It’s becoming harder to get engagement on your social media posts, particularly on Facebook, though I haven’t noticed a big dip in my stats. One of the reasons is that I have a steady flow of photos and videos to use.  Why does that make a difference? Read on to find out.

1. Most people have a preference for learning visually …

… so show, don’t tell. Depending on the stats you read, between 60-70% of the population have a preference for visual learning, which means they learn better from pictures than text. I’m a visual learner, and I promise you I rarely read text unless the visuals on a website have captured my attention. So if your ideal client has a visual preference too you need to grab their attention with photos that tell the same story as your carefully crafted words.

2. Images take up more space on the screen …

… so they’re more noticeable. Check your Twitter stream for example. Which tweets stand out?  The ones with images or the ones that are just text?

3. We take in information from an image much faster than from text

There are all sorts of figures bandied around for how much faster. Some even claim that it’s 60,000 times faster than text, which sounds too fast to me. But I definitely find it quicker to get the full picture, forgive the pun, from an image compared to text alone.

4. Photographs help with authenticity

Sharing behind the scenes photos of you at work, your clients, staff, your premises, customers using your products and services, etc, all helps to build your credibility and demonstrate that you’re a genuine business in a way that’s impossible without photos or just using stock photography.

So photography can help you get a better return from social media by making your updates more noticeable and engaging for your followers. That will result in more retweets, shares and likes, which in turn, will mean that more people see you tweets and status updates.

But this isn’t a plug for my photography services (though I’d be more than happy to help you create your own personalised stock library of images for your business).  You probably own a camera that produces good enough images for social media – in fact, most smartphones can do that.  You just need to know who to get the best from it.  So if you want to get some more inspiration for how to use photos and learn how to make the most of your smartphone’s camera too, join my free 14 day social media challenge and improve your photography in just a few minutes a day.