The Impact of Visual Media on Facebook
Article By: DISRUPT Media, www.DISRUPTmedia.co
A picture is worth a thousand words but will it get you a thousand likes?
If you’re just using Facebook to make announcements and just post links then you’re not making the most of your Facebook Page.
Photos have a higher engagement rate than text, links or even videos (videos are a close second). So just by posting a photo instead of something else, you are instantly more likely to receive likes, shares and comments. A photo receives 53% more likes than the average post and 104% more comments. For a funeral home this can be incredibly valuable in building brand awareness.
However, posting an album might increase that engagement of your followers even further still. Posts that include a photo gain 120% more engagement than an average post and photo albums get 180% more.
So it’s worth spending some time in bringing images together to make a photo album. If people’s interest is piqued they will be happy to start looking through the album and potentially like or share it with others. Of course this has to be done with some amount of thought. Images that are put in to an album should relate to each other in some way and follow a theme.
The impact of photos on Facebook is huge. Since Facebook purchased Instagram last year, it has witnessed an increase of 1,179% in its usage. People continue to prove just how eager they are in sharing their photos with others. For many people, Facebook and Instagram are the main ways in which they display and share their photos.
Every funeral home should take the time to think about how they are using Facebook and what kind of posts they are making. This information doesn’t necessarily mean that everyone should swap all of their posts for photo albums but it is definitely worth thinking about increasing the amount in which they are used.
It might sound tricky at first to cut down on text and replace it with images. But if you wish to make an announcement, is there a way of conveying the same information visually? Infographics are an excellent example of websites taking statistics and nuggets of information and turning them in to an image.
The great thing about things like this, is that there are so many ways in which these can be shared beyond Facebook. Places like Pinterest and Tumblr are highly visual Social Media sites and their users love sharing images too. So make sure that if you do choose to make images to put your company name and website URL on the image itself. Because if the image goes viral, you want to make sure that people know where it came from.
But what if you want to post a link to an outside site? Facebook will automatically find an image to use as a thumbnail but it is far more effective to add your own image. Find a photo that will effectively represent what you are linking to and upload that to your post.
Photo posts receive 84% more link clicks than posts that are just a link or a block of text. That’s a huge number and not one you want to miss out on, especially if your funeral home relies on page views.
Images make a big difference to the engagement on Facebook posts. Using photos is a must for any business on Facebook, as users continue to prove their love of visual media.
