A closer look at how images make everything better

Adding images to your content matters a lot more than you’d think. Think about social media and how much we rely on images to retain information or grab our attention. Social media has made a big shift to focus on the visual. For instance, Pinterest is now the third most popular social network and it’s all about the images. This site, if any, cements the importance of using high-quality, sharable images in web content. Facebook continually updates its platform to place a larger emphasis on images by, for example, making the images bigger within the Timeline and implementing a huge cover photo. Then there’s Instagram, the billion dollar acquisition. Facebook’s creator Mark Zuckerberg believes that the photo-sharing experience that so many love made bringing the two companies together so worth it. Obviously the obsession with images just keeps growing and growing.

In the remainder of this article, I’ll show you how images affect:

• Articles and their content page reviews
• Press materials
• Local search
• E-commerce
• Social engagement
  

Images are a must for articles

Images boost performances in news content, political content, and sports content. Image affect articles so much so that articles containing relevant images have 94% more total views than those without any! That’s a wild number. If you’re writing articles, I suggest you go find those pertinent images now! Don’t forget to throw in a search-optimized caption.

Get creative with media & images in press materials

According to the PR Newswire data, the more multimedia you include in your press materials, the more views you’re bound to get. By the way, PR Newswire analyzed more than 10,000 press releases so I’d take their word for it. Add other multimedia that compliments your press release and images in different ways. This may include accompanying files, soundbites, charts, interactive elements, videos, etc. Get creative!

Local search for businesses

About 60% of consumers are more likely to consider or contact a business that has an image show up in a local search. Think about it - how do you respond to local search results with an image of a business?

• 37% of the population believe images grab their attention and they are more likely to give that business more consideration.
• 23% say the images grab their attention and they are way more likely to contact the business then.
• 20% ignore the results with images and
• 20% say images neither grabs their attention nor influences their decision either way.

I don’t know about you, but if a business has an image, I find them more credible and I’m more likely to trust them. But that’s just me…

E-commerce & high-quality images go hand in hand

High-quality images shouldn’t even be an option when it comes to selling products online. 63% of customers value the quality of a product’s image as more important than product specific information. 54% value it more than long descriptions and 53% value it more than ratings and reviews! More than rating and reviews, people!

Social engagement on Facebook

It’s no secret that social media posts benefit the most from adding an image. Facebook posts with photos have the highest user engagement than any other post. Posts with only text have an engagement rate of just 27% whereas posts with photos have an engagements rate of 37% and those with videos have a rate of 31%. So, when you’re making your next Facebook post, choose gorgeous, HQ images that will generate sharing.

Overall, images make everything better when it comes to online content. People like looking at pretty images that relate to the text instead of boring black and white content. Spice it up and give the people what they want!