Facebook saw a 48 percent increase in ad clicks over the first quarter of 2014, and concerns of declining engagement were realized with a nearly one percent drop on text posts.
However, images and videos continue to rise to the top of the News Feed, providing the highest engagement of any other post.
Post Planner is a Facebook marketing app that aims to help you not only save time, but also increase engagement and reach on your posts.
We got to chat with CEO/Founder Joshua Parkinson about the recent addition of a Viral Photos feature, and a whole lot more.
You launched a new feature that finds the most popular photos on any Facebook page. How can businesses put this to good use?
If you’re a business with a fan page, you can use our Viral Photos feature for 3 main things:
- To curate proven images to publish on your page and reap huge increases in engagement & reach — usually 300%+
- To re-share the best images from partner pages — to build relationships and help promote their pages
- To research competitor posting strategies — to see what’s working best for them so you can replicate the best ideas
Curating proven viral photos, re-sharing viral photos from partner pages, and monitoring the photo strategies of competitors — this is what the new Viral Photos feature is all about.
The main pain point we’re trying to kill is the pain of guessing which photos will perform well on Facebook. In my opinion, predicting the future performance of an untested Facebook post is as difficult as predicting the future performance of a penny stock. Ie. extremely difficult. Post Planner removes a lot of this difficulty by taking the guesswork out of posting viral photos on Facebook.
Facebook recently called out “like-baiting” and explicitly asking for likes, comments or shares. What are some ways to increase engagement without “engaging” in such tactics?
The best way to increase engagement without asking for engagement is to post images that people love to share. In my experience, people love to share things that make a statement about who they are as a person. This is why wise/positive quotes on images do so well — because everyone wants to be perceived of as wise and positive. It’s why funny images do so well — because everyone wants to be perceived of as having a sense of humor. And it’s also why the more cynical, snarky images tend to do well too — because people want to be perceived of as “too smart or too good for all this”… “above it all” if you will.
The main point here is that you don’t have to ask fans for engagement to get engagement. You just need to publish images that people can share to make a statement about who they are.
We’re seeing more and more instances of organic reach decreasing, but there are many exceptions to the rule. What separates those Pages from the rest?
From my perspective, the pages that are holding strong and not seeing a decrease in reach are pages that:
- Consistently post a good *mix* of content, including photos, links and text status updates — instead of just posting non-stop images, or non-stop links
- Are responsive to user engagement — ie. they respond to comments and answer questions, etc.
- Have fan counts under 500k fans
- Are using FB ads to drive new Likes to the page (but not to boost posts)
Where do you see Facebook evolving in just the next few years?
No idea. But I think the News Feed will become ever more visual — with larger, more vibrant images and link previews — and ever more mobile friendly. And the News Feed algorithm will become ever more important to user experience. No groundbreaking predictions here, sorry!
As a wise man once told me: “The future is over-forecast and under-predicted.” 😉
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MVG3_RNyRs
Photo credit: Owen W Brown
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