Facebook | Forum « Facebook Experiment of the Week (8/20/12): Posting 30% more photos

Facebook Experiment of the Week (8/20/12): Posting 30% more photos (20 posts)

Topic tags: experiment, photos

Andrea Vahl said
9 months, 1 week ago:
Hi All -For all who are interested, I’d love to see if we could collectively run an experiment to see if we can get more data on what is working well.
I’d like to add more photos to our posts and measure the results. This can be dependent on how many photos you are already posting. If you are already posting a lot of photos, this may not work for you.
Here’s how this will work:
Take a look at the past two weeks of your posts and measure how many posts have photos attached.
Consider what increase of photo posts you want to have – I propose 30% more photos.
Measure your Talking about this number percentage (Talking about this over number of fans)
Have one week of increased photo posting and then measure your Talking about this number percentage.
Sound like a good experiment? I’m going to try it on one of my Pages and report back. Who else is joining me?
@andrea-vahl | # | Top
Diane Bianchi said
9 months, 1 week ago:
@andrea-vahl I’ll give it a shot!
@dianebianchi | # | Top
Kristy C. Cartier said
9 months, 1 week ago:
@andrea-vahl Do you mean actual photo posts or links to articles with photos? I don’t post too many photos directly (random would fit); however, I do post a lot to very visual links. These tend to get the best responses.
@kc_kreative | # | Top
Nichole Schlecht said
9 months, 1 week ago:
@andrea-vahl
Sounds good! I’ll let you know the results.
@iamconsulting | # | Top
Joseph Karl said
9 months ago:
I am noticing those pics with words on them are getting shared allot lately
@joseph-pfiffner | # | Top
Andrea Vahl said
9 months ago:
@kc_kreative Sorry I didn’t get back to you earlier on that, Kristy! Yes, I meant actual pictures rather than letting the link pull the picture in. See what we do at Social Media Examiner with our blog posts – we actually take a screenshot of the blog post and then add the link in the comments. We’ve been experimenting with that method to see how it affects the engagement.
Now I don’t propose that everyone has to do that but it’s a good thing to think about, how do I add a picture in rather than just a link? I have one client that has more than doubled her Talking about This number by switching to more picture posts. So definitely something to experiment with and see how it works for you! Can’t wait to hear everyone’s results!
@andrea-vahl | # | Top
Kristy C. Cartier said
9 months ago:
@andrea-vahl No worries. I do like the screenshots in the blog posts. I read stuff regardless but prefer visual content for sharing. This photo received a lot of attention (720 so far), of course, it contained people the audience knew too! Compared to a regular post with link (385). Our August numbers have been lower too as a lot of our industry peeps head out of town.
Not sure that I can bump up the image posts until I get closer to conference time. That is our main source of original content
@kc_kreative | # | Top
Andrea Vahl said
9 months ago:
There are so many variables, it’s hard to get meaningful stats with a small sample size, @kc_kreative – just like you said with people’s vacations, other things. But that is a good that the photo got more attention. Personal photos are the best for sure!
@andrea-vahl | # | Top
Laura Christianson, Blogging Bistro said
9 months ago:
@andrea-vahl
I’ve been experimenting with uploading photos to accompany status updates on my own Facebook page and the pages of several of our clients for a couple of months now. I’ve noticed that the posts with images do get more views, although it’s debatable whether they get more comments and likes.
One thing I’ve tried that really bumps up views is to enlarge (highlight) the status update with the picture attached. That spreads the update across both columns and makes it much more noticeable.
@laurachristianson | # | Top
Kristy C. Cartier said
9 months ago:
@andrea-vahl @laurachristianson I have noticed that the images show up larger on mobile now. Could be why they are doing better! Check out this article from the MarketingProfs on smartphones use.
@kc_kreative | # | Top
Kristy C. Cartier said
9 months ago:
@andrea-vahl Most of my posts this week have had low views (under 300); however, I posted an image with this link about The Age of Apps and it has received over 500 views so far with 15 being viral. BTW, this is a good number for our small page. (Our highest view was for the conference photos at over 800).
@kc_kreative | # | Top
Randi Thompson said
9 months ago:
@andrea-vahl
I have been so busy these past few weeks that I have not been keeping up with your experiments. Adding interesting photos has changed both of my business pages. In fact, the Horse and Rider Awareness page went viral the past two weeks because of the photos I shared. We are now up to about 1800 fans. The reach went up to 9,750! The engagement rate was 500%. I thought this was pretty good for a page that I have been doing experiments on. As you know, it was pretty much dead a few months ago. I have had several posts on both my pages get shared 1000 + times. I never have this happen with articles or the other more serious information that I share.
I would like to add that I also add an interesting headline. If it is a quote I will use that. After the headline I ask a question that is related to that page.
Randi
@randithompson | # | Top
Naurene (Bree) said
9 months ago:
People prefer posts with pictures – no question.
@ndonelly | # | Top
Ann at greenoak said
9 months ago:
i believe in this so much and am trying to do it more….i take pictures everyday in the store a nd look for  quasi legal.lol..   funny pictures floating around the internet   to use…. unfortunately i dont seem to get   to   organizing my data for   this  experiment.
..just sayin ~~ this is helpful , even tho im not   engaged..
the week i posted   over 50 pictures of our customers at our annual event/ yardsale we got    22,000 reach….they really liked that…….our normal reach   in about 9000…….our fans are up to 3400..
..i asked for likes once, and it was a dud, i still dont do contests or any kind of email harvesting….im so thankful for facebook;…so wierd that something this valuable   can still be free…except for our time….
@annfurnivall | # | Top
Diane Bianchi said
9 months ago:
I tried this for several days and there was definitely more “virality” (I think I just made up a word!) on the posts with pictures. This was a great experiment. Thanks for the idea @andrea-vahl!
@dianebianchi | # | Top
Andrea Vahl said
8 months, 4 weeks ago:
Everyone I have to apologize. @dianebianchi @annfurnivall @ndonelly @randithompson @kc_kreative @laurachristianson @joseph-pfiffner @dianebianchi @iamconsulting – I did not get my numbers down and so I don’t have results to post. BUT I am doing this this week for sure – I’ve already started on one of my pages and it’s already showing a fantastic boost. The picture that got the the most results was one that included several fans.
SO I will have some results and I’m keeping this topic sticky for the rest of the week. This is your chance if you haven’t taken down some measurements to try it this week. Thanks!
@andrea-vahl | # | Top
Naurene (Bree) said
8 months, 4 weeks ago:
I must admit, I’ve not been as diligent since we did something similar 6 weeks ago when one of my pages went from 1900 to 2400 from really a couple of key picture posts. Since then I’ve increased another 120 – not bad for not being particularly aggressive – which brings me to my point or comment. It seems once you’ve built a “critical mass” of about 2000 fans – and assuming you’re doing SOMETHING – it seems that you can build more quickly. I was wondering if anyone else thinks this or has an opinion?
@ndonelly | # | Top
Naurene (Bree) said
8 months, 4 weeks ago:
Of course, the other key take away is consistency and discipline!!!! :)
@ndonelly | # | Top
Kim Olive said
8 months, 3 weeks ago:
I have tried this & it works. Here are some facebook pages that I like…I am new here & I think I am not suppose to post the links in here..so I will just add the names of the pages. These pages follow this philosophy and are very successful.
*ChristiaNetcom (this one is big time)
*TrophyWhitetails (I think this one is cool b/c it has to mostly be men interacting)
@kim-olive | # | Top
Andrea Vahl said
8 months, 3 weeks ago:
I had great results with this! I have a very challenging page I manage that does not get a lot of interaction. Normally we post just once a day and it’s usually a link to an article, a question or a helpful tip with about 1 post per week that is a photo.
Last week I included 4 photos out of 7 posts and the Talking about This number doubled. It helped that one photo was of the people who are engaged with the page. I do agree @ndonelly that critical mass helps. I think it depends on the page and it can be around 1000 or 2000 fans. And of course consistency.
@andrea-vahl | # | Top