A Picture Says a Thousand Words

I myself am a visual learner, who would rather look at pretty pictures than read a 1,000-plus word article—and I’m not alone. In fact, 65 percent of the population is comprised of visual learners and 40 percent of people respond better to visual information than plain text. For content marketers, this means marrying compelling content with eye-catching visuals.

Visual content garners big results as it not only helps catch the reader’s attention, but it also increases engagement and drives website traffic. Put yourself in your readers’ shoes and consider the following: would you rather read a press release full of text or a post with one or two eye-popping images?

New research found that business-oriented webpages that contained images performed 91 percent better than those pages without pictures. Moreover, posts with images performed better in search results and garnered more shares than posts without visuals.

Integrating design into your content marketing strategy can be as simple as adding an image or video into a blog post or leveraging YouTube to create a product video.

But choosing any old photo and calling it a day won’t do you any good. Visuals are meant to help your content, not hurt it. According to research, customers value the quality of a product’s image as more important than product-specific information, long descriptions, and ratings/reviews.

Try to strategically place an image next to an important section of the article or use it to break up bulks of lengthy text. This way you will encourage your viewer to read and not skip the content altogether.

Adding images to your social media posts is just as important as almost every social media platform is inherently driven by visuals. This can mean pairing a photo with a Tweet or Facebook post. Research states that Facebook posts with photos have the highest user engagement than any other post.

There’s a reason why platforms like Pinterest and Instagram have become people’s daily obsessions. Don’t let your content get lost in the shuffle; boost its value by adding visuals.