Posting on Facebook Are Images Hurting Your Reach
Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.
Posting On Facebook
If you are a social media marketer or an online marketer, you might have already heard the news regarding the changes proposed to the structure and size of Facebook ads and posting on Facebook with images.
From February 2013, Facebook is planning to show text posts and promoted post ads more frequently than Facebook images-based posts. This doesn’t mean that image-based posts or ads will disappear from Facebook, but that the frequency at which they will be shown and posting on Facebook will change.
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One of the major changes posting on Facebook that social marketers may have to adjust to is the switch from image based posts to text based posts, or finding a suitable combination of the two in order to make the most of Facebook and still get a larger reach of your audience.
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But with end users interacting more with image posts when compared to text posts, it will not be easy to strike a perfect balance between these two.
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Posting on Facebook – the real reason….
Why does Facebook care? Adding advertisements to Facebook has been a big change to the platform, but one that everyone knew they would at some point have to do. As their stock price took a highly publicized dive, people began thinking more and more about how the site would ultimately make money. Facebook’s ability as an advertising platform has been questioned and scrutinized heavily, perhaps putting them under pressure to show more ads and increase revenue for their advertising partners.
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Too many image posts could begin to clog up the already busy Facebook user page, and detract from the larger paid advertisers, so perhaps Facebook are moving to try to limit the number of image posts on the site for this reason.
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For internet marketers, we need to decide whether adding an image when posting on Facebook will add enough impact to overcome the fact the image will be seen less often than an equivalent text post.
The answer from Facebook is that we now have to pay to promote our image posts to gain a greater reach. While this might not be a big deal for most online marketers and business owners, for those starting or with a lower marketing budget will be affected and will have to decide which image posts should be promoted.
Testing While Posting on Facebook
The only real way to do this is in the same way we test Google Adwords or landing pages, by split testing and seeing which gives us the best results in terms of conversions.
However, it should also be noted that advertising on Facebook and social media is just as much about growing a brand as it is about instant conversions, so sometimes it will come down simply to what gives the customer the best experience of dealing with our company.
My Take for Posting on Facebook
Recently, I did a non-scientific test while posting on Facebook. I posted a couple text posts at different times of the day and posts with images. I saw a significant increase in my reach with the posting on Facebook as text only. I also received more interaction from my fans.
So then I put a question on my fan page to ask others if they saw any changes. About 75% saw their reach numbers increase when they tried posting on Facebook without an image. While this is always a moving target with Facebook, and because your audience will be different than mine, I wouldn’t rush to make changes…. Instead, just be aware and the next time you are posting on Facebook that changing the way you share your information or spending the money for the promoted posts, that you just might see a better result with a text only post.
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