Think about the last news story that you came across…it was more than likely on your phone ( I know mine was). What do you remember outside of just the words that you read? Probably a picture or video. This week, we are talking visual communication.
ezTalks describes visual communication as “the way of communicating through a visual aid and it refers to the presentation of information through visible mediums like images or text. The images or text used in visual communication helps in entertaining, enlightening, persuading, and informing the audience.”
Visual mediums include things like pictures, video, diagrams, and graphics. The need for visual communication applies to both journalists and communication specialists.
The way I look at it, journalism is factual story-telling. Journalists take information that they gather from interviews and press releases and share that information with the general public in a creative and attention-grabbing way. I do not remember too many times during my life where a big block of plain black and white text has really grabbed my attention. The visual aspect of journalism is what could be the difference between someone receiving your information or not.
In 2015, The Huffington Post published results from a study conducted by BuzzSumo, “where they studied over 100 million different articles to see what made them shareable, they found that articles with at least one image were shared, on average, twice as much on Facebook and Twitter than articles that didn’t contain any images at all.”
What this means is that images can help with a posts circulation and increasing viewership. Why do we think that is? Tech Smith reported four reasons why visuals aid in communication:
1. Visual communication saves time by relaying messages faster.
2. Visual communication ensures that a clear, unified message is delivered.
3. Visual communication helps to provide a shared, consistent experience.
4. Visual communication results in better retention of the information.
The reasons listed above can apply to both journalists and communication specialists, and I want to talk about all of these things in a little more detail.
Visual communication saves time by relaying messages faster. I think that a great representation of this is infographics. Pie charts, bar graphs and the like are a super easy way for people to understand a lot of information in a quick glance. There is no need to read or analyze statistics because the visual component gives you the information that you need to know.
Visual communication ensures that a clear, unified message is delivered. It is more difficult to have any kind of miscommunication when you are looking at a visual. There have been many times when I have read a news article and was left a little bit confused, and then watching the attached video or looking at the attached picture has given me some clarity.
Visual communication helps to provide a shared, consistent experience. When we read things, it is natural to form an interpretation of the text and create a mental image of how we image everything to look. When we are given a visual to look at then we are not forming our own mental images and we are now sharing the same image and the same experience.
Visual communication results in better retention of the information. There are some people that are naturally visual learners, so for those people, this would be true no matter what, but visuals are helpful when it comes to remembering information. It is a little bit easier to think back to something you saw than to think back and remember something that you read. Bold fonts and colors can also help your visual component to be more memorable.
So what makes a good visual post?
One thing that makes for a good visual is something that evokes some sort of emotion. You want to make your audience feel something. Whether that be joy, sadness, anger, any time that a visual can pull emotion from an audience then you are creating a memorable experience.
The setting of your photo or video can also grab your audience’s attention. Think about in breaking news situations, often times visuals are necessary. For example, in active shooter situations, reporters are trying to keep everyone updated on the situation, but in a situation like this, viewers would rather see the scene with a live video or pictures rather than read about a description in a series of tweets.
Visuals that are bold, bright, and colorful are also good and memorable. You want something that will stand out and grab your audience’s attention. Dull posts will not do that. It does no good to include a visual that adds no additional value to a post, so it is important to add something that is visually appealing.
As a journalist, I can vouch for the importance of visuals. At my station, every tweet or Facebook post that is intended to drive viewers to watch your story of the day must include some sort of visual. Visuals are also required for our online stories. Our web team keeps track of post interaction and they have found that posts with some sort of visual aspect get more attention than posts without visuals.
Communication specialists are already pretty good at using visuals in marketing and on social media. An article published by ezTalks reads,
“Visual communication is the most effective way of passing information because the human mind processes things in images. The majority of people respond quickly to visual images instead of texts. Any business needs to understand the cognitive functions to maintain customers. Any form of advertisement should use images and graphics because it will have a great impact on boosting your business.
The use of visual communication is massively growing among business. Over 84% of all marketing strategies use images, popular GIFs, graphics, animations, and signs among others to pass information. Visual communication has more impact in passing information to people.”
I think that understanding how to effectively incorporate visuals into communication plans can boost an organization or business. For journalists, visuals can improve your storytelling and get your story circulated more times that it could have been without the visuals. Sometimes, your audience just needs to see it to believe it.
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