I was all set to write another post on social media ROI, based on a post I just read on PR Daily. Good stuff and well-presented, but I realized as I wrote that the information itself wasn’t new — in fact, it might not even be that interesting. What had caught my eye was the infographic.
Long story short: a social media firm named Syncapse released a survey in the middle of last year, plugging in some numbers to figure the value of a company’s Facebook fan. Percentages, dollar figures, blah, blah, blah. I probably read it back in June and completely forgot about it. Again, not knocking the data — it just didn’t stick.
But today, I came across a post that did more than list figures. It told the story in eye-catching visuals and colorful bar graphs.
I mean, look at that! A McDonald’s Facebook fan on average spends more than twice what a non-fan spends — same with Starbucks and Nike. How on earth did I gloss over these numbers the first time I saw them?
Answer: data overload. Everywhere I turn online, there are numbers — likes, fans, follows, retweets, comments, percentages, ROI calculations, user figures and projections. It’s borderline insane. Now, all of this information is fantastic, and some of it is highly useful, but instances based on typed text and numbers are at an immediate attention and memory disadvantage. If you want math to tell a story, you need to be taking it visual.
PR folks are notorious wordies — but don’t let your PR mistake the tool for the point. Could be that your next release or pitch would go miles further if you let a picture take the place of your thousand words.
