the longest shelf life of all social networks. According to Piqora an average Pinterest pin (image) yielded:

• 2 site visits
• 6 pageviews
• Over 10 re-pins.

For small businesses this translates to measurable results.

Pinterest is very addicting because of the visuals. Did you know that the average Pinterest user clocks an average of 1 hour and 17 mins an hour per month on the site compared to 36 mins on Twitter & 12.1 mins on Facebook?

Key takeaway:

1) Make sure you have at least one image posted in your blog sized at least 800×1200 pixels. I highly recommend Canva’s Pinterest template to create your images. It’s super easy to use and they have several free features which I love. Another tool I use to create free images is PicMonkey.

2) For SEO purposes make sure you always add a title to your image including a keyword.

Over to you…

Are you rocking visuals with your on line marketing efforts? If not, what’s preventing you from adding images to your blogs and articles?

If anyone wants to learn more about how to leverage the power of Pinterest into their business please contact me to reserve a free 30 minute business consultation to avoid wasting time or get Chapter 1 from my Pinterest course for FREE.