As 2013 begins, social media marketing has already grown a bit old school. Today, the marketing world is still hot on the social media marketing trail, but the trail has diverged. There are different paths with cheerleaders along the way no matter which path a marketer follows.
Ideally, marketers should find the path down the middle that marries all of the elements of social media marketing, but most are not there yet. Many of today’s marketers are still choosing a single path to focus on or jumping back and forth.
For example, those paths include the data and metrics focus, the storytelling focus, the visual focus, and more. This article hones in on the visual focus with the help of two great infographics that visually share the data and tell the story of visual storytelling. Appropriate, don’t you think?
First up is an infographic from UberVU that makes a clear point, “Visual social marketing is here, and it’s making money.” Take a look at the infographic to see the reach of brand visual social marketing. These two pieces of data sum things up nicely:
- Pinterest users spend more money, more often and on more items than users from any of the other top 5 social media sites.
- Half of Interbrand’s Top 100 Brands are using Instagram or Pinterest as part of their social media efforts.
To Be or Not to Be: Brands’ Biggest Social Business Question – An infographic by the team at uberVU
Next up is an infographic from Socially Sorted which not only shares a variety of statistics about visual social media usage trends but also explains how brands can leverage the power of social media. A few tips included in the infographic are:
- Don’t tell if you can show.
- Create original visual content.
- Crowdsource visual content.
- Add the words back in.
Infographic from Socially Sorted
These two infographics are filled with great information and are perfect examples of visual social media that works. However, don’t forget how important words are. Images without context can be interpreted in a variety of ways and can be meaningless without nearby messaging to explain the complete story. Tread carefully when you’re thinking of letting an image stand on its own without contextual messages. A shift to visual social media doesn’t mean that words should be completely abandoned.
What do you think?
Image: Jason A. Howie
Susan Gunelius is the author of 10 marketing, social media, branding, copywriting, and technology books, and she is President & CEO of KeySplash Creative, Inc., a marketing communications company. She also owns Women on Business, an award-wining blog for business women. She is a featured columnist for Entrepreneur.com and Forbes.com, and her marketing-related articles have appeared on websites such as MSNBC.com, BusinessWeek.com, TodayShow.com, and more.
She has over 20 years of experience in the marketing field having spent the first decade of her career directing marketing programs for some of the largest companies in the world, including divisions of AT&T and HSBC. Today, her clients include large and small companies around the world and household brands like Citigroup, Cox Communications, Intuit, and more. Susan is frequently interviewed about marketing and branding by television, radio, print, and online media organizations, and she speaks about these topics at events around the world. You can connect with her on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Google+.
Susan, thanks so much for including our infographic! I’m really happy to hear you found the data points useful. We loved the Socially Sorted infographic, too – lots of good stuff there.
Hope 2013 is treating you well so far!
Elisabeth – Social Media Marketing & Community Manager at uberVU
You’re welcome, Elisabeth!
Agree Susan. Great infographic post. Now, let’s go VISUAL.