5 Reasons Why Images And Video Are Important For Your Business's Website

It used to be that writing a great article for your blog or website was all it took to delight and engage your visitors. This isn't true anymore. More and more, marketers are finding out how images, screenshots, infographics and video are powerful draws to get people to view their content. There are important reasons why you should jump on the image bandwagon for your online presence.

Consumers would rather look at visuals
The average consumer today prefers to be visually stimulated, rather than to see word-based content. Text, when put together with imagery, is far easier and more entertaining for viewers to absorb, than words alone. The preference for imagery isn't confined to young audience members. One piece of data in Forbes Insight shows that close to two out of three senior executives prefer to get their information through watching videos, rather than reading text, if both kinds of information are available on the same page.

Visuals encourage social media sharing
Publishing visually appealing content is about more than simply finding interested viewers. It's also about inspiring them to share the content that they enjoy with their contacts on social media. When a page has images and video, it gets shared far more often than pages with just text.

Studies reveal that tweets that go out with images get about 20 percent more clicks. They get marked as favorites about 90 percent more often, and get retweeted about 150 percent more. For various psychological reasons, content with a visual element tends to feel meaningful to people. People feel compelled to share content that they see as meaningful.

Not only is visually based marketing more likely to be shared, it is likely to be remembered, as well. Studies reveal that people tend to remember 80 percent of what they see, but only 20 percent of what they read.

It's important for marketers to learn to focus on visual content over content based on text or audio.

Visuals make for longer posts
When you create a post about the top 10 social media trends, readers are likely to be happy with ten subtitles, with an image under each, and just a couple of lines of text. Images help you create posts that visually make up a great deal of length. Posts tend to look a lot more substantial and impressive when they go out with lots of images.

Visuals make complex subjects easier to understand
Whether you're explaining technical data or talking about how a new idea works, bare text is likely to cause all but the most dedicated readers to lose interest. When there are visuals to accompany text, however, readers are likely to feel that the content is easier to understand, retain and recall.

Visuals help you make your points stick
In an ideal world, clear, text-based arguments would be enough to carry a point across. In the real world, however, people tend to sympathize more readily with a point made when it comes with a supporting image.

Finally, when you skillfully create a piece of content with text and visuals, the overall effect is likely to be one of greater professionalism. Your audience is likely to notice that your presentation required expertise to create.

No matter how good your writing skills may be, you compete for the attention of the reader with other writers who punctuate their writing with great images. Using images can better help you keep up with the competition.

Contact me today to learn how I can help you with your visual needs.