Marketing Summer: When Kids, Lobsters, and Sunsets Are Your Brand Ambassadors

Neurologists confirm that our brains are wired to retain visual images. That a picture’s worth a thousand words has been an article of faith in journalism since 1918.  And now marketing researchers confirm what we suspected all along:  Leveraging visual content leads to significant increases in social engagement, blog traffic, visitor-to-lead conversion rates, and inbound customer acquisition results.   And just in case you STILL need more evidence, look everywhere you go this summer and the truth that should be driving your content strategy will be all around you: It’s picture time!

The implications for destination brands are obvious: Pictures should be at the heart of your strategy.  The use of visual content continues to skyrocket on every major social network, including Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn and Instagram because it drives engagement, builds brand awareness, and creates cascading opportunities for brands to sustain their communities with content that is relevant, informative, and well...so much fun! Here are some stats to support the continued expansion of your content strategy.... and um...I should probably just let the pictures tell the story from here. 

·         Images and photos are the most important tactic in optimizing social media posts according to the   Social Media Examiner

·         Socialbakers looked at the top 10% of posts made by more than 30,000 Facebook brand pages and found that posts with photos saw the most engagement—accounting for a whopping 87% of total interactions.        

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According to Buffer social, Tweets with images receive 18% more clicks, 89% more favorites and 150% more retweets.     

Last year the amount of video from people and brands in Facebook's News feed increased 3.6X year-over-year. 

According to Twitter Media Blog adding a photo URL to your tweet can boost retweets by 35%.

·         Social Media Examiner reports that 70% of marketers plan to increase their use of visual assets this year.