This is about as “age old rivalry” as you could get with social media. A battle between productivity and results. One takes much longer to produce but with massively better engagement and sharing, whilst the other doesn’t get gigantic results very often, but is about 10x quicker to produce. (roughly speaking)
We’re of course talking about the debate between photo and image content, versus video. Video is the more attractive of the two, but at what cost? Image solves that problem, but at a reduction in results. This isn’t going to be the answer to the query by any means, but it’s interesting to look at the comparison between the two from a stat point of view.
Hopefully you can draw your own conclusions from this article full of facts, numbers, and information to see whether video is worth fully investing in for your business’ social media, or whether there are other channels you should be focusing on. Onwards…
1. 66% of marketers don’t make videos because they think it’s too time-consuming
Although understandable, when people get over this barrier they start to see a return…
2. 68% of marketers say video has a better return on investment than Google Ads (Source: Biteable)
…with a further 53% saying it helps to increase brand awareness!
3. Viewers retain 95% of a message when they watch it in a video, compared to 10% when reading it in text
Product and demo videos come in the top video category types that businesses use, which clearly works well for educational purposes
4. Marketers who incorporate video into their campaigns experience 34% higher conversion rates.
Even a video here and there can boost your return by a significant amount!
5. 96% of users access Facebook on a mobile device, which means video must be optimized for people on-the-go using a smaller screen.
On top of this, people tend to not have sound on when watching in public, we’ve all been there and experienced the embarrassment of a video screaming out of your phone speaker.
6. A Facebook Ads study recorded that the first three seconds of video delivered 47% of the value, and the first ten seconds of videos contained about 74% of the value.
Video ads don’t even have to be very long for people to get the information, those 5 seconds before the skip button are all some companies need.
7. Images are one of the top drivers for users to click through to a website (Source: Adquadrant)
Images still outperform videos in this area because they are able to capture attention and share a call to action in an instant. Videos must hold user attention, and take time to compel users to act.
8. About 80% of marketers use images and pictures on their social media platforms
This has become industry standard now, images never fail to get a message across.
9. Articles with relevant images get 94% more views compared to articles without images
Images are a quick, surefire way to get your point across and set the tone for anything really. A blog post, social post, website home page, or even non-digital items like a magazine article.
10. Using 8-10 images on Instagram is the goldilocks number for engagement
Only being beaten by mixing in video and images into your carousel!
11. Believe it or not, telling people to swipe left on carousels actually works!
We’re not kidding. An increase of .17% to be precise, every little helps.
12. Images are the most frequently used type of visual content for marketing campaigns (80%) followed by video (63%) (Source: Lauro Media)
A tried and tested method, used by almost everyone to get the results they desire.
So in conclusion, video is very effective at getting information across to your consumers and customers, with possibly a lower return on investment (time, money, etc.) However, there’s nothing wrong with image content that is up to standard for some quick, digestible content for your audience.
We hope you found this content useful and educational! Contact Us today and find out more about how we can help you with promotional Photo or Video content for your business.
