From “a picture is worth a thousand words” to “‘pics or it didn’t happen” we know pictures have been an important part of our lives since they’ve been around.

With the rise of camera phones and then smartphones, that importance has only increased.

Pictures are everything on social media…if you’re posting something without a picture, it better be a video.

Humans are visual creatures and pictures not only work to capture our attention, but they are also digested much more quickly than words.

Your pictures need to be telling the story of your post visually.

I often call myself a writer and many describe me as one, but I spend far more time picking out images to go with a social media post for my clients than I do actually writing copy to go with it.

The right words mean nothing if the picture fails to capture your audience’s attention.

An image should at one glance get to the heart of what you’re trying to say, it should envoke the feeling your post and brand is going for.

If you don’t know what feeling you’re trying to convey, figure that out before posting anything at all. That feeling is not only how you gain the audience’s attention, but how you keep it and earn their loyalty. It’s everything.