Most of us have multiple social media marketing platforms installed on our phones. Many of us will use them daily, whether for work or pleasure. However, with Hackernoon positing that people are beginning to get "a feeling of chronic app fatigue," it's easy to see how social media marketing can fall foul if companies just churn out the same old uninspired posts.
What is social media marketing going to do with an audience of goldfish?
According to a study by Microsoft in Canada, the average human's attention span has fallen from 12 seconds in 2000 to eight seconds in 2015. Our attention span is no shorter than that of a goldfish, showing the startling impact of the mobile revolution on our minds.
However, it's not all bad news. The study also found that humans have developed the ability to multitask. While digital natives "struggle to focus in environments where prolonged attention is needed," it was also revealed that "they're better at identifying what they want/don't want to engage with and need less to process and commit things to memory."
What does this mean? Well, humans are simply undergoing a transformation in the way in which we process information. Our memory isn't necessarily corroding away, we're just allocating our attention in a different way to before, as a result of the technologies we're now using.
How to make your social media marketing strategy go swimmingly
Microsoft state that marketers can address this transformation in three easy steps:
- Be clear, relevant and concise
- Leverage rich media and movement to grab attention
- Be interactive, and build immersive experiences across screens
And good news - by using the right imagery in your social media marketing, you can tick all these boxes. Simple graphics are quick to create and pack a punch on screen. We've even created some videos which help to make our content experience much more engaging - take a look at this blog as an example.
Take a look at our infographic below, which shows just how important imagery is for social media marketing:
Hopefully, you now see how important imagery is for keeping your social media marketing fresh and engaging. Yes, it can take some time and effort to really get right, but it'll all be worth it when the clicks, retweets and likes come rolling in. If something's worth doing, it's worth doing properly!
It takes 20 years to build a reputation and 5 minutes to ruin it. Make sure your social media management is helping not damaging your brand by reading our post "How to boost your brand reputation with social media management"