The Visual Social Media Trend

Infographic courtesy of Socially Sorted

Every now and then as I scroll through my newsfeed I tend to come across that random Facebook friend who insists on posting what seems like a long miserable novel as their status. Below that post, one of my sorority sisters shares a funny Youtube link that ends up getting multiple shares and over 50 likes. Why is it that photos and videos get more attention online than any text updates?

Social media is moving away from having a word count limit or posting lengthy emotional Facebook posts. Now users are relying on images and videos to promote their latest adventure on social media sites. An INC article, Want to Boost Your Social Media Following? Get Visual, mentions "Facebook’s top brand pages, videos are shared 12 times more often than text and links, and photos receive twice as many likes as text updates. ”

Trends have changed from writing a 1,000 blog post to being limited to 140 character tweet. Now social media trends are getting rid of text all together and posting visual content instead. Images can tell a story without using any words at all. These visuals make it easier for viewers to understand the content that the user wants to express. Pictures and videos are much easier to get a point across than a page full of text. 

I would much rather look at an image for five seconds than spend five minutes reading a lengthy article. Even when I am browsing online trying to find an article to use for a class assignment, I am usually able to get the gist of an article just by looking at a caption of a picture instead of wasting my time reading the article. Visuals allow people to understand a lot of information without having to read any words at all.

With the growth of social media platforms like Vine, Instagram, Snapchat and Pinterest, it is apparent that users are more likely to share and view photos and videos on social networking applications. These visuals make a viewer feel more emotionally connected to their friends. This is because the viewer can actually see from the perspective of their friend how fun their vacation to Hawaii is or how well that soufflé recipe from Pinterest turned out just by looking through their friend's pictures on Instagram. 

Visuals on social media sites will continue to grow in the future. Images and pictures  can translate a message much more effectively than text. This is probably why Instagram has become so much more popular than Facebook. Pictures are able to tell a more descriptive story than a 140 word character limit on Twitter can. 

Various brands and businesses are even utilizing professional photographers to shoot HD pictures and videos that can be edited and posted onto various social media sites like Pinterest, Instagram, Tumblr and the company's blog. These businesses want to utilize visuals to engage their customers into buying their new ice cream flavor or this season's latest fashion trend. 

Even writing this blog post, I feel it is ironic that I am writing a lengthy paragraph full of words when I could be describing my point of view through several pictures or an Infographic to keep my viewers engaged. I think I'll start taking my own advice by using more images and videos on my blog to captivate my viewers.