Image explosion era under social networking sites

I wonder if you know that 10% of the pictures in human history have been taken over the past 12 months. I know this data may be a big shock to everyone: why do so many pictures, what is the use of these pictures? I think the answer you might have guessed is that it's used on social networking sites. And as Antony Young, the CEO of WPP Group Mindshare North America, says, the power of technology and the media is driving more and more consumers to embrace the image culture. And more intelligent mobile devices give users more opportunities to create and consume picture information, and social networking sites allow them to be shared across multiple platforms.

You might say that the boom in the picture is nothing new. But what I want to say is that the rise of this picture is inevitable, and most of the content publishers should deploy a corresponding picture strategy. And now, to better illustrate this, let's look at a few sets of data:

If you ask Facebook or Zuckerberg, they'll tell you that Facebook's turning point is the picture. Facebook users now upload 200.005 million of photos every day. A Harvard Business School report estimates that 70% of Facebook's activities are related to photos: whether it's "liking" or commenting on a friend's photo or uploading your own photos.

The rise of Instagram and Pinterest, a start-up company, is not unrelated to the picture. Their early development even surpassed Facebook and Twitter over the same period. The Instagram website attracted 2 million users within two months of its creation and had 15 million users at the end of 2011, with up to 60 photos uploaded per second. Pinterest from the unknown to have 10 million users also only spent 6 months.

So what is the underlying cause of this picture explosion? The answer is: people have a natural preference for pictures-we just can't help liking to look at all kinds of pictures. In the history of mankind, the picture has been very important in the information expression and the dissemination of information, but this fact only after the photo-exchange website is very hot, the public will be recognized again. Compared with the text information, people process picture information faster, can consume more information. And the picture is more than words, the public understanding of the requirements are lower, so can create more user participation.

So, more and more companies, more and more sites in the introduction of image strategy. Our next question is, how do we deploy the picture strategy? Please see the following three points:

1. User participation, that is, how to make the picture to increase the participation of existing users?

A lot of publishers have done well in this area. They do not hesitate to place high quality pictures on every page of the page, and even organize the pictures into galleries. One thing to note, though, is that the most popular images are likely to shift the user's attention away from your site. For example, a celebrity avatar may lead a user to an entertainment website, or a picture of a product that directs a user to a shopping site. Here's a good solution: create related picture applications that let the picture itself contain information about the user's needs. It's important to note that while the images may be the user's favorite form of expression, if the images distract the user, you can't rely too much on the image.

2. User access, that is, how to allow a user to participate in the conversion of user sharing activities

First, we can put the "Facebook" Twitter share button in the picture. Publishing these images to sites such as Instagram,facebook is another form, because it really puts the picture in the social media, where the sharing activity originated. According to the findings of the Research institute Sharaholic, the Pinterest-oriented flow (referral traffic) even exceeded the sum of G+,youtube,linkedin and Reddit. Not only can users easily pin pictures on Pinterest browser extensions (browser extension), but Pinterest's integration with Facebook has also drawn more attention to the images. Luminate Company (formerly Pixazza Company) adopted another method: publishers are not waiting for users to download the Pinterest program, but in each picture automatically attached to the application. Several of these applications are based on the image area positioning of the sharing application, that is, the user in a picture needs to emphasize the location of the comments, to facilitate friends see.

3. Income generation, that is, how to make this strategy more money?

Many small web sites are in a way that increases user traction by placing ads directly at the bottom of the picture, the equivalent of a semi-transparent, Overlay ad at the bottom of YouTube video. This overlapping advertising is desirable as long as the content of the advertisement is relevant to the picture itself. But there is a better way: the user-initiated content reward model. In this case, the user is more likely to notice if the advertising content or service provided by a brand is related to the content of the image.

Original link: In the age of Pinterest, Instagram, marketers Need an Image strategy