The Importance of the Use of Images/ Audio- Visual in Today's Social Media.

I have used Flickr to create an album comprising of some recent images of my work as a dancer. I found Flickr to be a great way of storing and sharing images and I enjoyed seeing a collection of my dance photos in this way, as it wasn't something I had done before. 


https://www.flickr.com/photos/128995167@N06/sets/72157648572609390/


For dancers, images and audio- visual play a crucial role in securing auditions and landing job offers. Without a professional headshot you won't get very far, turning up to an audition without one is highly frowned upon and seen as unprofessional. 
Whilst working as a freelance dancer in Asia, obtaining work through my agent was solely dependent on my portfolio of photos, which further highlighted the importance of images. 

It's not only dancers that now use a headshot in order to increase their employability. It has been proven that employers are more likely to view your full online profile and subsequently make contact with you, if you include a headshot. Users on sites such as LinkedIn and Reed are given the option to post a photo to their online C.V. 

Images and audio- visual are now an extremely powerful means of communication in today's social media. From magazine articles to blog posts, then to Facebook posts and finally 'tweets' (which are restricted to 140 characters), the length of our messaging keeps getting shorter, with more and more information being visualised for easier consumption. 

Instead of taking photographs and sharing them with a few family and friends, we're uploading them to our social media pages, photos are becoming the 'universal language'. On Facebook, around 250 million photographs are uploaded every day, and those photographs are prominently featured on the platform. A post that includes an album or picture receives 120- 180% more engagement from 'fans' than a text- based post. 

With society responding more to visual stimuli and story telling, Facebook and Google+ have both moved to image- centric layouts (whereby images are used to tell more of the story than text). Twitter's images are much more front and centre, and Pinterest, which is the fastest growing social platform ever, relies solely on picture content. 

Companies are now using images through social media to promote their brand. Every company has a 'story' to tell. This could be anything from brand history to internal innovation to customer feedback. Brands are using pictures to tell compelling stories that generate engagement. This is becoming increasingly popular, as visual story telling isn't a high- cost strategy. Consumers aren't looking for the highest- quality visual content, they want stories told in a visual way that encourage, engage, enlighten and entertain.