The Importance of Images on Social Media & Blogs: A Picture is Worth 1,000 Words

Yesterday, I shared some statistics that support the fact that maintaining a good blog will increase any business’s SEO–including the businesses of writing and art.

March Marketing – Start a Blog to Increase Your SEO

All of the sources that I checked agree that the blogs that post images are much more successful than those that do not.

  1. “90% of bloggers include images in their blog posts.
  2. “Only one in four bloggers add videos in posts.
  3. “34% of bloggers say they experience strong results after including videos in blog posts.
  4. “Bloggers who added ten-plus images in a blog post reported stronger results.”Todorov, Georgi. “81 Of the Most Up-to-Date Blogging Statistics in 2021.” Semrush Blog, 12 Feb. 2021, www.semrush.com/blog/blogging-stats.

In my opinion, blogs are types of social media, and it has been proven that images are important on all types of social media:

“Allen Klein, an award-winning expert keynote speaker, once remarked that 80% of what people learn is through social media posts.

“We all know that social media images are a vital element of any blog or social media post.

“Besides the fact that they might be compulsory in some formats, they also make your post more charming and attractive.

“They are a crucial part of content marketing, as people tend to look at the image first and then decide if they will read your headline (and what else comes after it). . . .

“With more than 2.5 billion camera phones in use, we are entering a new dynamic era around image creation and content.

“Marketing firm MDG Advertising discovered that content paired with an image attracted 94% more views on average than content without visuals.  . . .

“Also, a picture is still worth a thousand words, but today it’s also worth a thousand pins on Pinterest or hearts on Instagram.

“Today, people have a concentration span of fewer than nine seconds or even less than a goldfish.

“As a result, social media images are more powerful than ever.” (Fadrid)

Farid, Zahra. “Why Are Social Media Images Important?” Social Champ, 16 Nov. 2022, www.socialchamp.io/blog/social-media-images-ideas.

Because I was essentially paid to get my MA in English [with an emphasis in writing], I earned that degree first. Later, as I sat before the graduate committee in visual art, a professor said to me, “You already have one master’s degree, why do you want another?”

My quick and simple reply was [and still is]: “Because A Picture’s Worth 1,000 Words.”

With that being said, let’s do an experiment.

How attracted are you to the words only of the following quote:

“Fall has always been my favorite season. The time when everything bursts with its last beauty, as if nature had been saving up all year for the grand finale.” – Laura DeStefano

That quote, posted just as you see it in the above phrase, is not a crowd-stopper. Let’s improve our visibility by increasing the size of that text:

“Fall has always been my favorite season. The time when everything bursts with its last beauty, as if nature had been saving up all year for the grand finale.” – Laura DeStefano

The size and the boldness of the above text helps, but the words still need more punch. Let’s try to put those words in a fancy frame: [Also note how the size and the boldness of the text in the following is important.]

Autumn scene. Fall. Trees and leaves in sun light

Well, the fancy frame really helps, but it doesn’t help enough.

Here is another experiment. How impressed are you with the following comment:

I Want You

I dare to say that the previous sentence is not very impressive to most people.

Let’s try it again. Let’s try it in bold:

I Want You

That is still unimpressive. Let’s try the words as a quote:

I Want You

Still not good enough. Let’s try bolding the words, putting them in a quote

I Want You 

With every added action on the words, we make them more noticeable, and yet, they are still not enough to grab attention on the World Wide Web. Now, let’s try turning the words into images:

poster-i-want-you

By merely placing the words inside a decorative frame and changing their colors and sizes, our three words are definitely beginning to stand out. Let’s try this one more time:

Yes!

The case is closed. Words with images are definitely more noticeable.