How to Make Your Facebook Content ‘Pop’ with Images

Facebook is a highly visual medium. Studies show that Facebook posts featuring photos are the most noticed, liked, and shared.

Posts featuring an image stand out in the news feeds of people who like your page. While a great image can cut through the clutter, you don’t need to fill your feed. Think “representative” and high-quality images. Showcase a few great pictures that give a sense of an event–an AIDS walk, for example–and share the photos that bring to life an aspect of your work or your agency’s services.

“We’ve found that posting photos on Facebook is the best way to engage our audience. The bottom line is that images are easier to consume than text, especially when your content is competing with a million other things that might be in a user’s feed. The key is to share high-quality photos that your audience is interested in because not all photos are created equal.” – Meico Marquette Whitlock, Associate Director, Communications, National Association of State and Territorial AIDS Directors (NASTAD)

Here are 10 tips to make your Facebook page ‘POP’:

1. Write captions (in the status box) for your pictures so your page’s visitors will know what they are looking at.
2. To respect people’s privacy you should always have their permission before tagging them or using their names in captions–especially if you are posting on behalf of an organization.
3. Share photos when your organization sponsors or participates in a special event.
4. Share new graphics from your HIV-prevention or care campaigns or from a nicely designed cover of a recent report you’ve produced.
5. Time your image-sharing to local, national, and international events and special days—National HIV Testing Day (June 27), the 21st International AIDS Conference July 18-22, 2016), and World AIDS Day (December 1).
6. Use Facebook’s photo-album feature to upload multiple photos into “Lookbook Photo Albums.” Use the albums to develop a “theme”—such as showcasing individual staff or volunteers, documenting a special annual event, or marking a special day.
7. Keep track of which posts get the most attention by looking at Facebook Insights in the top navigation bar of your page. Insights offers a lot of useful analytics about your visitors and their level of engagement with your content.
8. Make sure the title, body content, call to action, and any other text in your status update are clear and have no typos.
9. Consider image – creation tools like Canva and Over, that can enhance your photos and graphics with text overlays and design elements.
10. To make sure images display optimally on your page use this ‘cheat sheet‘ to determine how to size them for Facebook (and other social media platforms).

Regularly grabbing the interest of people who like your page with high-quality, purposeful images means you are more likely to stand out in their minds as credible and worth their time. Clearly, making the effort to include images with your Facebook posts can have tremendous benefits for you and your page’s followers.This post was originally published on the AIDS.gov blog.