Some say image is everything, and that"s especially true on the Internet where the shift to visual optimization is playing an increasingly important role in the recent phenomenon of photo marketing. In light of their numerous benefits for brands of all kinds, MDG Advertising developed an insightful infographic that illustrates the influence of images on a company"s business, branding, search, and social media efforts. For insight on optimizing images for content and commerce, along with advice on image optimization techniques, take a look at the following infographic to see why images can help make success a snap.

It’s All About the Images [infographic by MDG Advertising]
Infographic by MDG Advertising

First, the infographic details the power of Pinterest whose popularity has propelled the use of high-quality images in sharable online content. It also explains how Facebook"s greater focus on images has led the social media giant to switch to Timeline and acquire photo startup Instagram.

Next, the impact of images on articles is examined since content featuring compelling images averages 94 percent more total views than those without. It also illustrates how articles featuring news, political, and sports content appear to benefit the most from relevant images.

In regard to press materials, the infographic shows that total online views are directly related to the number of multimedia elements within. A larger number of photos, videos, and other media accompanying press releases result in higher views.

Local search is also discovering the positive impact of images, with 60 percent of consumers more inclined to select a business with images in its local listing. This illustrates the strong relationship between image and photo SEO, which businesses can no longer afford to ignore as more and more companies realize the attention-grabbing power of images in local search.

The infographic goes on to explain why high-quality images are essential to e-commerce. Clear, detailed images are deemed to be very important by 67 percent of consumers and carry even more weight than the product information, full description, and customer ratings.

Finally, the correlation between images and social media is examined and it"s no surprise that posts with photos have higher levels of social engagement than other types of posts. Advice on optimizing images for social media is also featured.

As MDG"s infographic shows, images are the rising stars of the Internet and harnessing the enormous power of image optimization in a company"s photo marketing strategy can result in unlimited potential and performance for an image-savvy business.