Week 7, Post #1: Business and Visual Social Media.

Is visual social media right for my business? It is easy to find statistics that show that people’s attention spans for advertisements and interests are generally shrinking. There is also strong evidence that people in general are more interested in pictures and learn more from them. Also the fact the leading social media platforms are either visually based or are putting a great deal of effort into making their platform more visual based, would suggest that visual is the way to go. It is true that not all businesses lend themselves strongly to straight visual content. Although almost all business content can be enhanced or improved with some visuals added.

The four leading visual networks for business are:

#1 YouTube: It is almost completely visually based. If you believe the saying that a picture is worth a thousand words than a one minute video could be worth nine hundred thousand words. This is estimated at fifteen frames per second for sixty seconds. For the majority of people, showing them what you have or what you want them to do is almost always more effective than telling them. Another strength of the YouTube platform is the longevity of the effectiveness of its videos. One video may continue to be visited for several years. For these reasons and the fact that YouTube has one of the largest user bases. I believe it is the number 1 visual platform.

#2 Facebook: Facebook has the largest active user base of all the platforms. A lot of users check Facebook many times a day and there are statistics that show pictures or visual posts get more circulation than straight textual posts. Facebook offers business the ability to measure the effectiveness of their posts and accurately direct it toward their target market. Marketing can be a great expense for businesses. The more efficient you can be, with the funds you have available, increases your chance of success. With Facebook's large user base and tools for measuring and directing your marketing, I believe that it is the second best social platform for visual content.

#3 Twitter: The Twitter platform has recently started allowing visual content and it has quickly grown to be widely used in most tweets. Although Twitter's user base is a third or less the size of the previous two platforms, It is still one of the largest user bases in social media. The culture and format lend itself well to the business presence and for that matter I have ranked it as the third best choice. Twitter is also a social platform that a lot of users check many times a day or are even continually notified of new content. This makes it a good choice for timely notifications to your target market.

#4 Pinterest: This platform has a much smaller user base, but they seem to be very loyal. I like the ability that you have to create boards and groups to expand your content exposure. Also I like the long life of the content and its ability to be seen long after you have posted it. Pinterest has a good format to use visual leaders to direct traffic back to you main media bases. I don’t think that Pinterest is for everyone, but for unique styled products or services Pinterest could work well.

Of these four platforms I think that along with my blog, Facebook and YouTube will be the best for me. I think that for now concentrating on a few areas and doing a good job with those will allow me to continue to provide valuable content and not burn out. Once I have mastered posting and creating content for these platforms, I will likely be able to expand to using the other platforms as well.