Images are a great way to tell a story behind a brand and can impact consumers’ social actions on content curation web sites such as Pinterest.
A Curalate research study of more than half a million images posted on Pinterest indicated a connection between image characteristics and consumer behavior. Curalate recently analyzed 30 visual characteristics, including textures, colors and the use of faces, to learn how these elements influence consumer actions such as number of pins, repins and ‘Likes’ on the social network.
Pins from brands that don’t use faces in marketing images drive 23% more repins than those that do, the research found. The study also revealed, among other conclusions, that vertical “portrait” images as well as red and orange also motivate more repins.
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“As consumers continue to flock to visual platforms like Pinterest and Instagram, marketers need to learn to market without words,” noted Brendan Lowry, Marketing Manager for Curalate, in a blog post. “This type of data is a major first step in helping brands and retailers predict which images will prompt consumer action before they share images across their social platforms.”
Additional findings from the Curalate study include:
- Very light and very dark images are not repinned as often;
- Images neither highly desaturated (black and white, for example) nor highly saturated perform better;
- Red images get more repins than blue images;
- Imagery that contains less than 30% background (such as whitespace) are repinned the most; and
- Repins drop off for images containing 40% or more of background area.
“As increasing numbers of consumers flock to sites such as Pinterest and Instagram,” said Apu Gupta, CEO and Co-Founder of Curalate, “understanding imagery will be a critical component of the digital marketer’s skillset.”
Click here to view an infographic based on the Curalate study to learn more about the images that drive the most engagement on Pinterest.
