Web Biz Strategy

Photo? Check

In this post I’m going to expand on a topic that I cover in my Facebook Pages optimization guide – using Photos when you do Status Updates for your business or organization.

We are talking about uploading a photo to Facebook vs. just posting the message itself. When you do this, your message becomes the caption for that photo.

Here’s why you should do it:

1. You get a higher response rate on your post. Some people have reported up to a 100% increase in response rate – likes, shares and comments – when you include a photo. This just makes sense. Visual content is more eye-catching and compelling, so people both see the items more (are less likely to skim past them), and react more.

2. It allows you to edit your message copy later if needed. With a text-only status update, you cannot edit your text. For a really bad typo, normally to fix it you would need to delete the post, potentially losing accumulated likes and comments.

With a photo post you can go back and edit the caption at any time, which then updates the post in real-time in everyone’s feeds, without re-posting the item. You can correct a typo, add missing information, whatever you’d like. Just click on the photo, which will take you to the photo page. Then click “Edit This Photo.”

3. You can write more than 420 characters. If you try to post a text-only status update, Facebook will give you an error if you use more than 420 characters.

Photo posting gets around this entirely. Here is a test post that I just did – I put in 804 WORDS, not characters.  See for yourself.

(A shout-out to Ching Ya for sharing this trick here on her blog, along with some other great Facebook tips.)

End result: A smart poster uses every post strategically. Using photos with your posts provides multiple benefits, so while there can always be exceptions, in general you should follow this best practice.