We all know that images are compelling. The growth of visual content has been on a rapid upward trajectory over the last 12 months.

Social media platforms such as Pinterest and Instagram have taken the social media world by storm.

Instagram announced in July that it had acquired 80 million users. To put some further perspective on its adoption and growth, the visual social media network is now being used by 40% of the worlds top 100 brands.

Compete recently released a report showing that Instagram was the fastest growing web property on the planet amongst the top 50 websites. The report stated that it had grown from 16 million to 22 million unique visitors in just one month, which is a growth rate of 38% in just 30 days!

So How Powerful is Visual Content on Social Media?

Simply Measured looked at Facebook’s top 10 brand pages to find out the real numbers and facts and figures on the engagement and sharing levels of Photos and videso in compariosn to text and discovered:

• Videos are Shared 1,200 percent more than links and and text posts combined
• Photos are liked 200% more than text updates

To put some perspective on the power of visual content other studies show that Photo and video posts on Pinterest are referring more traffic than Twitter, Stumbleupon, LinkedIn and Google+.

For more insights into the power of visual content below are some more revelations.