How Images Impact Your Content

When most people think of content marketing, they probably visualize a typed article –with lots of words. And yes, there’s obviously “content” that includes blocks of text, but it’s not the ONLY kind of content you can publish — and use for your marketing.

Content includes images, infographics, videos, charts, micro-content, listicles… basically any piece of information that an audience would find interesting and valuable.

With so much information “out there”, how do you make your own content stand out from the rest? One simple, highly effective way is to add visuals. Images make your content exponentially more interesting, intriguing and clickable.

Visuals tell your story without writing a word.

Consider these compelling facts–which are also (cleverly) designed to be examples:

(Source: How Little Do Users Read?)

Remember that block of text I mentioned earlier? Yeah. You’ll be lucky if someone barely skims it. An interesting visual, however, will stop them in their tracks. The bonus? People retain 80% of what they see as opposed to only 20% of what they read.

(Source: 6 Powerful Reasons Why You Should Use Include Images In Your Marketing)

Ninety-four percent is huge! If you want to get more eyeballs on your content, whether it be a blog post or social media update, images are guaranteed to help you do that.

(Source: 37 Visual Content Marketing Statistics You Should Know in 2016)

Not only does color inspire folks to learn more, color is a very memorable sense. Black and white visuals have their place but if you want to increase the chances of your audience remembering your content (and by default, you/your company,) colorful visuals can help make that happen.

(Source: 9 Informative Infographics To Guide Your Visual Content Marketing)

Sharing is caring — but people have to care first. How do you encourage people to care? Add a visual. Visuals can help your content go viral.

(Source: How Twitter’s Expanded Images Increase Clicks, Retweets and Favorites)

Photos are a feast for the eyes. People love them. When they resonate, people will share them. We, at Endurance Marketing, make it a point to include at least one photo with every single tweet we send on behalf of our clients.

(Source: Survey: 60% Of Consumers More Likely To Consider Or Contact Businesses With Images In Local Search Results)

Visual content humanizes your company and your brand. Images help to show that you are what you say you are. It legitimizes you as a verifiable business. Better yet, visuals encourage people to buy your product, as per the below.

(Source: Consumer Psychology and the E-Commerce Checkout)

I created images for each of these statistics to not just tell you but to show you how much more interesting a post can be with visuals added. Adding visuals grabs interest, expands your audience and can ultimately grow your business.

There are tons of great tools out there to help you integrate visuals into your content marketing. In fact, I created all of the above visuals using Buffer’s Pablo application. Feel like it’s too time-consuming? Give us a shout – there’s tons of great stuff we can do to get your visual content game on point while you go about your work.