More than enough studies show us that visitors to your website or social media newsfeed will engage more with your content when you include compelling visuals. Here are a few strategies you can use to generate more engagement on your website and social media accounts. 

Add Visuals to Your Content to Improve Online Audience Engagement

Blog posts are an excellent resource for your SEO strategy, and you can improve your results by adding images to break up your text. Aside from shying away from visual boredom, you’re boosting your online audience engagement. Not only are blog posts more likely to be read from start to finish when you add pictures, but you also create more incentives for your visitors to share your content. 

Visitors Learn More from Images

If you haven’t incorporated images into your business’ visual marketing strategy, now would be a good time to start. Most of your visitors (around 60%) are visual learners and will appreciate images that enhance or help explain what your text is trying to say. In terms of social media, visual content is even more alluring. You can achieve 60% more engagement when you keep your posts under 250 characters with an included image. Still not convinced?

Engage Your Audience with Images that Trigger Emotions

A lot of your marketing efforts online are designed to create a lasting image and give your brand a solid footing in the marketplace. Triggering emotions can help you do that. Give your visitors a case of the feels with your visual content, and you will have gone a long way towards establishing trust and loyalty.

For example, pictures with earthy, warm colors like yellow, orange, and red will trigger positive emotions of happiness and optimism. Colors will affect a customer’s decision making, whether it’s subscribing to your website or making a purchase. Be sure to engage your audience with photos or graphics. An image consisting of symmetrical elements will be more likely to stir up feelings associated with predictability and order. As you can see, understanding your audience can give you significant insight into the types of visuals you should be using in your content. 

Try to Scale Images Correctly

A large beautiful image can look great. Unfortunately, most of your readers are visiting on a mobile device. If you haven’t taken steps to optimize your image, then there is a good chance your visitor hasn’t waited around to read what you have to say. Ensure your photos are clear and look good on any device to keep your visitors reading. This is one of the best ways to boost online audience engagement on your website.

Stock image sites usually deliver images in large uncompressed formats for editing. Uploading an image file in its original state will significantly slow down your site. Use an image editing app to scale your image to the right size and reduce its file size using a compression format like JPG or PNG. Doing that last step will mean your image downloads to the device much faster to improve the user experience. 

Mix up Your Image Styles

Everyone gets something different out of images and understanding your audience will help you choose ones that will have the most impact. Similarly, you can also create more exciting content by mixing up your image styles. Add infographics where appropriate, include a small GIF to break up the text or make a point, and use JPGs and PNGs to add large, striking images that don’t use too much bandwidth. 

The popularity of visual sites like Instagram and Pinterest indicates that people can’t get enough of great visual content. Using images strategically will stir up emotions, improve social sharing, add value, and improve the user experience. That’s how to get the right online audience engagement for your business.

This article was first published on https://blog.123rf.com/link-between-online-audience-engagement-visuals/