Is a Picture Worth a Thousand Words? An Empirical Study of Image Content and Social Media Engagement

TLDR

Social media posts with pictures are generally more popular than those without, yet the specific characteristics that drive higher engagement remain unclear. The study empirically examines how image content influences engagement for major airline and SUV brand posts on Twitter and Instagram. Using datasets of posts from Twitter and Instagram, the authors analyze image characteristics and engagement while controlling for selection bias. They find a robust positive effect of image presence on engagement in both categories on Twitter, that high‑quality, professionally shot images boost engagement on both platforms, while colorfulness, human faces, and image‑text fit affect engagement differently across platforms and product categories.

Abstract

Are social media posts with pictures more popular than those without? Why do pictures with certain characteristics induce higher engagement than some other pictures? Using data sets of social media posts about major airlines and sport utility vehicle brands collected from Twitter and Instagram, the authors empirically examine the influence of image content on social media engagement. After accounting for selection bias on the inclusion of image content, the authors find a significant and robust positive mere presence effect of image content on user engagement in both product categories on Twitter. They also find that high-quality and professionally shot pictures consistently lead to higher engagement on both platforms for both product categories. However, the effect of colorfulness varies by product category, while the presence of human face and image–text fit can induce higher user engagement on Twitter but not on Instagram. These findings shed light on how to improve social media engagement using image content.