Pics Rule on Social

Forget for a moment the recent success of Instagram, Pinterest, Flickr and other photo/visuals oriented social media.  A new study of Facebook posts by HubSpot found that photos on Facebook pages generated 53% more likes than the average post, and photo posts generated 103% more comments - at least for businesses.  (The study examined posts from B2B [business to business] and B2C [business to consumer] Facebook users).

  Facebook users posted and shared around 300 million photos last year, an increase of 20% from the start of 2012.  Instagram use (measured separately) is up more than 1000% since it was bought by Facebook; however, Facebook recently announced it will no longer post Instagram metrics separately.  The study looked at thousands of business posts to see if incorporating visuals encouraged use and engagement by other social media users.  In addition, engagement metrics are a large component in Facebook's EdgeRank metric, which is used to determine what posts and comments appear in Facebook News Feeds (providing businesses with even more exposure and chance for impact).
  The study looked at a variety of types of posts, and found that 85% of the "most engaging Facebook posts" incorporated photos.  In contrast, 3% of the most engaging posts incorporated video, 5% were status updates, and 7% were links.  Furthermore, photo posts received 84% more link clicks that text-only or link posts.

The report suggests that this conclusion might challenge initial theories that using text-only posts could be a better Facebook strategy for businesses, versus the contradicting argument is that Facebook surfaces text-only posts in News Feeds more often than photos...  Marketers who are using interesting images to their advantage can increase traffic to their websites with an included link.

Sources -  A Picture is Worth More Than Any Words,  ResearchBrief
Facebook yanks Instagram usage data from public view, C/Net
Photos on Facebook Generate 53% More Likes Than the Average Post [NEW DATA], HubSpot's Inbound Internet Marketing Blog