In a digital world where every company and brand is jostling for the attention of their customers through social media, how important is image quality?

I would argue that it’s a key factor in successfully getting someone to stop their endless scrolling and instead focus on your content.

Capture attention with high-quality images

Ever since the 2007 introduction of the first iPhone, researchers have found that our attention span isn’t what it used to be. In fact, it might be shorter than a goldfish’s.

Although that paints a rather gloomy picture of where our cognitive abilities are at, our brains are still pretty remarkable. For example, some researchers have concluded that we can still far outpace a computer in our ability to recognize faces and familiar objects!

But what does any of this have to do with promoting your business on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest or other platforms?

No matter how clever or witty a caption is, our reduced attention span doesn’t allow for enough time to read all of these messages.

Preview, an app that serves as a tool for Instagram users, actually polled their audience on whether they “always read people’s captions” and found that 65% don’t.

Now I’m not saying captions don’t matter, just that they aren’t as likely to catch a consumer’s attention compared to, say, a photo.

What determines image quality?

So what makes one photo a better quality image over another? Many will agree that a poor-quality image usually has these characteristics:

• Blurry or pixelated
• Poorly lit
• Distracting background elements
• Unclear main subject

A high-quality image usually is:

• In-focus
• Well-lit
• Has a clear subject
• Composed in a dynamic or visually interesting way

Now you have a better understanding of what makes a high-quality image, but you still might be unsure of how this will impact your social media marketing success. So, here are a few statistics marketing firms have gathered from diving deep into this very topic:

• 67% of consumers say that the quality of a product image is “very important” in selecting and purchasing the product
• Images on Facebook receive 20% more engagement than videos and 352% more engagement than links
• Younger audiences say the images that they like most on Instagram are beautiful and well composed
• In an online store, customers think that the quality of a product’s image is more important than product-specific information (63%), a long description (54%) and ratings and reviews (53%)
• People only remember 10% of information 3 days after hearing it, on average; adding a picture can improve recall to 65%

In conclusion, if you are taking the time to come up with a perfect caption for a post, make sure you are also taking time to capture a high-quality image as well.

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About the author

Kaitlyn has been working at Madwire®️ for over a year now in the Social Media department. In her free time, she enjoys reading, kayaking and exploring more of the beautiful state of Colorado!