A picture is worth a thousand words. With the rise of social media, this common expression has more meaning now than it ever did. When posting on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or LinkedIn, companies should accompany their posts with a relevant visual to increase information retention and consumer engagement.

According to the Sprout Social Index, 58% of social media users prefer visual-first content. That means graphics, images, and produced video should be the focus of a company’s social media profiles.

74% of consumers share video content from brands on social media, meaning they’ve spread the brand’s influence for free!

According to research, people only remember 10% of what they hear three days later. If your message is accompanied with an image, 65% of it will be remembered in the same time frame.

When creating posts on social media, brands should use various types of visuals. Mixing up the type of image, be it a photo, meme or infographic, can keep the brand’s page fresh and interesting for the consumer.

It is imperative that companies keep a consistent brand identity across all social media platforms. By posting the same image across all platforms, companies provide a cohesive message to the customer, which in turn generates more attention, engagement and loyalty.

If struggling to produce visual content, companies can reach out to their fan base on social media for photo submissions. Companies can ask permission to feature these posts on their own pages to generate conversations. As an added benefit, this will create a strong online community of dedicated fans to engage with.

Why is all of this important? To put it simply, social media sites are where the consumers are at. For almost half of consumers, social media is where they go to first if they have questions or issues. Also, social media has become a crowded space. Companies need to include compelling visuals in their posts to stick out and grab the attention of the customer.

Visuals are what the users prefer to see and interact with. A good social media plan will reflect this sentiment by including relevant imagery with their posts.