On December 30th, HIV.gov blogged about our take on social media trends for 2014, which have helped to formulate our goals on how we bring you information in 2015. It has validated some key facts such as: 81% of all American adults ages 18+ are Internet users, of which 52% of online adults use two or more social media sites, 53% of young adults are using Instagram that is focused on “more image and less text”, continued growth and user diversification of Twitter, a platform which limits us to ‘short-form’ content, and finally 87% of users are staying in touch with personal networks but another 58% are also using it to stay connected professionally.

Today we share our first goal for 2015: Keeping It Visual. HIV.gov joined InstagramExit Disclaimer in 2014 and have an average of 15 new followers a week. This platform’s image-based content has increasingly become a key part of our outreach strategy because we are able to reach this growing user base with HIV information that is easy to view, understand and share among their own social networks.

We go the extra mile to include eye-catching visuals within our social media content — and we try to optimize our images by using correct dimensionsExit Disclaimer for each platform we are sharing them on. This is important for organizations that are reaching the HIV community through multiple social media channels because it ensures that users view those images uniformly, whether on Facebook or Instagram.

Our “images” are often more than just photographs: we also engage our visitors with infographics that help them visualize dataExit Disclaimer, or with images offering inspirational quotesExit Disclaimer. You can find free images on websites like Unsplash.comExit Disclaimer and Canva.comExit Disclaimer.

Here are some tips we use and recommend to make your social media content more visualExit Disclaimer!

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