Take the time to understand the type of visuals that resonate with your customers. Notice what types of emotions are provoked by certain visuals you share or the actions your customers are prompted to take as a result of those emotions.

Here are some facts about the photos and videos on social media:

• Facebook: 250 million photos are uploaded every day and the site has an audience of 1.1 billion.
• Instagram: As of April 2013, Instagram had an average of 100 million daily active users, who have uploaded 4 billion photos.
• Vine: 13 million of the over 500 million Twitter users are active on Vine, and with the launch of the Android app in June 2013, this number is on the rise.
• Pinterest: 48.7 million people use this platform and spend over 14 minutes on this platform a day.
• YouTube: There are more than 4 billion views per day by the more than 1 billion viewer audience.

How to Get Visual in 5 Steps

Step 1: Image & Video Inventory. A great starting point for your visual marketing efforts is to inventory your image and video collections. Look at the images you’re currently using to market your business. Taking the time to familiarize yourself with the photos and videos you already have available can make getting started with visual marketing easier. If you sell a product from a manufacturer, see what they have available for you to use, and if you sell a service think, about investing in a month’s subscription to Shutterstock or iStockphoto.

Step 2: Identify Your Impact and Action. Any time you’re considering using an image to market your business, ask yourself, “What do I want my customer to feel and what do I want them to do after they’ve seen this picture?” The answer to these questions doesn’t have to be complicated, but it does need to be clear. Every image needs to have a clearly identifiable emotional impact – and those emotions should be the ones that prompt people to get motivated to act. Combining phrases and photos that provoke emotion and action is a great technique. Short videos with a purpose can also be a great idea especially now that you can share Vine videos to more than just Twitter.

Step 3: Pick Your Social Platform(s). Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook… it is possible to be on all these platforms to share your images and videos, but it is not easy to manage all of them. Each and every platform on social media has increased their visual tools. Each platform has its own advantages, and each will bring you an interested audience, but to be successful you need two things: consistency and relevance. Be sure that you have a plan in place for sharing your visuals often and that they provide the emotional relevance that we mentioned in step two above.

Step 4: Entertain Your Audience. What types of photos or videos are most effective at capturing your audience’s attention? Humorous content has the highest chance of becoming viral, I know how often I re-share those ecards that make me laugh out loud. As much as we enjoy laughing, we don’t watch comedies all the time, do we? Sometimes we want to be inspired, or simply learn something new about the world around us. Photos and images that provide that momentary inspiration, escape or enlightenment are entertaining to your customer. The goal here is to be remembered by your audience throughout the day so they will be inspired to take action.

Step 5: Assess & Adapt. The metrics provided by Facebook, other social media sites, and your own website’s analytics can serve as useful tools in assessing the impact of your visual marketing’s effectiveness. Pinterest business accounts provide stats, YouTube videos show you analytics and if you incorporate a trackable bit.ly into Twitter you’ll be able to get stats there as well.

Look at how many people see, share, and comment on your posts. As a rule of thumb, the more activity it generates, the more powerful the post. Be sure you are encouraging interaction and conversation; ask for feedback on your images and videos. Over the course of time, trends will emerge, and you’ll be able to tell what types of content your audience values the most.

Give them more of what they want and they will think more about you.