Your Social Media Channels Need a Visual Strategy

What does ‘content’ mean to you? For many marketers and brand owners, the answer is written content in the form of blogs and articles. But audiences prefer looking at pictures than reading endless reams of text – a picture paints a thousand words, right?

Humans are naturally visually wired. Which is great news for businesses because the opportunities are huge: visuals allow you to communicate more complex messages, induce more emotions and be more engaging than with words alone.

Visuals have also been a key factor in the growth of social media. In 2012 Dane Atkinson (CEO of SumAll.com) reported Instagram as having as much as 10 times higher engagement than other platforms like Facebook and Twitter due to its image-led approach.

That’s why any good social media strategy today takes images as seriously as it takes words. So how do you make sure you’re putting visuals at the heart of your social media strategy? Here are our tips.

Don’t tell if you can show
It’s sometimes harder to show personality or communicate effectively with words. Replace text with images to get your message across wherever you can.

Create your own
Visual content is more shareable and this makes it a great opportunity for brands to get in front of more potential customers. Creating original visual content means customers are more likely to associate it with your company.

Be consistent
Finding your visual style is really important. While you want variety to keep things fresh, you need to keep some consistency. This gives the audience something familiar to remember you by. Videos, animations and graphics are very different content formats, but you can link them all with a signature icon or style that users come to associate with you. Here are some of our signature styles…

Tell your story
Often it’s not what you do, but why you do it that matters most. Create an emotional connection with your audience based on shared values. Your story is your most important asset here – think about the ‘why’ behind your business and put it centre stage.

Include user generated content
Visual content doesn’t just have to come from your marketing team. Encourage employees and customers to share images relevant to your product or service. Photo or video competitions are also great for creating user generated content.

Don’t forget words
Images are powerful but they often work better if they include a little bit of text. Just remember, when it comes to adding words, keep it short and sweet in so they don’t lose their impact.

Have a question on social media or design? Tweet us @infographicly_ – we’d love to hear from you!

Or if you’re looking to visualize your story on social media, why not ask us about one of our social media visual packages? Email us on