One of the many ways that social media has helped businesses is by giving you the opportunity to tell your own story.

Successful marketers connect with communities by telling stories that not only capture audiences, but allows them to become emotionally invested as well. While words play an important role in the conversation, media — such as photos and videos — is stealing the show.

In March, Facebook launched Timeline for all Pages, which placed a greater emphasis on storytelling through photos and videos. According to Simply Measured, media drives the most engagement on the top 10 brand Pages. Photos are Liked twice as much as text updates, and videos are shared 12 times more than links and text posts combined.

Facebook isn’t the only social network seeing a prominent increase in media creation and consumption. Forty-two percent of posts on the blogging platform Tumblr are photos — leaving text, chats, quotes, videos, and links to making up the other 58 percent.

Even social newcomer Pinterest has seen success due to the visual nature of its platform. The service has referred more traffic than Twitter, StumbleUpon, LinkedIn and Google+. And in June, pinners followed more brands on Pinterest than users on Facebook or Twitter.

YouTube is still dominating with more than 100 million members taking social action on videos every week. In February, it was reported that over 700 YouTube videos were shared on Twitter every minute. And just last week we reported that Facebook became the second largest video site in the U.S., overtaking Yahoo.

While none of this should come as a surprise, it’s a good reminder for businesses that are just getting started with social media. While a good photo or video can go a long way, it’s important that you don’t clutter your feed with just those. Try to find a balance and see what messages work best in a visual medium.

[Via: AllFacebook, Image credit: Andy Wright]