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Growing your social media platform begins with increasing engagement. One of the easiest ways to boost engagement is through the use of effective visuals. Provide better visuals and you’ll attract more people that will interact with your content on social media.Ìý

You’ll get more comments, likes, shares, retweets, saves, etc.Ìý But more importantly, if you have a way to drive social media traffic to a place where you can collect an email address, you’ll be able to to further engage with your audience.ÌýÌý

In fact, studies have shown that tweets with photos get retweets. On Facebook, posts with images receive on average two to three times more engagement than those without. This increase in engagement can be seen on most other social media platforms as well.Ìý

Luckily, these days there are tons of easy-to-use tools for creating stunning visual content that will attract and engage your viewers. To help you with this, we look at five ways you can use images to boost engagement on social media.

1. Understand what resonates with your viewers

It’s obvious that visuals are best for , but you still need to find out exactly what types of visuals resonate the most with your viewers.

The types of content consumers engage with

Typically you can make an educated guess as to what will work with your audience.Ìý As an example, if you had a software or service that focused on serving , it’s safe to assume that text-based posts would resonate well with them.

But you don’t always have to make educated guesses. There are many tools that can help you discover this information. For instance, you could use to simultaneously pull historical social data from multiple social media profiles and networks that your brand is active on.Ìý

This will help you gain insights as to what resonates most with viewers when it comes to visuals. By doing this before you begin creating images, you’ll avoid wasting your time and resources creating visuals that your audience doesn’t find appealing.Ìý

Once you find the content with the most reach and engagement, you can then outline the image attributions shared by your most successful social media content.ÌýIdentify patterns across the different networks and you will be able to use this information to better inform your future decisions.

Play on emotion

One of the most effective ways to create content that resonates with your audience is to leverage the power of emotions. By connecting with your audience emotionally, you are likely to make a long-lasting impact.Ìý

Humour, in particular, is a great way to spark an emotional response from viewers, making it more likely that they will comment, share, and remember the visual (and hence the message behind it). This tactic works regardless of the industry you are in.

An example of a brand that used humour to bring a fun element to its marketing is The Dollar Shave Club.ÌýThe brand’s hilarious video featuring its CEO sparked massive amounts of engagement and helped to propel the company to success.

2. Use visuals to make data more appealing

According to , infographic posts on social media deliver up to 180% more engagement than text-based posts. Infographics are a great way to compile information so you can publish it in a visual format that is a lot easier for your audience to understand.Ìý

You can use them for outlining posts such as:

• Data-driven articles
• Case studies
• Listicles
• Reports
• Industry facts
• Survey results

… and much more.

With infographics, even small businesses and marketers with limited budgets can win the attention of their target audience. To make this strategy even more effective, use infographics to tell a story with your data.

Data visualizations are a versatile type of infographic that you can use to outline large data sets. The combination of charts and graphs creates a data-rich post that grabs the viewer’s attention and keeps them engaged.

Unfortunately, most people’s eyes start to glaze over whenever they’re presented with complicated graphs, tables, and charts. Infographics can help you present your data in a way that is not only easily digestible but also aesthetically pleasing too.

There are tons of tools you can use to create high-quality infographics (many of which are free), including:

• Infogr.am
• Venngage
• Visme

These tools come with predesigned templates to make it easy for you to create an eye-catching infographic in just minutes.

3. Include animated GIFs and emojis

Videos and images aren’t the only visuals you can use to boost engagement on social media. You can also include animated GIFs and emojis as part of your strategy to get more people to engage with your brand.Ìý

On Instagram, over 95 million posts are shared every day. The figures are just as high on other social media platforms, so you can imagine just how hard it is for your posts to stand out.

A little animation can do a lot to help your content catch the eye of your target viewer. The best way to implement this strategy is to create GIFs from your YouTube videos as a way to add movement and a bit more narrative to your visuals.

And don’t forget about emojis.Ìý

The way we communicate has changed significantly in the past few years, and, as long as it’s on-brand for you, using emojis is a great way to infuse a human element into your marketing.ÌýUse emojis to give personality to your brand voice and bring your captions to life so you can capture your audience’s attention as they scroll down their timelines.

You can also use memes – but only if that’s how your audience communicates with their followers on social media. Do a quick search through your comments sections to discover the types of memes that stand out, and choose the ones that are relevant to your industry and brand.Ìý

This type of strategy works great in virtually all industries as there are always ways to be human and have fun on social media without sacrificing your professionalism. A great example of a brand that uses animated GIFs, emojis, and memes to make its content more human is Buzzfeed – and they never lack engagement on social media.Ìý

Tools for Creating Animated GIFs include:Ìý

• MakeAGif (free)
• GIFYT
• GIFMaker.me

4. Add text to images to increase engagementÌý

A picture might be worth a thousand words, but it doesn’t hurt to add a few more if you want to boost social media engagement. By including a few words in your image, you can help to add more context and further the point you’re trying to make.

Here are a few ideas for adding text to images:

• Use quotes to make images stand out: You can use relevant quotes over your images as a way to power up your visuals. This tactic works well on all social platforms, and the better the quote, the more it’s going to drive engagement with your followers.
• Use different fonts: Your choice of font could be the difference between an image that goes viral and one that’s ignored by the audience. For instance, when using quotes in your images, make sure you choose fonts that are easy to read and place emphasis on the emotive words.

Use captions for images

Rather than trying to cram too much text (or context) into the image, use captions as your backup to make sure you can still get your message across.

For instance, you can use captions for storytelling on Instagram. Alternatively, you can overflow the text from your image into the captions as a way to continue the story without overwhelming viewers with too much text in the image.

Make sure your caption length matches the platform. For example, use shorter captions on Facebook and longer ones on Instagram. And include searchable keywords on Pinterest to make it easier for your audience to find your images.

5. Install on-hover sharing buttons

These days, people are always in a rush – even when scrolling through their social media feeds. You need to make it as easy as possible for them to share your content so you can expand your reach and increase engagement levels.Ìý

A great way to help you do this is by installing on-hover sharing buttons as a way to encourage more visual shares from your viewers. You can use a simple plugin like WWM Social Share On-Image Hover to enable easy mouseover sharing.

The tool automatically places buttons on all your social media images which allows viewers to share them instantly with the click of a mouse. This is a simple, yet extremely effective method to increase engagement.Ìý

Conclusion

There you have it. Five surefire ways to use visuals as a way to boost engagement on social media. Just remember to also track and understand your audience engagement so you can build deeper connections between your brand and its followers.

Are you ready to scale up your social media strategy? If so, which of the tips outlined above do you intend to use? Share your thoughts on social.

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This is a guest post by Prof. Ron Stefanski. He’s an online entrepreneur and college professor who helps people create and market their own online businesses.Ìý Learn more about Ron by visiting Ìý

You can also connect with him on or , or on his .