4 Reasons Videos and Visuals Increase Engagement

A Shift From Tell To Show 

Considering the amount of content uploaded daily, it is no surprise videos/visuals are a user’s default mode of sorting and clearing through text-loaded posts. 

For portraying a lot more information efficiently, there has been a clear shift from tell to show. Videos allow users to devour content more quickly while dramatically improving their likelihood of recall. As every social media platform says, repeatedly, video content is the best performing content type online.

• Video is the best performing content type on Facebook
• Tweets with video see 10x more engagement than those without - and Promoted Tweets with videos save more than 50% on cost-per-engagement
• LinkedIn users are 20x more likely to share a video on the platform than any other type of post
• Pinterest users are 2.6x more likely to make a purchase after viewing brand video content on the platform

So Why are Videos so effective?

Here are 4 Scientific Reasons why visuals and videos work best 

Half of the human brain is devoted directly or indirectly to vision, from day one it is our primary sense for understanding the world around us. With 70% of visual receptors in our eyes, it only takes 150 milliseconds to recognise and symbol and 100 milliseconds to attach a meaning to it. With our brains processing visuals 60,000 times faster than text and retains 80 percent of what we see versus just 20 percent of what we read.

2. We Respond to Faces

Recognising another human face is important to us, so much so there is a section of the brain devoted to it. 

Seeing a human face gets the neurons in our brain excited and highly active when perceiving it. If you can add in a recognisable face, all the better. It has been shown that single neurons can react to the faces of specific people.Therefore, post that use visuals and faces feed off the brain’s natural process to grab attention.

3. We Recognise Emotion

An emotional videos/visuals attract immediate attention, and are actually processed in a prioritised manner. As we respond to faces, we look for emotion in others to influence our own behaviours.

Whether you are intentionally conveying emotion or not with your videos, users will still feel emotion when they view your post. Using video and tapping into a user’s feeling of awe and happiness increases their likelihood to share the content.

4. We Remember What We See

When we try to remember something, a visual always comes to mind. We evolved for visuals, not words so it is natural to tie an image to a memory. Not only do we remember things visually but we remember visuals much better than we do words. 

Based on research, after 3 days, if we read text alone we would only remember 10 percent of the information. Whereas, presented with text along with a relevant visuals we are 65% more likely to recall this information.

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