By Victoria Stoklasa, CEO
You never forget your first love...and mine was art. To this day, beautiful and interesting visuals stir my soul and warm my cold, dead heart. That’s why I am so in love with the shift toward images being an integral part of social media content strategy. Users across various social platforms are far more likely to engage with companies who posts images. If you want to use images in social media for your business, here are four ways to make it work!
You never forget your first love...and mine was art. To this day, beautiful and interesting visuals stir my soul and warm my cold, dead heart. That’s why I am so in love with the shift toward images being an integral part of social media content strategy. Users across various social platforms are far more likely to engage with companies who posts images. If you want to use images in social media for your business, here are four ways to make it work!
1. Show, Don’t Tell
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and that adage rings true on social media. While images can be used in obvious ways, such as posting pictures of products your company sells, they can also be used to tell a far more compelling store than words alone. Show your products in action—for example, we created the illustration above to show our client's products used during a picnic.
2. Be Original
While it is far easier to use ready-made stock images, users on social media aren’t stupid—they can tell when an image was paid for and downloaded from a catalog. That’s why I recommend that your business take own high-quality photos. Not only can you have unique images, but you can further customize them by adding your company logo and slogan to the images. That way, if users share your image, you’ll further your brand’s reach.
3. Get Help from Fans
Not all original images need to come from your company. Ask your fans to submit images of them using your products or services. While you’re at it, have them attach a unique hashtag to their images to make it easy to find—something like #coffeelover2014 for people taking pictures in that aforementioned coffee shop, for example. This tactic not only gives you plenty of contact with little effort, but also makes social media users feel like part of the community that is your brand.
4. Keep Using Words

Wait, what? I thought we were supposed to show and not tell—it’s right there in the first suggestion in this blog! Well, playing with typography can create striking, stylized images. When adding text to images, skip over the pre-programmed images and download some trendy, beautiful fonts that can update your images. (Check out our previous blog post to learn about our favorite fonts of 2014.)
How has your company used images? Or, do you have follow-up questions? Leave a comment and let us know!