When it comes to content, buyers tend to prefer visual content. Why is this so? Did you know that people can process images 600,000 times faster than text?

People retain 80% of what they see, but only 20% of what they read and 10% of what they hear. The brain loves visual material – 90% of information that is transmitted to the brain is always visual.

How can you utilize this information in sales? Did you know that using larger images alone can increase sales by 46%? Retail sites with video content tend to increase conversion by up to 46%. The bottomline is if you or your organization are not using visual content to drive sales, then you are missing out on a huge portion of potential sales.

Logos, typography, colors, symbols and imagery helps you identify your brand’s values and unique personality. When you use visual content, it has the potential to go viral. Content is shared 3 times faster than text, so imagine what social sharing can do for your sales.

How do you use visual content to your advantage? Here are two simple data visualization tools.

Infographics

Publishers who use infographics tend to see a 12% increase in traffic than those who don’t. What are infographics? They are charts or diagrams that are used to represent information or data.

Infographics makes a complex subject easier to read, digest and understand. It also adds depth and value to your existing information and helps to facilitate quick comprehension.

Memes

Memes are a popular way to express humor through the art of parody. It’s often easier to get a message across to your audience using humor. Memes with GIF content usually go viral on social media quickly, so don’t be afraid to use humor to your advantage.

Popularity of Visual Media on Social Platforms

YouTube sees 100 hours of video uploaded every minute. It is the 2nd largest search engine next to Google and processes 3 billion searches per month.

Pinterest has seen 50 billion ‘pins’ collected by people onto more than 1 billion boards. More than 14 million articles are pinned each day.

Instagram sees 300 million monthly active users, and process an average of 70 million shared photos every day.

SlideShare has over 60 million unique visitors per month and more than 15 million uploads. SlideShare helps boost your online presence and SEO and increases your Google rankings.

Twitter’s published data shows that 35% of retweets contain photos and 28% contain videos. Image tweets tend to get more retweets by up to 150% and 18% more clicks than plain text.

Tools for Impressive Visual Content

BeFunky has features like cropping, red-eye reduction, filters, borders and collages.

PicMonkey and Photovisi are photo-editing tools and are able to create collages.

Infogr.am and Piktochart makes it easy to create infographics.

Social Image Resizer Tool helps you resize images easily for your social media profiles.

Recite and Quozio makes images from quotes.

Pinstamatic is a Pinterest tool that adds website snapshots and ‘pins’ of Twitter profiles to Pinterest boards.

Handy Mobile Apps for Visual Content

These five mobile apps make it easy for you to create visual content while on the move.

Word Swag is an iOS app for quote-type graphics and adds stylish text to your images.

InstaQuote is an iOS and Android app for easy phrase-based images. It also creates Instagram-ready images for easy upload to Instagram, Facebook, Flickr and Twitter.

PicSay Pro is an Android photo-editing app that can add styled text and word balloons to your photos.

YouCam Perfect is an iOS and Android app that enhances your selfies, and lets your retouch your photos.

InstaCollage is an iOS and Android app that creates photo collages and features several photo frames and photo effects.

5 Ways to Use Visual Content Successfully

1. Always use eye-catching visual content to link to your blog from your social networks.
2. Try to use humorous content to create a long-lasting impression.
3. Do optimize your designs for all social networks.
4. Do use uniform design templates.
5. Employ hashtags effectively.