It's no secret that humans are attracted to bright, shiny things. This evolutionary quirk naturally extends to social media, where posts with photos and videos rank far higher than text-only updates.

A recent infographic from eMerge turns the lens on social photos and comes up with some interesting stats. Here are some of the highlights.

Brands

Over the past year brands have increased the photos they post on social platforms daily by 20 per cent, while articles with images are 94 per cent more likely to be viewed than those without.

Adding a video to your article will increase the likelihood of click-throughs by 45 per cent.

Facebook

Facebook users really, really like photos. Facebook posts with an image attached get over 50 per cent more engagement than text-only posts, while posts with a photo album attached enjoy 180 per cent more engagement.

Since Facebook rolled out image-heavy Timeline, photo and video engagement has increased by 65 per cent. 

Twitter

Twiiter users might be constrained to 140 characters, but that doesn't mean they don't appreciate a good image. Like Facebook, tweets with an image attached get twice as much engagement then text-only posts.

Interestingly, after Twitter introduced its built-in sharing service photo engagement increased by 421 per cent. 

Pinterest

Pinterest is a platform built on beautiful images, so it's no surprise that 80 per cent of Pinterest content are repins. 3.6 per cent of all referral traffic for Pinterest comes from images.

On another note, Pinterest is now the third most popular platform in the US.

To see the full infographic visit mediabistro.com.

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