Facebook is constantly updating its algorithms, and it is easy to have your Facebook page get lost in the shuffle. You could pay to increase your page’s visibility with a Promoted Post or a Sponsored Story, but you don’t have to. Paying for posts can defeat the true sociability of social media.
Visual Marketing Doesn’t Lie
There is a simple, free and organic marketing strategy that you can use right now to increase your page’s visibility and engagement. When Facebook users scan their Timeline, images catch the eye quickly. Facebook users are more inclined to share images with their friends. Visual marketing is backing what we already intuitively know. HubSpot reports that Facebook users are uploading photos more than before; their study found that photos received 53 percent more likes and 104 percent more comments than text-heavy Facebook posts.
Amit Agarwal’s Post Style Experiment
Amit Agarwal from Digital Inspiration explains how to make your post stand out. Agarwal experimented with his posting styles. When Agarwal used a link-only post style, his numbers just didn’t add up. How did he have over 80,000 Facebook page likes and only an average of 10,000 post views? It wasn’t that Agarwal had one bad post; it became a trend on his page.
Agarwal made small changes that resulted in thousands more post views. Instead of sticking with a link-only post style, Agarwal switched to a picture and link post style. Large and captivating images became the focal points of his posts. The link is still an important element in the picture and link post style. The trick is to strategically position the link in the post. Agarwal recommends to keep the link in the beginning of the description because Facebook only shows three lines per post in the news feed. Agarwal found that shortened links also worked better. After Agarwal implemented these small tweaks, he had 30,000 and 50,000 post views for two different photo posts.
We’ve all heard that a picture is worth a thousand words. After Agarwal’s experiment, we also know that they are worth thousands of Facebook views.
Photo courtesy of Flickr user Shermeee