A lot has changed in the world of Facebook over the last two years. Shoot, a lot has changed in the world of Facebook over the last two months! It seems every time you log on something has been tweaked, twitched, or swapped out. Between the Edgerank roll out and the removal of page activity from users’ tickers, it is more and more difficult for posts to make it into newsfeeds. We’ve all seen a dip in engagement. Who isn’t bummed out when after crafting the perfect promotional post you discover it was only seen by a fraction of the people who actually like your page?
After all, if engagement is the Holy Grail, we’ve got to get our posts in front of eyes that will engage.
All these changes mean that we as marketers and promoters need to work smarter and more strategically.
If I had a dollar for every piece or post I’ve seen suggesting that including a picture or video will increase your views I wouldn’t have to worry about engagement at all. But here’s a little secret we’ve discovered about our clients’ pages: it isn’t true.
For our authors, other types of posts are much more likely to make it into their customers’ newsfeeds. Today we’re sharing what kind.
1. Pure Text Posts: Posts with nothing but text are pay dirt. They routinely preform the best for our clients. Not only is the “people saw this post” number much higher than any other type of post, they typically generate the most engagement.
2. Text + a Link: Posts that include a shortened link perform next best for our clients. When scheduling these posts be sure to remove the link box that automatically appears when a link is added to the status update.
3. Picture (with or without a link): The fact that picture posts fall 3rd on this list continues to confound our team. We’re all drawn to pretty pictures in our newsfeed and we’ve all seen the countless sources suggesting we add pictures to our posts. But time and time again, picture posts – both with and without links attached – preform less successfully than pure text posts for our clients. It’s “a puzzlement.”
4. Link Posts: These posts are what automatically appear when a link is added to a status update. They are fully customizable and are visually appealing. We have recently been given the power to upload our own pictures to these posts and we’ve always been able to edit the link’s title or description. The one downside for our clients? Very few eyes see them.
5. Shared Link/Post: We hesitate to share this item because the last thing we want to do is discourage sharing the content of others. But it seems when a page shares the post of another page those are least likely to be seen. It’s counterintuitive, but it’s true. We wonder why on earth engagement with other pages is buried? It’s “social” media at its best! What is more confusing though is that if ANY type of post is actually shared by another user its visibility improves exponentially. So while the person who shares your post may not get many views, your original post gets more views. It’s confounding.
Facebook is a for-profit business. To guarantee your posts be seen by a greater number of users promoting or boosting them is your best bet. But if you’re like us, taking advantage of organic views is important too. We encourage you to test our suggestions and see if they work on your page!
We want to hear from you! Tell Us… Do these observations mirror what you’re seeing happen on your Facebook page? What types of posts earn you the highest visibility and the most engagement?
This is so helpful, Molly! And intriguing, since as you say, everyone always says photo post get the most views. I’ll have to try out some of these suggestions on my blog page and see how it goes. Thanks for all the time you’ve put into researching this!
My pleasure, Elizabeth! Please let us know what you find.
Hi Molly,
Excellent post, and thank you for sharing the insights you all have discovered within your client base! I have to say, we still find photos and video working well with our own clients, and considering the weight they get with EdgeRank (all other things being equal), it’s hard for us to knock them off the pedestal, so to speak…but you make a very good point about the short and sweet text updates. Those ones have worked really well in our experience, too. Variety is the spice of life and Facebook, it seems!
It’s so interesting how different pages see different results with different types of posts. Thank you for sharing what you’re seeing! AND I’m glad to hear people are seeing success with pics & videos. I know that’s what I’m drawn to in my newsfeed!
I think the picture posts might depend on what sort of page you have. I’ve had more views on some of my photo posts than on other types of posts. My page is for a parenting blog and other moms seem to be fond of funny and sweet pics of kids. I suspect that parenting bloggers don’t make up much of the clientele from which you gather your results.
I was thinking the same thing! On my FB page for my personal blog, pics seem to get more play. It just goes back to knowing your audience, right? That’s why I’m so thrilled to hear feedback from other bloggers. We’re curious what types of posts get engagement in different arenas.
I have noticed the same things and had many conversations about this. For a while we’ve been hearing that image posts get the most views and interaction and I think Facebook is trying to (for some reason) reverse this and is now giving priority to text only posts. I couldn’t even venture to guess why.
I’ve also noticed that links to other Facebook pages get much higher views than links to external sites. Not that this should be surprising, Facebook wants to keep you there.
I was surprised by what you found out about sharing other FB posts/content though. I hadn’t noticed this myself but will definitely keep an eye out. As you said, it’s confounding why Facebook would do this…
Ooooo, I’ll have to do some experimenting with links to other Facebook pages! Thanks for the tip and comment, Jenn.
{have a great weekend!}
I tested the volume of engagement between an fB post which had a link to my blog, and another fB post with just pure text (same content with the blog). Wonder of wonders, you’re right on! Thanks for these valuable tips!
Joan, I’m so glad you found it helpful! Thanks for coming back to let us know.
Just tried posting a pure text post right now. Thanks for sharing these tips!
Looking forward to seeing if it gets your post in front of more eyes! Thanks for taking time to comment.
Happy Monday!