You’ve heard the saying “a picture is worth a thousand words.” As it turns out, the 2018 version may be “an image is worth a ton of engagement.” Thus the importance of images in social media.

By the latest statistics, people will only remember somewhere around 10-20% of what they read. If you include an image, though, that jumps to nearly 65% of the information being remembered. On social media, nearly half of users prefer posts with images. When it comes to Facebook, specifically, the posts with images received over 200% more engagement than posts without images. Since Facebook’s algorithm prioritizes posts getting engagement and accounts that have high rates of engagement, these numbers speak for themselves.

If we shift our focus to Twitter, tweets that included an image received over 150% more retweets than those without images.

And then there are outlets like Pinterest, Instagram, and Snapchat that are based on all posts having a visual component. Snapchat’s usership is up to 1.87 million. Pinterest surpassed 200 million active users in September. Instagram boasts 800 million monthly active users, with 500 million of them being active daily.

If images are good, videos are better. A full 78% of users watch video on Facebook live, according to research done by Livestream. YouTube says that nearly 5 billion videos are watched daily. Even Instagram is getting in on the video trend, saying recently that they’re looking at allowing videos of up to an hour in length to be posted.

At Asterisk Creative, we get these stats, and we work with our clients to capitalize on these opportunities. Between our graphic designers, our photographers, and our videographers, we offer multimedia solutions to make your social media rock. If you’re ready to make that happen, contact Asterisk Creative today.