Social media is becoming more visual. The debut of Twitter Header is a great evidence of the growing trend of social media going visual. Although the Twitter Header can be critiqued as a copycat of Facebook’s Timeline, it shows that it is now inevitable to focus on visual contents, since even a popular text focused social media site, such as Twitter, is forced to make its site more visually appealing. There are many statistics numbers that support this trend. Even our posts on Facebook are becoming shorter and more focused on visual contents than texts. As we notice, photos tend to get more “likes” than text updates. Moreover, there have been a lot of conversations on emerging social media platforms, such as Instagram and Pinterest, over the last few months.
Why is this happening? In the contemporary era, we are overloaded with information, while our time and the capacity of our brain to process information are limited. Images can help us get more information quicker.
What is the implication for businesses? It is now common business sense that success depends on customers, not a product itself. Businesses have to catch up with the constant change in consumers’ preferences. If customers are more willing to look at and share photos than texts, it would be in the best interest of business to follow the trend.
An useful article:
Five Steps To Integrate Visual Content Into Your Social Media Strategy