Social Media Images–Two Sides of the Same Coin
We live in a world dominated by social media. It dictates the way we perceive things, therefore it is a mighty tool used to shape opinions, and even people’s lives. However, social media needs to adapt to the ever-changing rhythm of life.
Since we live in a fast-paced world where every new generation seems to be having a declining attention span, social media platforms have been challenged to find a way to catch their audience’s attention.
Something similar happened with the gambling industry as recently as a decade ago. Offline casinos were unable to adapt to the modern rhythm of life and they were overtaken by the much more forward-thinking industry of online casinos. It is clear that the casinos online felt the pulse of the public, responded to it and were duly rewarded with tons of new customers.
For social media, the solution came in the form of images. Images, in the social media context, are defined as different types of visual expression, including photos, infographics, postcards, memes, gifs, emojis and even texts designed as images. Social feeds are bombarded by images, and typed comments are the thing of the past.
The Pros
If you are looking for a bigger web presence and visibility across platforms, images are the right marketing strategy for you. Whether you are an individual going after more likes, comments, and shares, or a young entrepreneur trying to market your business, images can be your instrument to promote yourself or boost your sales.
Images take up more space on news feeds and have greater visual impact. Images help you build your personal identity as well as create cross-platform loyalty, making them a great way to self-promote or market your brand.
Images also increase engagement and convey concepts better, thus enabling superior understanding and communication. Effective images evoke better responses and are a nifty way of expressing mental and ideological ideas. Memes and emojis are not only a way of expression, but a great medium for understanding one’s private emotions and thoughts as well as others’.
The Cons
Images might be a creative and catchy way of conveying ideas, but they are also a destructive force that diminishes the use of words in everyday life. This causes problems for those using social media for insight, and for those who relish the written form of communication.
The unique beauty of the word gets lost in the face of the constant use of images. The image-based conversation is slowly becoming a new form of communication. Why type to share your feelings and experiences when you can take a photo instead?
A picture is worth a thousand words, but what if these picture-perfect images are a bad influence not only on our language but on our mental health as well. Images are detrimental since they oftentimes promote vanity.
Selfies are deemed as self-focus that borders on narcissism. Young people nowadays form their identities based on the likes the get, so posting the ideal picture and the most amusing gif became the goal of their existence.
With more than 80 million images uploaded on Instagram and million gifs shared on Twitter every day, who can be any wiser as to know whether we are moving in the wrong or right direction?
We hope you enjoyed this promoted piece as much as we did!
