Visual is In - Are You into Visual?

From David Lee King's blog at http://www.davidleeking.com/2012/04/10/visual-is-in-are-you-into-visual/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+davidleeking+%28David+Lee+King%29#.T5bt5jJYvf8

Two huge social media sites have been mentioned in the news in the last couple of weeks: Pinterest and Instagram:

Pinterest – Experian claims Pinterest is the 3rd most popular U.S. social networking site.
Instagram – just purchased by Facebook for a whopping 1 billion.

What’s going on? Why are these two sites so hot right now? Well… it’s because of this:

• Pinterest = visual 
• Instagram = visual 
• Facebook = visual (depending on what you do with your status update) 
• Youtube = visual 
• etc. 

Visual is in. Why? Because you visually “get it” immediately. It takes seconds to look at a photo and understand what’s going on. It’s very easy to look and like … and then click through to the meat of the post/site/message/video/etc if the visual carrot being displayed is interesting enough to make you click.

Is your website visual? Do you use visual parts and pieces to get people interested in your stuff? If not, you should maybe take a hint from the growing popularity of visual-based sites, and … add some things to look at.

Some visual starter ideas:

• blog post – add an image that relates to the post. The image can help some people “get” the post better 
• Video post – make a short video, showing off a new thing in your library. Videos are easy to watch and share. Since the video is usually embedded into a site, there’s a visual component, too. Do video well, and people will stick around (and hopefully click around, too). 
• Facebook – add an image of that packed program. This visually shows popularity – much better than having someone type “the event was really well-attended.” 
• Twitter – tweet links to your photos and videos. 
• Pinterest, Instagram – start experimenting, and figure out how (or if) you can use one or both of these for your organization. I’ll bet you can. 
• Websites – add photos and graphics. 

How are you making your website visual? Adding visual elements to social media?