Images are ideal. Do you use visuals in your social media marketing? Are you wondering how you can use images to take your marketing to a whole new level? The push toward visual content has plenty of anecdotal evidence—as you browse the streams on Twitter and Facebook, you’re likely to see images all over. There’s data behind the reason why. Image posts get more views, clicks, re-shares, and likes than any other type of post. And it’s not even close.
On Facebook, photos get 53% more likes, 104% more comments and 84% more click-throughs on links than text-based posts.
Same goes for Twitter. In a study of over two million tweets from verified users across a number of different industries, Twitter found that photos have the greatest effect on retweets.
Photos average a 35% boost in Retweets
Videos get a 28% boost
Quotes get a 19% boost in Retweets
Including a number receives a 17% bump in Retweets
Hashtags receive a 16% boost
Now that you know what works, you can place these different types of updates into a consistent strategy. One of my favorite systems is the one used by Buffer’s co-founder Joel Gascoigne. It works like this:
Start with the basic five types of updates we all post: Links, images, quotes, reshares, plain-text updates
Choose a “staple” update, a single type that will make up the majority of your shares
Create a 4:1 ratio of sharing: for every four “staple” updates, publish one different type for variety
This way your followers know what to expect from you, and you can hone your sharing to a specific type, making it easier to perfect and to experiment.
(Note: You might not want to post the exact same updates across each of your social networks. Consider composing your updates in a unique way to complement each network’s own best practices, culture, and language.)