Your Brand Can’t Skimp on Visuals -

Social Media Giants and Mere Humans Demand Them

Are you on Facebook? Twitter? Then you know full well how much competition exists for every second of your day in the social sphere.

Throw in frequent e-mail checking and simultaneous device use, and we have a landscape where grabbing – and keeping – user attention is harder than ever. This onslaught is quite possibly re-wiring our brains, reducing attention spans by more than 50% in the last 10 years.

How can brands cut through social noise? The answer is simple: Content that is VISUAL, CREATIVE and ORIGINAL is what gets people talking - and (what you really need) sharing.

You probably already know this intuitively (just think of what you click on when you scroll through your news feeds). But the proof is in the data. Across industries, rich media (photos, videos) is far more likely to be shared on Facebook than status updates or links alone.

But it’s not just about natural preference for visuals.  Facebook Timeline and EdgeRank are giving increasing weight to visual content. Twitter too, has begun to place a higher emphasis on images, debuting user galleries last year, and serving up photos in hashtag search results. And then there’s Pinterest (no clarification needed).

So go ahead. Use a graphic designer. Combine graphics, data and messaging that people will want to share around the web. That’ll give your content – and your brand - legs.

-Marta Grecchi, strategist