Perspective | Social Media to Social Visual Media! The shift in trend!

One has been hearing about social media very frequently these days and there is a lot being written about it and watched on the internet. Ever since Facebook and Twitter became often used platforms to communicate with each other and with the community at large, social media has assumed importance not only amongst individual users but also amongst the corporate, digital marketers and advertisers.
 
There was a bandwagon effect and suddenly every brand was running to stand out differently on the social media platforms. Blogging, tweeting, status updating has been on the heads. Since few years, marketers have been betting big on ‘Content is the king’ but the older trend is back! The saying always remains true that a picture speaks more than a thousand words! Studies show that ‘social media’ has evolved to ‘Visual Social media’.
 
Let’s go some years back, visual element was always the first target in the marketing strategies, may it be hoardings, banners and what not, the brands used these mediums to target their audiences but with social mediums like Facebook, Twitter, etc coming in, the era and the mind set changed and the marketers shifted to tweeting etc.    
 
 
It’s no surprise that with social media a picture captivates a reader’s attention over text. Since pictures have more impact, everyone from marketers to brands and to consumers have started heading towards promoting social media visual marketing through YouTube and small videos on Facebook too. 
 
Well! Actually, ‘technology shift’ is somewhere responsible for the shift in trend towards visual, isn’t it! There is no doubt about the fact that more and more people engage with social media via smart phones, they would prefer listening and enjoying a video rather reading a text. Okay! Let’s take a very simple example of our daily lives, don’t you feel that taking a picture and posting it is much easier than typing text! I’m sure everybody feels that! 
 
So we at Adgully spoke to industry experts about their thoughts on the fact that adding visual media helps in selling the product well! Also to know what is their take on the shift in trend for social media to social visual media.
 
Vinay Bhatia, Vice President Marketing, Shoppers Stop, says, “Adding a visual element to the content on social media does not only help the product sell well but also engage well! It’s not that if it does not have a picture or video attached to it will not work. We at Shoppers stop have many times promoted with a single line. Actually, the fact is we need to understand the mindset of the consumer and his/her insight. It all depends upon how you communicate and whom you communicate to.”
 
Visual element usually works well! He says, “Even we want to link social media to our business in every possible way, to our customers, stores etc. The trend is moving from conversations and dialogues to real engagement which can be done through content creation which is a corner stone of our strategy.”
 
Vivek Bhargava, CEO, iProspectCommunicate, says, “Internet speed has increased over the span of few years and consumers have started liking digital media. The reason behind television’s popularity is the fact that it can communicate more than the content. Also, internet has gained that much credibility that YouTube is today the 11th largest TV channel.”
 
It is a true fact that video is becoming stronger on the internet and with the fast growth of 3G services and smart phones, TV on the go is really an in thing now. The consumption of video content on YouTube is increasing enormously. At the end of the day, consumers like doing what they want and it’s a fact that consumers love watching videos. YouTube is becoming one of the most powerful medium to advertise as compared to other social mediums. But it all depends on how one creates content for the target audience. Let’s say if one wants to advertise to sell a BMW then a full page advertisement won’t work because huge percentage of people who would see that advertisement would not be able to afford it.”
 
P. Krishnakumar, Executive Director, India Marketing, Dell says, “Let’s look at the market sometime back. It was the visual element, may it be hoardings, banners etc, which was being used to sell well and so why would social media stay back.”
 
Brands have to catch the attention of the people in any way and it is always true that visual element helps in attracting the customer’s attention. Also technologies play an important role and no doubt that it’s easier to explain through pictures or videos. Adding visual element to the content on social media does help the product/service differentiate with others.
 
Rajiv Dingra, CEO and Founder, Watmedia said, “Social media is not a cluttered space. Even on television within a two minute break we have 10 12 ads. It depends upon what the customer and platform and market demands.”
 
Therefore adding a visual element to one’s content does help in selling out well. The reason that it was content all over because visual medium acquires bandwidth and that bandwidth was missing and so that is the reason why it’s more of visual content seen now. So pictures and videos will always dominate any form of content. They can emote much more whereas text can just go to some extent. Social media being a platform for engagement will always engage around videos and pictures. It depends upon how you deliver to your customer.
 
So with this, not only us but the marketers and the clients as well believe that Yes! The trend is going back again! Visual media is taking over Social media giving it a name: Social Visual Media!
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@adgully

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