13 Apr Visuals Are Vital

Strong visuals can convey your brand’s message just as effectively as well-written content. As images, videos, and graphics grow in popularity with online audiences, marketers are taking advantage of the immense benefits of using visuals. Here’s a look at some of the most popular forms of visual content that can provide maximum impact for your brand.

Infographics

Infographics are bite-sized visual representations of information. Certain kinds of data, such as statistics, has to work against the stigma of being boring, tedious, or difficult to understand. Infographics take this material and put it into colorful, fun, and eye-catching visuals. Here’s a great example of the way infographics can be used to communicate important information. Infographics benefit the user as they make the information more visually-appealing and easier for the eye and mind to digest. The human brain can take in visuals 60,000 times faster than it can written content. That means, if that last sentence had been in an infographic, you would have processed it much quicker. And in the online world, speed and convenience matter.

Photographs

As we’ve said here before, content with high quality images receives more views and engagement across various platforms and also impacts user buying decisions. If we take another peek inside the human brain, we find that vision is one of our strongest senses. A Brain Rules study found that when hearing new information, people will only recall about 10% of it after a few days. However, when we see the information paired with relevant images, we can retain 65% of the data. The effective use of original or creatively edited stock photos can improve your marketing efforts and draw in a larger audience of potential consumers.

Memes

Memes are, in a sense, conduits of culture. They are timely and often humorous, using graphics, text, and images to tell a story or provide commentary on current events. Some marketers may brush off the use of memes in their strategy but there is no greater form of content that reflects the ideas of social users and the topics they care about. An effective use of memes requires knowledge of current events, an understanding of the way users communicate on multiple platforms, and the ability to “fit in” amongst other social users. The last thing you want is to see this popular image from 30 Rock on your business’ timeline. If done well, memes can help your brand stand out amongst out-of-touch competitors.

As the title of this blog suggests, visuals are vital. Even the use of the image at the top primes this blog post to generate more activity than if a picture was not included. Visual content resonates with online users and the positive results take the form of everything from increased engagement to stronger sales. With these benefits in mind, marketing professionals would be wise to begin incorporating visuals into their social media and advertising campaigns.