Which Social Media Tools Reach Audiences Effectively?

A picture is worth a thousand words. Never has that been more true than with social media.  Sites like Pinterest, Instagram and Tumblr are built around images rather than text.  This visual marketing revolution includes more than six billion photos published each month, worldwide (CITE).  Even social networking sites that were built around words, like Twitter, include image sharing.  Pretty pictures, funny memes, graphic mashups guarantee more user engagement on sites.  In 2013, more than half of user activity was image uploads (Ionescu, 2013).  It makes sense that the most effective social media tools are those that capitalize on images.  According to Coleman “….visuals have been linked to increased attention and involvement” (2006). 

To test this theory I selected three social media tools that incorporate some type of image.  First up is a mash-up. A mash-up is a website “that combines data from more than one source into a single integrated tool” (New Media Tools , 2014). More specifically I created a ZeeMap, featuring some local attractions from Maine (my favorite beach and my favorite surplus salvage store):    https://www.zeemaps.com/map?group=1149003&add=1

This tool would be great for listing geographic resources, like support groups, historical societies or health centers.  The images are really just a place holder and hard to see in detail, but they give the individual pins a more finished look which I think would encourage more sharing of links among users.  

Next I tried Tumlbr. I admit, I like this tool much better. It is kind of like a dressed up, grown up version of Facebook. You can post images, audio, links and text and there are no ads to clutter the layout. It is popular with artists and those looking to express themselves in a creative format.  https://www.tumblr.com/blog/dandelionwine76  Tumblr is just ….pretty. However, for commercial purposes, I don’t think it would be the best format for getting a message out.  Users on Tumblr follow personal interests and I didn’t see a way that they would be exposed to other areas, like a “What’s Trending Now…” list that other social networking sites use. 

My freelance job requires that I have an active Twitter account, but I am rarely active on that particular social networking site. Instead, I use Hootsuite to post all my latest articles in one foul swoop to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.   For this experiment I thought I’d try posting a tweet with an image (something I didn’t know you could do until this week’s assignment).  As much as I don’t like Twitter personally, I do think it is effective for relying messages to a large and diverse audience. And as I already mentioned, messages that include an image are more likely to get clicked on.  https://twitter.com/Abt_Restaurants

Images can make people laugh and cry.  They can shock and motivate people to action. You don’t need to think too much when looking at an image.  It can encapsulate a message that would otherwise be ignored by the masses.  This visual form of communication will continue to grow and evolve with social media and I suspect be a major way businesses, organizations and individuals communicate in the future (Ionescu, 2013). 

Works Cited

Coleman, R. (2006). The effects of visuals on ethical reasoning: what's a photograph worth to journalists making moral decisions? Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 835-850.   

Ionescu, N. (2013). Online political communication: the role of image upload on facebook . Romanian Journal of Journalism & Communication , 53-58.

New Media Tools . (2014, October 8). Retrieved from Aids.Gov: http://www.aids.gov/using-new-media/tools/